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

‘The defendant said that it was too badTo be taken up before Judge Con-rad.·····Now Mr. H–, the lawyer, was there,With a pretty good head, but not very much hair,So little, in fact, that a wig he must wear,Ri tu den u-den a!’

The parody had the jogging, jolting air of the original, and was replete, we recollect, with whimsical associations. ••• We shall venture to present here the comments of two most valued friends and contributors, upon the performances of two other esteemed friends and favorite correspondents. Of ‘The Venus of Ille,’ the one writes as follows: ‘I fully sympathise with you in your admiration of this tale, as well as of ‘The Innocence of a Galley-Slave.’ I could not in the perusal of them both but feel the vast superiority of the Grecian over the Gothic style. For in spite of all the humor and wit and nature and pathos of the Dickens and Lever school, there is something more of the Gothic and grotesque in their paintings than in these pure and unforced limnings of the able Frenchman. Where the ground-work of the tale is of sufficiently bold conception, and the incidents offer hooks enough to hang interest upon, there can be no doubt that this cool style is by far the most effectual in the end. The more strained and heated style of some other modern authors will be very effectual for awhile, but the excitement of the reader will flag sooner. The reason is, that too much descriptive and passionate power is expended on minor portions of the tale; and the enthusiasm of the reader is partially exhausted before he comes to the grand catastrophe, where it should be most of all elicited. But writers like Walter Scott, or this Frenchman, are self-possessed and meditative in a great portion of their writings; by skilful touches giving the reader every thing necessary for him to know in reference to characters and scenes; and on any great emergency their sudden heat carries the reader away captive.’ The admiration expressed by our other accomplished friend for the chaste and graceful essays of a still more accomplished correspondent (there is nothing like disparagement in this comparison) is widely shared, as we have the best reason to know, by our readers on both sides of the Atlantic: ‘John Waters! There is a drab-coated plainness about the name, which is at the same time liquid and musical; not more liquid and musical, howbeit, than those charming commentaries of his on every variety of quaint topic; full of an amiable grace, tinged with the most delicate hue of a fine humor; a refined ore drawn from no ordinary mine without alloy; like the compositions of Sappho, to which an unerring critic has applied the expression, χρυσειοτερα χρυσου; the very best of gold. Doves never bore choicer billet-doux beneath their wings. A beautiful sentiment always touches the heart, though couched in homely phrase; but when one knows how to cull from our mother-tongue the most expressive words, and has gained that enviable mastery, making them fall into their own places, and thus become inseparable from the idea, the perfection of art is gained. Serve us up these choice morceaux each month, dear Editor; let them not be missed from the generous board, lest the banquet be incomplete. Let me tell you, in passing, that your correspondent Harry Franco’s tale is a caution to dowagers. Never have I encountered such a startling incident on the high seas, out of ‘Don Juan.’ ••• Did it occur to ‘N.’ that the change suggested in the mere inscription of his epigram, ‘Religious Disputation,’ would be entirely out of keeping? ‘Uniting the circumstances,’ as Commissioner Lin would say, would produce such discrepancy as was occasioned lately at a democratic meeting in one of the western States, where a certain resolution in favor of our old friend and correspondent, Gen. Cass, was made to undergo a slight metamorphosis by the substitution of the name of Mr. Van Buren; causing it to read something like this: ‘Whereas Gen. Martin Van Buren emigrated to the west from New-Hampshire in early life with his knapsack on his back, and unsheathed his sword in repelling the Indians and fighting against the British!’ etc. This historical fiction, in the antagonistic excitement of the moment, was carried by an almost unanimous vote! ••• Inversion of mere words, or involution of phrase and syntax, let us whisper in the ear of our Troy correspondent, is not a very great beauty in poetry. His own good thoughts are spoiled by this affectation. It requires an artist to employ frequent inversion successfully. The opening of the ‘Lines on a Bust of Dante’, by Mr. T. W. Parsons, affords a pleasing example in this kind. It is clear and musical:

‘See from this counterfeit of himWhom Arno shall remember long,How stern of lineament, how grimThe father was of Tuscan song.’

Inversion should be naturally suggested, not forced. ••• It is to be inferred, we fear, that the late ‘principal editor’ of the ‘Brother Jonathan’ does not take it in good part that the new proprietors of that now popular journal saw fit to arrest its rapid decadence, by a removal of the inevitable cause of such a consummation. Lo! how from his distant down-east ambush, with characteristic phrase, he denounces them as ‘cowards’ and ‘puppies!’ Whereupon, in a response appropriately brief, the ‘brave few’ of the ‘principal editor’s’ old readers who have ‘endured unto the end,’ are informed by the new incumbent, that the tabooed ci-devant functionary ‘seems disturbed because he was not suffered to kill the ‘Brother Jonathan’ as he had killed every journal in which he was permitted to pour out his vapid balderdash. He is a perfect Bluebeard among newspapers. He no sooner slaughters one, than he manages to get hold of another, and butcher that with the same remorseless indifference.’ The editor adds: ‘He once enjoyed the honor of some connection with the ‘New World,’ and would have consigned that well-known sheet to the tomb of the Capulets, had not the publishers foreseen the danger, and escaped in season.’ We merely note these facts, as corroborative of a remark or two of our own, in our last issue. ••• ‘An Incident in Normandy’, we shrewdly suspect, is not ‘from the French;’ if it be, all that we have to say is, that such pseudo-rhapsodists as the writer could never by any possibility love nature. The thing is altogether over-done. A Frenchman’s opinion, however, Cowell tells us, should never be taken where the beauties of nature are concerned, unless they can be cooked. There is another grave objection to the article; which consists in the undue frequency of Italian and French words and phrases, foisted into the narrative. We have a strong attachment to plain, perspicuous English. Ours is a noble language, a beautiful language; and we hold fully with Southey, who somewhere remarks that he can tolerate a Germanism, for family sake; but he adds: ‘He who uses a Latin or a French phrase where a pure old English word does as well, ought to be hung, drawn and quartered, for high treason against his mother-tongue.’ ••• ‘The Song of the New Year, by Mrs. Nichols, in a late number,’ writes a Boston correspondent, ‘is an excellent production, and a fair specimen of the improved style of our occasional American verse. Suppose a book-worm should light on poetry of equal merit among Flatman’s, Falconer’s, Prior’s, or Parsell’s collections? Would it not shine forth, think you? Indeed our lady-writers are wresting the plume from our male pen mongers unco fast.’ ‘That’s a fact.’ Mrs. Nichols has a sister-poet at Louisville, Kentucky, who has a very charming style and a delicious fancy. A late verse of hers in some ‘Lines to a Rainbow,’ signed ‘Amelia,’ which we encountered at a reading-room the other day, have haunted our memory ever since:

‘There are moments, I think, when the spirit receivesWhole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves;When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose,Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose.’

Moore never conceived a more beautiful simile than this. ••• Number Two of the ‘Reminiscences of a Dartmoor Prisoner’ will appear in our next issue. We have received from the writer a very interesting and amusing manuscript-volume, filled with patriotic poetry, containing vivid pictures of scenes and events in the daily routine of the prison, as well as sketches of Melville Island Prison, and reminiscences of striking events in the lives of sundry of the prisoners, in the progress of the American war. We shall refer more particularly to this entertaining collection in an ensuing number. ••• The Lines on ‘Niagara Falls at Night’ are entirely too terrific for our pages. They are almost as ‘love-lily dreadful’ as the great scene itself. ‘M.’ must ‘try again,’ that is quite certain; and we are afraid, more than once. ••• Tu Doces! Doubtless many of our young readers, especially in the country, have often pondered over the zig-zag hieroglyphics which covered the tea-chests at the village-store, and marvelled what ‘Howqua,’ which was inseparable from these inscriptions, could mean. It was the name of the great Hong merchant, ‘the friend of Americans,’ who died recently at Canton, at an advanced age, leaving his vast wealth to two sons. Here is an elegy written upon his death by his brother-merchant Tingqua, which is now being sung about Canton to a dolorous air, accompanied by the yeih-pa and the tchung, a curious sort of guitar and harp in common use. The elegy comprises a little outline, together with hints and allusions, prettily conveyed, of the principal biographical events of Howqua’s career, and is entitled

TINGQUA’S TEARS

I weep for Howqua. He was the friend of my youth. We often rose before day-break, and gazed together at the soft blue clouds round the retiring moon.

At that time I smiled on Howqua. We both grew old together. We often went to the tombs of our fathers, side by side, and thought tenderly of the loving dead.

Weep friends of the Hong. All friends at home (literally Celestial friends,) and all natives of outside countries weep; weep excessively. For Howqua is no more.

Howqua was a fixed man. He had reason. Loving old laws, old customs, and all things long since established as wise, he therefore hated change.

Howqua was very rich. He had no half-thinkers and third-smokers (meaning no partners,) and no branch-breakers to his universal tea-dealings.

Also he had lands for rice and pasture, and to play at ball, and villas, and ponds of fish, and fifteen field-bridges of carved wood gilt, and seven domestic bridges inlaid with ivory birds and dragons.

Also he had money in the foreign mysteries (probably meaning the funds.)

Also he had doings with several things of great value, and shares of large ship-loads. But never would he touch the hateful opium-trade, after the recent mad insolences.

Also he had some wives.

Also the Great Emperor loved him, though Howqua was only as the poorest man before that Yellow Illumination of our day and night.

The body of my friend was slight, and easily injured; like the outside of people’s pocket-watch when she walk against the sun (that is, an injured watch that goes wrong.) But my dear friend for whom I shed these tears had a head with many eyes.

Howqua knew what to do with his unnecessary gold. He built a temple to Buddha, and thus made the god a present of 2,000,000 dollars, to the excessive delight of his Essence and Image.

Also, Howqua gave 800,000 dollars to assist the ransom of his beloved Canton from the fangs of the late war; to the excessive delight of the Fighting-minded Barbarians.

Weep, then, for Howqua, even as I weep. He was the friend of my youth. Together we grew old, walking toward our fathers’ tombs. We might have died together; but it is well that one old friend should be left a little while to weep.’

The paper upon ‘American Interior and Exterior Architecture’ we are quite certain would not have the tendency which the writer contemplates. It would discourage rather than foster that better taste which is gaining ground among us. In this city, how great have been the improvements in the exterior and interior decorations of our dwellings, within the last eight years! We remember the time as it were but yesterday, when the beautiful muslin window-shades, first introduced among us by Mr. George Platt, were considered a luxury of interior decoration—as indeed many of them were. But from these small yet promising beginnings, our accomplished artist has gone on, until his extensive establishment is filled with specimens of rich and elaborate architectural decorations, for the various styles of which the reigns of French and English sovereigns have been put under the most liberal contribution. Our wealthy and tasteful citizens have vied with each other in the enriching and beautifying of their mansions; while, also emulous, a kindred class in our sister-cities have laid requisitions upon Mr. Platt’s architectural and decorative genius, (for in him it is genius, and of no intermediate order,) which have convinced him at least, that the ‘laggard taste’ which our correspondent arraigns, is ‘not so slow’ as he seems to imagine. ••• Who was ‘Dandy Jim from Caroline,’ of whom every boy in the street is either whistling or singing, and whom we ‘have heard spoken of’ by musical instruments and that of all sorts, at every party or ball which we have found leisure to attend during the gay season? We are the more anxious to glean some particulars touching the origin and history of this personage, because his fame is rife among our legislators, and the ‘lobby-interest’ at Albany; if we may judge from a quatrain before us, which hints at a verbal peculiarity of our excellent representative, Alderman Varian, whose v always takes the form of a w, especially in his rendering of a foreign tongue; as witness his being ‘just on the qwi-wi-we for the capitol,’ on one occasion, and the subjoined versification of another of his Latin sentences, with cockney ‘wariations:’

‘Then here’s a health to Wari-an,That ‘Weni, widi, wici’ man!He talk de grammar werry fine,Like Dandy Jim o’ Caroline:For my ole massa tol’ me so,’ etc.

There is in these humane and benevolent days an increasing sympathy in the public mind for a man condemned to ‘march sorrowfully up to the gallows, there to be noosed up, vibrate his hour, and await the dissecting-knife of the surgeon,’ who fits his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. ‘There never was a public hanging,’ says a late advocate of the abolition of capital punishment, ‘that was productive of any thing but evil.’ There is an anecdote recorded of Whitfield, however, which seems to refute this position, in at least one instance. This eloquent divine, while at Edinburgh, attended a public execution. His appearance upon the ground drew the eyes of all around him, and raised a variety of opinions as to the motives which led him to join in the crowd. The next day, being Sunday, he preached to a large body of men, women and children, in a field near the city. In the course of his sermon, he adverted to the execution which had taken place the preceding day. ‘I know,’ said he, ‘that many of you will find it difficult to reconcile my appearance yesterday with my character. Many of you will say, that my moments would have been better employed in praying with the unhappy man, than in attending him to the fatal tree, and that perhaps curiosity was the only cause that converted me into a spectator on that occasion: but those who ascribe that uncharitable motive to me are under a mistake. I witnessed the conduct of almost every one present on that occasion, and I was highly pleased with it. It has given me a very favorable impression of the Scottish nation. Your sympathy was visible on your countenances, and reflected the greatest honor on your hearts: particularly when the moment arrived in which your unhappy fellow creature was to close his eyes on this world forever, you all, as if moved by one impulse, turned your heads aside and wept. Those tears were precious, and will be held in remembrance. How different was it when the Saviour of mankind was extended on the cross! The Jews, instead of sympathizing in his sorrows, triumphed in them. They reviled him with bitter expressions, with words even more bitter than the gall and vinegar which they gave him to drink. Not one of them all that witnessed his pains, turned the head aside even in the last pang. Yes, there was one; that glorious luminary, (pointing to the sun,) veiled his bright face and sailed on in tenfold night!’ This is eloquence! Would that we could have seen the beaming features, the ‘melting eye, turned toward heaven,’ which indelibly impressed these words upon the heart of every hearer! ••• Many of our readers will doubtless remember the time when Professor J–, the celebrated ‘artist in hair,’ was flourishing in his glory, and when his fame was perhaps as rife in New-York and Boston as that of any man living, in his line of art. His advertisements too, so unique in their grandiloquent phraseology, will not soon be forgotten by those who relish such things. The Professor is not now, as regards worldly prosperity, the man he used to be; but his gentlemanly feeling still clings to him, and his pride in his profession is as enthusiastic as ever. We observe by a Boston journal that he is once more trying his luck in our eastern metropolis; and this reminds us of an anecdote concerning him. A friend tells us that some months since he encountered the professor at a coffee-house, where he was rehearsing to a rather verdant customer the former glories of his professional life. Among other things, ‘At one time,’ said he, ‘I was sent for by express, to go to Philadelphia on professional business.’ ‘To do what?’ asked his listener. ‘To make wigs for the Signers of the Declaration of Independence!’ replied J–, with a pompous air. Now the professor’s comrade was not very quick-witted, as we have already hinted, and it did not occur to him at the moment whether the signers were men only of yesterday, or of the last century; and he rejoined, in a tone of wonder: ‘What! do they all wear wigs?’ ‘All?’ replied the professor, with a look of mingled piety and triumph; ‘why, Sir, did you ever know a wax-figure to wear its own hair? Men of flesh and blood, now-a-days, don’t know any better; but the man of wax, Sir, possesses a truer taste, and always consults the Perruquier!’ The relator says it would be impossible to convey an adequate idea of the superb manner in which the last word was uttered; the full round tone, and the tonsorial flourish of the right hand, as if it still grasped the magic brush and scissors. ••• The reader will have gathered from an incidental allusion in an article by Mr. George Harvey, in our last number, some idea of the fervent enthusiasm with which he has studied and copied Nature, in her every variety of season and changes of the hour, in executing his beautiful Landscape Drawings. We have neither the leisure nor space for an adequate notice of these pictures; but being solicitous that our town readers should participate in the great enjoyment which they have afforded us, we would direct them to Mr. Harvey’s exhibition-room at the old Apollo Gallery, nearly opposite the Hospital, in Broadway. ••• Here is a pleasant specimen of an ‘Unnecessary Disclaimer,’ for which we are indebted to a metropolitan friend: ‘A few evenings since, as a gentleman was walking up Broadway, and just as he was crossing the side-walk at the junction of White-street, his feet suddenly slipped from under him, his hat flew forward with the involuntary jerk, and he measured his length on the side-walk, striking his bare head on the hard ice, till all rang again. At the instant it chanced that a lady and gentleman were just emerging from White-street into Broadway, and the prostrate sufferer, lying directly across their path, interrupted for a moment their farther progress. He soon recovered his feet, however, and with one hand on his newly-developed bump, and the other on his breast, he turned to the couple whose passage he had impeded, and exclaimed with cool gravity: ‘Excuse me; I didn’t intend to do it!’ Probably he didn’t; at all events, his word was not disputed. ••• Most likely our readers have not forgotten an admirable satire upon the ‘Songs of the Troubadours,’ from which we extracted some months since the affecting story of ‘The Taylzour’s Daughter.’ Something in the same style is ‘The Doleful Lay of the Honorable I. O. Uwins,’ a gentleman who threw himself away upon a bailiff’s daughter, to escape from the restraints and pungent odors of a sponging-house. The ‘whole course of wooing’ and the result are hinted at in the ensuing lines:

‘There he sate in grief and sorrow,Rather drunk than otherwise,Till the golden gush of morrowDawned once more upon his eyes;Till the spunging bailiff’s daughter,Lightly tapping at the door,Brought his draught of soda-water,Brandy-bottomed as before.‘Sweet Rebecca! has your father,Think you, made a deal of brass?’And she answered: ‘Sir, I ratherShould imagine that he has.’Uwins, then, his whiskers scratching,Leer’d upon the maiden’s face;And her hands with ardor catching,Folded her in his embrace.‘La, Sir! let alone—you fright me!’Said the daughter of the Jew:‘Dearest! how these eyes delight me!Let me love thee, darling, do!’‘Vat is dish?’ the bailiff mutter’d,Rushing in with fury wild;‘Ish your muffins so vell butter’dDat you darsh insult ma shild?’‘Honorable my intentions,Good Abednego, I swear!And I have some small pretensions,For I am a Baron’s heir.If you’ll only clear my credit,And a thousand give or so,She’s a peeress; I have said it!Don’t you twig, Abednego?’‘Datsh a very different matter!’Said the bailiff, with a leer;‘But you musht not cut it fatterThan ta slish will shtand, ma tear!If you seeksh ma approbation,You must quite give up your rigsh;Alsho, you mosht join our nation,And renounch ta flesh of pigsh.’·····At a meeting of the Rabbis,Held about the Whitsuntide,Was this thorough-paced BarabbasWedded to his Hebrew bride.All his former debts compounded,From the spunging-house he came;And his father’s feelings woundedWith reflections on the same.’

It is a very dear marriage for Uwins, for on visiting his father the Baron, that incensed nobleman tells the double-dyed apostate never to cross his threshold again, and directs John the porter to kick him into the street. The order is anticipated:

‘Forth rushed I. O. Uwins, fasterThan all winking, much afraidThat the orders of the masterWould be punctually obeyed;Sought his club, and there the sentenceOf expulsion first he saw:No one dared to own acquaintanceWith a bailiff’s son-in-law.Uselessly down Bond-street strutting,Did he greet his friends of yore;Such a universal cuttingNever man received before.Till at last his pride revolted;Pale, and lean, and stern, he grew;And his wife Rebecca boltedWith a missionary Jew.Ye who read this doleful ditty,Ask ye where is Uwins now?Wend your way through London city,Climb to Holborn’s lofty brow;Near the sign-post of ‘The Nigger,’Near the baked-potato shed,You may see a ghastly figure,With three hats upon his head.When the evening shades are dusky,Then the phantom form draws near,And, with accents low and husky,Pours effluvia in your ear;Craving an immediate barterOf your trousers or surtout,And you know the Hebrew martyr,Once the peerless I. O. U.’

A friend, in a recent letter to the Editor, thus alludes to the ‘National Intelligencer,’ one of the ablest and most dignified journals in the country, and to two of its ‘special correspondents:’ ‘Mr. Walsh, who writes from Paris, seems an incorporation of European literature and politics; and his articles are, in my belief, the most valuable now contributed to any journal in the world. Willis is the lightest and most mercurial ‘knight of the quill’ in all the tournament. It is astonishing with what dexterity, felicity, and grace he touches off the veriest trifle of the day, investing the trite with originality, and giving the value of wit and poetry to the worthless and the dry. Pity that this brilliant ‘quid nunc’ should degenerate into a mere trifling ‘arbiter elegantiarum,’ and expend his buoyant and ductile genius in the indictment of ephemeral paragraphs. His genius, it is true, has little solidity; but if he would rest two or three years on his oars, he might collect the scatterings of wit and poetry, which would in that time accrue to him from his readings and reflections, into a volume of essays, etc., which would be inferior in brilliancy and piquancy to but few of any nation.’ Possibly; but in the mean time, let us advise our friend, Mr. Willis has the little substantials of every-day life to look after. He ‘pleases to write’ frequently and currente calamo, because he ‘pleases to live.’ Fame is one thing, and can be waited for; there are other things that cannot tarry so well. Mr. Willis has ‘seen the elephant.’ He knows that Kenny Meadows is not far out of the way in his humorous picture of ‘The Man of Fame and the Man of Funds,’ wherein a shadowy hand protrudes from cloud-land, holding a pair of steel-yards, to resolve the comparative weight of an appetizing leg-of-mutton, and a huge laurel-wreath. The mutton ‘has it’ all to nothing, and the wreath ‘kicks the beam! ••• Punch, up to the latest dates, suddenly makes his appearance in our sanctum. Merriest of Merry Andrews, he is ever welcome! His ‘Comic Blackstone,’ must be of great service to legal gentlemen. In it, among other things, we are enlightened as to the ‘Rights of the Clergy.’ We subjoin a few items: ‘An archbishop is a sort of inspector of all the bishops in his province; but he does not call them out as an inspector would so many policemen, to examine their mitres, and see that their lawn sleeves are properly starched, before going on duty in their respective dioceses. An archbishop may call out the bishops, just as a militia colonel may call out the militia.’ ‘A bishop (episcopes) is literally an overseer, instead of which it is notorious that some of them are overlookers of their duties, and blind to the state of their diocese, though they call it their see.’ ‘The duties incumbent on a parson are, first to act as the incumbent, by living in the place where he has his living. Formerly, a clergyman had what is called the benefit of clergy in cases of felony; a privilege which, if a layman had asked for, he would have been told that the authorities would ‘see him hanged first.’ ‘A curate is the lowest grade in the church, for he is a sort of journeyman parson, and several of them meet at a house of call in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, ready to job a pulpit by the day, and being in fact ‘clergyman taken in to bait’ by the landlord of the house alluded to.’ Concerning ‘Subordinate Magistrates,’ as officers of the customs, overseers of the poor, etc., we glean the following information: ‘Tide-waiters are overseers of the customs duties, therefore it is their duty to overlook the customs. Custom is unwritten law, and a practice may be termed a custom when it can be proved to have lasted for a hundred years. Now, can any man doubt that the custom of defrauding the customs has endured more than a hundred years? Then the practice has become a law, and for observing this law, which, it seems, is one of our time-revered institutions, and a profitable proof of the wisdom of our ancestors, landing-waiters and tradesmen are to be prosecuted and punished. Monstrous injustice!’ ‘Overseers of the Poor are functionaries who sometimes literally over-see or over-look the cases of distress requiring assistance. The poor law of Elizabeth has been superseded by a much poorer law of William the Fourth, the one great principle of which is, to afford the luxury of divorce to persons in needy circumstances. It also discountenances relief to the able-bodied, a point which is effected by disabling, as far as possible, any body who comes into the work-house. The Poor Law is administered by three Commissioners, who spend their time in diluting gruel and writing reports; trying experiments how little will suffice to prevent a repeal of the union between the soul and the body.’ We have this information concerning the clock heretofore complained of: ‘Punch has been accused of hitting this clock very hard when it was down; and it certainly must be admitted that it was wholly unable to strike in return. We are happy to say that the wound has been followed by the clock being at last wound, and we now offer to take it by the hands in a spirit of friendship. We have been told that the long stagnation has been caused by the absurd scruples of the pendulum, which refused to go from side to side, lest it should be accused of inconsistency.’ Under the different months, ‘Punch’s Almanack’ gives many important directions, one of which is for the proprietors of the public gardens: ‘Now trim your lamps, water your lake, graft new noses on statues, plant your money-taker, and if the season be severe, cut your sticks.’ The following ‘Tavern Measure’ is doubtless authentic: Two ‘goes’ make one gill; two gills one ‘lark;’ two larks one riot; two riots one cell, or station-house, equivalent to five shillings.’ For office-clerks, as follows: Two drams make one ‘go;’ two goes one head-ache; two head-aches one lecture; two lectures ‘the sack.’ To those gentlemen who are lovers of the Virginia weed in its native purity, a list of prices, ‘furnished by one of the first Spanish houses,’ is published. It includes ‘choice high-dried dock-leaf regalias,’ ‘fine old cabbage Cuba’s,’ ‘genuine goss-lettuce Havana’s,’ and ‘full-flavored brown-paper Government Manilla’s!’ Two scraps under the head of ‘University Intelligence’ must close our quotations: ‘Given the force with which your fist is propelled against a cabman, and the angle at which it strikes him; required the area of mud he will cover on reaching the horizontal plane.’ ‘Show the incorrectness of using imaginary quantities, by attempting to put off your creditors with repeated promises to pay them out of your Pennsylvania dividends.’ ••• Many German physicians and surgeons hold that there remains in the brain of a decollated head some degree of thought, and in the nerves something of sensibility. It is stated by his biographer, that in the case of Sir Everard Digby, executed for a participation in the Gunpowder Plot, the tongue pronounced several words after the head was severed from the body. After the execution of Charlotte Corday, also, it is alleged that the executioner held up her lovely head by its beautiful hair, and slapped the pale cheeks, which instantly reddened, and gave to the features such an expression of unequivocal indignation, that the spectators, struck by the change of color, with loud murmurs cried out for vengeance on barbarity so cowardly and atrocious. ‘It could not be said,’ writes Dr. Sue, a physician of the first eminence and authority in Paris, ‘that the redness was caused by the blow, since no blow can ever recall any thing like color to the cheeks of a corpse; beside, this blow was given on one cheek, and the other equally reddened.’ Singular facts. Do they not militate against certain theories of ‘nervous sensation’ recently promulgated in our philosophical circles? ••• Doesn’t it sicken you, reader, to hear a young lady use that common but horrid commercial metaphor, ‘first-rate?’ ‘How did you like Castellan, last evening, Miss Huggins?’ ‘Oh, first-rate!’ ‘When a girl makes use of this expression,’ writes an eastern friend, ‘I mutter inly,’ ‘Your pa’ sells figs and salt-fish, I know he does.’ And it is all very well and proper, if he does; but for the miserable compound itself, pray kill it dead in your Magazine! Hit it hard! By the by, talking of odd phrases, hear this. A young Italian friend of mine, fresh from Sicily as his own oranges, a well-educated, talented person, who has labored hard to get familiar with English letters, and has read our authors, from Chaucer downward, dilated thus on the poets: ‘Po-pe is very mosh like Horace; I like him very mosh; but I tink Bir-ron was very sorry poet.’ ‘What!’ quoth I, ‘Byron a sorry poet! I thought he was a favorite with Italians?’ ‘Oh, yes; I adore him very mosh; I almost do admire him; but he was very sorry poet.’ ‘How so? Byron a sorry bard?’ ‘Oh, yes, very sorry; don’t you think so? molto triste—very mel-an-choly; don’t you find him so? I always feel very sorry when I read him. I think he’s far more sorry than Petrarca; don’t you?’ This will remind the reader of the very strong term used by a Frenchman, who on being asked at a soirée what was the cause of his evident sadness, replied: ‘I av just hear my fader he die: I am ver’ mosh dissatisfied!’ ••• We shall probably find a place for the paper entitled ‘Foreigners in America.’ The writer touches with a trenchant pen upon ‘the social abuses which the first families in the metropolis tolerate at the hands of disreputable exquisites and titled rascals.’ Nervous words, but not undeserved. ‘How much more rapidly a fashionable foreigner will move in the high road of preferment than one of your thinking, feeling, complex persons, in whom honor, integrity and reason make such a pother that no step can be taken without consulting them!’ ••• We have indulged in one or two sonorous guffaws, and several of Mr. Cooper’s ‘silent laughs,’ over the following ‘palpable hit’ from a New-Jersey journal: ‘A talking-machine,’ says the ‘Newton Herald,’ ‘which speaks passable French, capital English, and choice Italian, is now to be seen at New-York. It is made of wood, brass, and gum-elastic.’ ‘A similar machine,’ adds the ‘Sussex Register,’ ‘compounded of buckram, brass, and soap-locks, and familiarly called ‘Green Josey,’ is to be seen in Newton, at the Herald office; though we cannot say that it speaks any language ‘passably.’ It frequently makes the attempt, however, and here is one of its last ‘essays:’ ‘Gov. Gilmer is understood to have had a standing cart-balance for any appointment under the present administration, which he might choose to except; but he will not except an appointment of any kind under this administration.’ Isn’t that ‘standing cart-balance’ rich? The usual phrase carte-blanche, which in the sentence quoted might be rendered by ‘unconditional offer,’ is transmogrified into cart-balance! Among all the blunders perpetrated by conceited ignorance in its attempts to parley-voo, this stands unequalled. We have seen hic jacet turned into his jacket, in an obituary; that was a trifle; but cart-balance overcomes our gravity!’ So it does ours. The anecdote, to adopt the reading of a kindred accomplished linguist whom we wot of, is a ‘capital jesus-de-sprit!’ ••• The beginning of ‘L.’s ‘Stanzas’ is by no means unpromising; but what a ‘lame and impotent conclusion!’