overflowing with love, and intoxicated with happiness, the following expressive and happy answer : "See Letter LVIII." which, referred to by the successful suitor, told him at once, in the gentlest, most select and elegant phraseology, the unspeakable joy, and inexpressible bliss which awaited him. This, and other facts have proved to me, how great a service you have done to men by keeping, ready for them, epistolary effusions in the very moment when it is the most difficult to give utterance to passion, joy or grief; for instance, when a father died, when a child was born, when a difficulty arose between husband and wife, when a mortal falls heedlessly in love, and for the like occasions, in which it is often in the same degree necessary to give vent to the most excited feelings as they are overpowering, and thus debar every self-effusion. Then, in such trouble and anxiety, appears your work, like a true friend in need, who speaks when our sobbing joy or grief suffocates every attempt to utter words. Never have I missed any thing in my life so much, as, when I heard the first time of the conquest of Warsaw, and the noble Poles, and I wished to write of, and on it, to a friend of mine, I missed a letter for the occasion in your book. Pray, Sir, add in your new edition, a few letters on the conquest of free nations, on eruptions of nullification, on the defeat of an election, on the breaking out of revolutions, on the aurora borealis, on early snow, &c. The chief points, however, respecting which I would take the liberty to make a few suggestions are the following: I do not find in any work on epistolary style-and I have read all those which are acknowledged to be the best in most modern languages of Europe that the most essential points of a perfect letter are treated of. If I were bold enough to give you any advice, I would say, print as the first rule, in red types : Before you write a letter, consider well, whether it is worth while to write it. Secondly, I would print in silver types : Then weigh well whether the letter is worth receiving. And thirdly, I would print in golden types : Then weigh and consider whether the letter is worth the postage. If all these rules were duly complied with, how few bad letters should we receive, and how much postage should we save! Is there any thing so provoking in this world as to receive a triple, an ounce letter, with cursed slips of newspapers, or little prints, which a friend sends to you from abroad, perhaps to Charleston, because a vessel was just going from his place to New-Bedford? Or, as I received once a letter in Boston via New-Orleans! My friend undoubtedly thought the letter sent to Boston via New-Orleans, would make an infinitely shorter way than via Cape Horn, and I must allow there he was right. This reminds me of my worthy barber, a Sicilian, who told me that when he was in Algiers, and wishing to go to the United States, he embarked in a vessel which was just going to Calcutta. Unnecessary postage puts me in a rage; it is hard to pay for the stupidity of your correspondents, and how can you evade it? if you won't do as the gentleman did, with whom I served my apprenticeship-he held the letters sealed with a wafer over steaming water, until the wafer abandon ed its pasting power and closing quality, read the letter, and returned it to the post-office, if he did not think the letter worth the postage? I think, as there is in all great capitals of the European continent a bureau, or board, for opening suspected letters, and kindly sealing them again, so a number of merchants might employ a skilful letterpeeper, in order to return silly epistles, as well sealed as they were originally. What postage might be saved! Though no body can say that I often am detected in committing poetry, yet, one evening, after I had just received such an outrageous triple epistle, my fury broke loose, and howled in the following rhymes Oh ye, whose thoughts on easy wing And yet how many letters sent Are empty, dull, and queer; We should not think them worth a cent, On every thing a tax is laid, Clocks, ribbons, rags and wax ; The tithe is for salvation paid, Postage is friendship's tax. I should not send these verses, which are a true representation of the emptiness against which I would make war, had I not determined to expiate them by a " paid," in smiling red characters on the outside of the letter. I again ask your pardon for having intruded so unceremoniously upon your time and patience, and hope you will permit me to call myself, Sir, I was exceeding glad to hear from you, that you are getting on so well. Thank you, thank you, my boy, for your cheering news. What is better in these sad times than good news from a dear friend? I would give all the newspapers of a week for one letter from a fellow I love. It gave me double pleasure to see that you were so contented in NewLondon, because when I spent a week there, chained as I was by contrary winds, in the month of January, some years ago, I thought even Ferdinand VII. and Don Miguel, when they call themselves kings by the grace of God, do not utter a greater lie, than he who first called that place New-London. I am sorry that I cannot return as good news as you gave me! Something very serious, very important, has happened to me; it has made me quite grave and contemplative. And Yesterday morning-hearken! I discovered my first gray hair. Stop, said I; stop, Charles, pause a moment; look at it-a gray hair!Hem!-The harbinger of those years, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. Quite gently he first knocks at the door, hardly perceptible, or he slily creeps in, wherever there is a little hole. Close the windows, bolt the door, live in an island-castle, he follows you yet, and bids defiance to all your defence. One gray hair follows the other, one hair after the other leaves you; one tooth rots after the other; one wrinkle comes after the other-all unbidden-every year steals something from you, and brings nothing. Time plucks one feather after the other. But I may cheat the molesting messenger of old age, and of that which lurks behind it. There are scratches which hide the baldness of your scalp; nobody will perceive that it is not your own; I may have teeth, whiter and more regular than my own ever were; I can color the remaining hair, and force the gray one to look young; I can darken the brows, and even the leanness of age, may be changed into the fullness of youth; yet he finds you under your crust, as the slow fever finds the proud warrior under his shining armor. Thou goest down, whatever thy art may contrive, down-hill, whether thou dancest gaily, or walkest slowly-down thou goest until thou stoppest, where thou, and all thine art are at an end-at the grave. Thy afflicted friends may, indeed, place a wreath even on thy bier; yet a wreathed bier is but a bier, and a crowned corpse is but a corpse. what then? Thine art will moulder with thee, and naked shalt thou rise. Then it will be well to say: omnia mea mecum porto. Then thou shalt stand on thy own self. Hast thou not seen rich men, who lived gay, were flattered, and stood equal with the most gifted? Suddenly they failed; reduced upon themselves, they were their own test. Some of them showed that they were better than their treasures; manfully they worked their new way. Others proved that they had been but the accidental appendix to their wealth, a collective name of their riches, a label, a nothing. Thus, Charles, as this is the trial of talent and energy, that awful other one will be the trial of thy very soul. It is true; look in the face of the fact. There will be no painting, no cheat, no hiding, no hushing over. Beware, collect thyself, look back, and ask what hast thou done? Look forward, and ask what shalt thou do? Consider, resolve and act; have no fear and be a man. That brings to my mind Leibnitz's theory, that the soul will be engaged in yonder life, principally in those truths and occupations, the pursuit of which engrossed us, when on the globe; a mathematician will view the vast field of mathematical truths; a botanist will see the essence of plants, the laws according to which they color themselves so beautifully, and draw all the variegated fragrance from the same nourishment without color and without odor; and the secret working of nature's life, when the reviving rays of lovely spring change the cheerless colors of the remains of winter into the gentle green of hope. I think it a fine, a cheering theory; and yet what becomes of the sexton, who counted how often the word and appears in the Bible? Has he to count the ands of all works of all libraries, the codices in the libraries on the Jupiter and Pallas, and the great Porcellian Library, in Cambridge, not excepted? What becomes of the Suabian schoolmaster, John James Heberle, who keeps an accurate account of all the blows, switches, slaps, calottes, fillips, &c. which this pedantic Turk inflicts upon his pupils ?* Shall he have an insight into all the school-rooms in the whole universe, the primary, public, grammar and high-schools for males and females, academies, colleges and universities, on all the planets, and fixed stars, and into all the schools of the nebula, and count all the fillips in the vast creation? What shall become of a zealous collector of seals, as there are in Europe so many? Shall they be condemned to study the coat of arms of all beings on earth, under the water and above the clouds? What, oh Heaven! becomes of a statistical writer, or lexicographer? I wonder, however, whether I shall know in the other world, who Junius was; and whether General Eliot has really seen the sea-serpent; and whether those noble, poor, disappointed fellows, Parry, Lyon and Franklin will know whether there is a north-west passage or not. By the bye-" The days of chivalry are gone," says Burke; "the days of chivalry have come," say I. Does the chivalric spirit consist in a steel coat from tip to toe, leaving but just one chance to be killed? Was the little drummer boy, who drummed like a hero at the side of Bonaparte, when he rushed over the bridge of Lodi into the enemy, and glory, and an empire, no chivalric fellow? Were the two grenadiers, who jumped near the Pirna gate of Dresden, upon a redoute, and marched upon it up and down till they were shot dead merely because Napoleon, seeing that the cannoniers in the redoute began to fear the Prussian riflemen, who shot one of them after the other, had told them, just turning round-" Go my friends, show how Frenchmen stand fire"-were they not brave? Or was it not chivalric-I do not say whether it was right or wrong,-when in 1809, that Prussian officer at Wesel preferred to be executed by the French, with his comrades, though a pardon was offered to him, without any farther condition? Millions of instances might be given for one. Or does Burke weep over the noble customs and elegant manners of the chivalric ages, fled forever from sober mankind? Burke, Burke, if so, either thou jokest, or thou didst not know history. But the knighterrants! Those we have not! Those were high-hearted men,—the Amadis and Lancelot. Confound your Don Quixotes! We have better knight-errants. Is it not heroic when the bold adventurer of science presses upon his lonely path, struggling against scorching rays, and savage beasts, and still savager men, and thirst, and hunger, and fever, not for an adored mistress who never existed-worshipers of absurdity-but for that heavenly inquisitiveness to know, as Plato calls it? The Humboldts, the Clappertons, the Parries, Park, Laing, Caillé, Lewis, Clark, Mollien, Hornemann, Niebuhr, Burkhardt, Ehrenberg, Marcius, Spix, New-Wied, Denham, Bowditch, Campbell, Lander,, Burchel-those are our knight-errants, our martyrs. Nay! I have often thought it would be well to write a martyrologium of all the glorious names of those who died in the cause of science. It would be an edifying, elevating, ennobling list. Poor chaps, like ourselves, reading it, would feel a little better for belonging to the same race with those * John James Heberle, a schoolmaster, in Suabia, keeps a register of all the punishments he inflicts on his scholars. This register contained the following entries a short time since :"9,111,517 blows with a rod, 12,010 of a slight switch, 20,989 slaps with a rule, 136,715 cuffs with his fist, 10,235 calottes, 7905 fillips, 1,115.800 taps on the head, and 12,763 additional tasks." There was besides an entry of his having 777 times made scholars go on their knees. [German paper.] gallant knights of knowledge. This was a long excursion, but mentioning above the names of Laing and Parry, set at once my indignation at work, and on it rattled, like an alarm watch in the morning. I beg your pardon, and so, good bye, my dear fellow. The nonsense grew longer than I thought, when I began it-a letter which would do honor to mother Goose. Good bye. Ever yours, CHARLES W. P. S. My father, at Leominster, is still the old, kindhearted gentleman, as you knew him, wishing well to every one, but a little entété. I cannot persuade him to regulate his watch after the town clock; he says "And if all the world is wrong, I will at least regulate my watch after the sun with the due corrections indicated by the almanac." The consequence is that all the world, following the incorrect town clock, breakfast, dine, and sup, at a convenient hour, and that my father is always too late or too early, with his watch astronomically regulated. THE HEBREW MINSTREL'S LAMENT. FROM the hills of the west, as the sun's setting beam "Awake, harp of Judah! that slumbering hast hung "Ah! where are the choirs of the glad and the free, "And where are the mighty, who went forth in pride, "Oh Judah, a lone scattered remnant remain "No beauty in Sharon,-on Carmel no shade,- |