(literally a veil of tears;') to the deformed mine-delvers, 'demons of the pit,' with joints racked with toil; to these, how much good has not the tender-hearted Hood done! May his name and memory be honored forever! In the words of a British reviewer, he sits down beside the poor seamstress as beside a sister; counts her tears, her stitches, her bones, too transparent by far through the sallow skin; sees that though degraded, she is a woman still; and rising up, swears by Him that liveth for ever and ever that he will make her wrongs and wretchedness known to the limits of the country and of the race. And hark! how to that cracked, tuneless voice, trembling under its burthen of sorrow, now shrunk down into the whispers of weakness, and now shuddering up into the laughter of despair, all Britain listens!' For mingled truth and humor, we scarcely remember any thing more forcible than HooD's Black, White and Brown,' the story of a rabid English female abolitionist, who, by an error common to all her class, had mistaken a negative for a positive principle, and persuaded herself that by using sugar she was assisting to 'forge the chains of the down-trodden slave ;' that by not preserving damsons she preserved the niggers; that by not sweetening her own cup, she was dulcifying the lot of all her sable brethren in bondage. Accordingly:

'ALL at once Miss MORBID left off sugar.

'She did not resign it as some persons lay down their carriage, the full-bodied family coach dwindling into a chariot, next into a fly, and then into a sedan-chair. She did not shade it off artistically, like certain household economists, from white to whitey-brown, brown, dark-brown, and so on, to none at all. She left it off as one might leave off walking on the top of a house, or on a slide, or on a plank with a farther end to it: that is to say, slap-dash, all at once, without a moment's warning. She gave it up, to speak appropriately, in the lump. She dropped it, as Corporal TRIM let fall his hat, dab. It vanished, as the French say, toot sweet. From the thirtieth of November, 1830, not an ounce of sugar, to use Miss MOREID'S Own expression, ever darkened her doors.''

Her family did not much like tea without sugar. One took it mincingly, in sips; another gulped it down in desperation; a third, in a fit of absence, continued to stir very superfluously with his spoon; and there was one shrewd old gentleman, who, by a little dexterous by-play, used to bestow the favor of his small souchong on a sick geranium.' Mrs. MORBID's two nephews were the greatest sufferers. Her house was no longer to them a dulce domum.' Currant tart was tart indeed without sugar; and as for the green-gooseberries, the young gentlemen said they tasted like a quart of berries sharpened to a pint.' But the old lady perseveres in her system; adding to the constancy of a martyr something of the wilfulness of a bigot. An advertisement in a provincial journal, headed 'Great Hardship,' is the means of installing in her house a black female servant, who had been dismissed by an American lady on her arrival in England, because she happened to be artful, sullen, gluttonous and indolent. Presently sundry silver coin are missed by the benevolent old lady, and at length DINAH is caught in the very act of emptying a purse into her pocket. The reader must learn, through the story itself, the method by which Mrs. MORBID arrived at the astounding fact, that DINAH 'stole the money to buy sugar! Our last extract must be 'The Art of Book-Keeping,' which we commend to all our readers generally, and a few in particular, who will see (and we hope feel) our drift:

'How hard, when those who do not wish
To lend that 's lose their books,
Are snared by anglers folks that fish
With literary hooks:

Who call and take some favorite tome,
But never read it through:
They thus complete their set at home,
By making one at you.

'Behold the book-shelf of a dunce
Who borrows-never lends:
Yon work in twenty volumes once
Belonged to twenty friends.

'New tales and novels you may shut
From view; 't is all in vain;
They're gone; and though the leaves are 'cut,"
They never come again.'

All this is very humorous; but 'a mere humorist Hoop was not. He was a sincere lover of his race; a hearty friend to their freedom and welfare; a deep sympathiser with their sufferings and sorrows;' and now that 'poor Tom's a-cold' we trust that some of his literary contemporaries will give to the world his life, correspondence and complete works. Then and not till then will THOMAS HOOD occupy the place in English literature to which his rare and various merits justly entitle him. We rejoice to learn that the high consideration of the British government and the munificent practical gratitude of the humble classes whose cause he espoused, have placed his family in circumstances of permanent comfort if not luxury. Would that he could have foreseen such a result! From how much anxiety would it have saved him while living!

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY'S CRUSADE AGAINST DANCING.—A sound and capable correspondent, himself a professor and a practiser of religion, has sent us an exposé of the character of The American Tract Society's Tract on Dancing.' That it is a tissue of weakness and twattle, he says any ordinary intellect would discover at a glance. He adds:

'OUR brothers of the Tract Society, whose holy horror of Papal intolerance is so great, should not thus attempt to cram their narrow-minded notions down the throats of their reluctant church-members, under pain of church censure,' and even expulsion. Why shall not the right of private judgment remain intact, at least in a few things? It appears that our forefathers, in Sir ROGER DE COVERLY'S time, did not so interpret Scripture as to make dancing sinful; and in treatises of education written by clergymen of high standing in the Church, Scripture is not so interpreted as to make dancing sinful. But some hypocritical 'professors,' in these latter days, who will not allow any one to have got religion' unless they took the infection according to their way-great sticklers, forsooth, for the right of private judgment,' and decriers of a Church which would interpret Scripture-insist notwithstanding on their own interpretation, and would affix severe penalty on those who think otherwise! Now perhaps all the art of these gentlemen (if they have ever been brought up in a gentlemanly way) cannot prove dancing to be intrinsically sinful; and as to the particular cases where it may be so, every man is to be his own judge. Truly, those who have issued this recent bull would be better employed in advocating consistency, humility and justice between man and man, instead of poisoning the mind of innocent hilarity with doubt, building up a wall of prejudice, and shutting out the light of heaven from their neighbor's premises, while the steam-presses of the 'American Tract Society' are smoking the heels of pedestrians on the side-walk and disturbing the whole neighborhood with the clatter of their machinery in publishing a 'Tract on Dancing." 'O, Scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites! — ye pay tithes of mint and anise and cummin, but neglect the weightier matters of the law!'

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. Let us hope that it will not be deemed wholly egotistical and impertinent, if on this first day of October we open a free communication with our readers in the words following, 't' wit-namely:'

'SOLEMN yet beautiful to view,

Month of my heart! thou dawnest here;
With sad and faded leaves to strew
Pale Autumu's melancholy bier;
The moaning of thy winds I hear

As the red sun-set dies afar,
And bars of purple clouds appear,
Obscuring every western star.'

So wrote our better-half when he was among the living. The solemn yet beautiful season which he loved so well is here - here at DOBB's, we mean- and surely no where save on the Hudson, and no where else on the Hudson, could the advent of October be welcomed by such attendant glories.' The gorgeous sun-sets reflected in the calm resplendent bosom of the Tappaän-Zee; the broad and ever-varying shadows of the Palisades, so justly appreciated and well beloved of refined JOHN WATERS; near and far the dark or pale blue Highlands of the Hudson; the silent painted woods that paint the silent waters; where shall these be seen in such perfection as from the open window at which we sit, jotting down these opuscula of ours, on this the holiest of the days of this Sabbath of the Year?' Yet a sadness, like mist spreading from the river and covering the landscape, darkens the spirit when we reflect that this fading loveliness cannot last; that this beauty in decay' must soon give place to all the sombre accessories of nature's actual desolation:

6

'THEN cold and pale, in distant vistas round,

Disrobed and tuneless all the woods will stand,
While the chained streams are silent as the ground,
AS DEATH had numbed them with his icy hand.'

Will some of our poetical friends come to our assistance, within the next two weeks, with a deftly-executed Farewell to Dobb's?' The return of the melancholy days of Autumn; the wakening up of the metropolis; the renewing of town-associations, and the growing inability hereabout to do those things which are not convenient,' (in a professional and printerial point of view,) which even Saint PAUL found troublesome; all these things move us,' beckoning townward. So that anon

we must depart. Until another summer solstice, therefore, when (Deo volente,) we resume our present country quarters, we must bid a reluctant Good-bye to Dobb, his Ferry. No more delightful sailing in pleasant steamers on bright summer mornings and evenings; no more gossip with agreeable friends and companions, daily going and returning; no more day-light-and moonlight promenades (past Friend STEPHEN'S and through long avenues of flowering locusts,) in the Glen' of courteous CoNSTANT-loveliest of lovely scenes; no more ever-memorable walks along the high breezy level of the Croton Aqueduct, through sweet-scented meadows and orchards bending with ruddy fruits, to enjoy cherished days at the charming umbrageous man's-nest' where gentle GEOFFREY CRAYON expands and bourgeons,' generously implying and bountifully imparting delight; no more quiet rides with enthusiastic confrères through the wizzard region of Sleepy-Hollow; no more evening quadrilles and waltzes upon the piazzas of the excellent kind-hearted K -'s; looking down over grape-arbors and waving maples and locusts upon the moon's bright track upon the waters; no more pleasant reünions there with congenial metropolitan friends; 46

VOL. XXX.

Pass but a little while, and DOBB'S

none of these things, until another season.

shall hear without listening, as over the vexed flood it

'COMES, with an awful roar,

Gath'ring and sounding on,
The Storm-wind from Labrador,
The wind Euroclydon-
The Storm-wind!'

Then will the rain rain cold, and frost and snow descend upon the brown verdureless hills; while amidst the 'sweet security of streets,' reäwakened social ties, and all the multiform sensations, sights and sounds of gay and giddy Gotham in its 'season' we shall await the coming of another summer:

'FLY swiftly round, ye wheels of time,

And bring the welcome day!

We are deeply pained at receiving the melancholy intelligence (and not a little surprised at receiving it so late) of the death, at the early age of thirty-one years, of an old and warmly-esteemed contributor, JAMES KENNARD, Jr., of Portsmouth, New-Hampshire. One who intimately knew and loved the departed, sends us the following well-deserved and touching tribute to his memory:

'WHEN a hero who has 'slain his thousands' goes down to the grave, covered with blood and glory, a nation testifies its gratitude and admiration; poets immortalize his fame; orators pronounce his eulogy; magnificient obsequies, attended by all the 'pomp and circumstance' of woe, mark his transit to the tomb; and 'storied urn and animated bust' perpetuate the memory of his person and his deeds. Like the lightning and the storm, he has fulfilled a mission of mingled usefulness and terror. There are other men whose happier lot it is, like the shower and the dew, to be the agents of unmixed beneficence, and to shed around them an influence as much gentler as it is more constant and more useful. Such a fate was his whose death it is our melancholy duty to record.

'The modest signature of J. K., JR.,' which has for some years occasionally appeared over articles which have graced the pages of the KNICKERBOCKER, is doubtless associated in the minds of many of its readers with hours of agreeable literary relaxation. Few of them but will be pained by the announcement that they are to see it no more; and especially when they learn the remarkable history of him to whom it belonged, and the peculiar circumstances of trial and suffering under which those cheerful articles were written.

The subject of this brief notice was born in Portsmouth, (N. H.,) of an old and highly respectable New-England family. His early education was directed to his preparation for the pursuit of commerce, bis destined occupation; and at the usual age he left the school for the counting-room, and entered upon the active business of life. Had he remained there, his character and talents would doubtless have made him a successful and respected merchant; but Providence had reserved for him a different fate. At the threshold of his early manhood appeared the symptoms of a disease which was soon to cut him off from all active pursuits, and confine him to his room and to his bed for the remainder of his days. It first manifested itself by a stiffness in the knee-joint. From this and other symptoms the amputation of his leg soon became necessary. This did not however check the progress of the malady, which gradually spread to every portion of his body. His joints soon became motionless, and he was obliged to recline, supported by cushions, upon his bed, without the power of moving any part of his body, except his hand, and his head, and these to a very limited extent. In this condition he remained, the evil gradually increasing up to the period of his death. 'It was under these circumstances that his more serious studies were undertaken and his literary Jabors performed. When most men would have given way to repining and melancholy, he set about the only employment which opened to him the sources of enjoyment and usefulness—the cultivation of his mind. He read incessantly. Every moment not given to social intercourse or necessary sleep was devoted to study. Nor was his pen idle. Thoroughly imbued with high and liberal principles; sympathising with all that was great and good; filled with a generous hatred of oppression and wrong, and feeling that every man had a mission of usefulness to fulfil toward his fellow men; he endeavored, through the medium of the press of his own town, the only channel then open to him,

* He went cheerfully to Boston, and lest he should occasion anxiety to his relatives and friends,submitted privately to the painful operation, which was performed by Dr. WARREN, with his accustomed

skill.

to exert all his influence in favor of truth and right. A visit to the South had given him an oppor tunity of observing the practical working of the slave system; and he made the evils of that institution the object of a vigorous and uncompromising hostility. Even those who could not agree with him in sentiment,* were forced to acknowledge the ability of his opposition and the sincerity of his devotion to the cause he advocated.

'Far from losing an interest in the outer world from which he was debarred, he looked 'from the loop-holes of retreat,' with an eager and interested gaze upon the progress of political and social events, as well in foreign lands as in his own country. He detested every species of cant. He was full of faith in man and hope as to his destiny; and longed for the approach of that happy day, which he believed not far distant, when the advancement of physical science, together with a gradual reorganization of the social system, should have remedied the evils of poverty and degradation, and bound mankind together in one common brotherhood; when the 'nations should learn war no more,' and even down-trodden 'Ethiopia should stretch forth her hands to GOD.' The same spirit of sympathising interest extended to the minor concerns of his own town, and of the delightful social circle which crowded his chamber, to supply to him the want of the means of locomotion and personal observation, and to learn a lesson of cheerful resignation and hope. Here the current events of the day, as well as the graver subjects of the political, social, religious and scientific progress of society, formed the topics of lively and interesting conversation. His observations were marked by an astonishing range and accuracy of information, and constantly glowed with humor or sparkled with wit. The powers of sarcasm and satire, which he possessed in a high degree, were pointed only against opinions which he considered of a hurtful or dangerous tendency; they were never employed to give needless pain or cause an unnecessary wound. The chamber of the bed-ridden, that image of all that is sad and gloomy, was here the theatre of delightful social intercourse and of polished and elegant conversation. Nothing but the presence of the couch, and the recumbent position of the patient, reminded the visitor that it was also the scene of wasting disease and agonizing pain.

'The trial of patience and resignation was not yet complete. Hitherto, he had been able to use his eyes in reading, and his hands in writing, so that these, his most reliable sources of enjoyment, were independent of the services of others. But more than two years before his death the malady attacked his eyes, nearly destroying the sight of one, and making it impossible to use either for any such purpose. He was now reduced to a state of utter helplessness and dependence. His chamber was kept dark, except when a curtain was partially raised to allow a friend to read aloud, or write from his dictation. Even yet he retained his cheerful submission to a fate more cruel than death. His literary labors did not cease, although he was of course sometimes obliged to forego them for want of a reader or an amanuensis. He still continued to keep up quite an extensive correspon. dence, and to write frequently for the press.

'But his physical frame was now rapidly wasting; and as it failed, his nature seemed to become more and more assimilated to that state of pure spirituality upon which he was destined soon to enter. The body had long ceased to be the instrument of convenience or pleasure; it had become a mere prison-house for the confinement of the soul. The period of its incarceration reached its close on Thursday the twenty-eighth of July last, when, emancipated from the pains and sorrows of earth, he tasted the freedom of the dead.

'There is a lesson to be learned from a life like this. Who of us, in this world of toil, where man's mission is to labor and to wait,' is bearing with quiet cheerfulness the lot assigned by Heaven, and making it the grand object of all desire and effort to act well and usefully his part in the station be occupies? Here we see a young man, in the very flower of his days, confined a hopeless invalid to a couch of pain and languishing; yet with cheerful submission undertaking severe literary tasks, laboring with anxious solicitude to elevate and bless his fellows, and making his life a model of gentleness, contentment and purity.

We have thought it neither impertinent nor useless that some brief memorial should implore the passing tribute of a sigh' for the departure of worth and virtue like this; and it is therefore that the hand of Friendship has ventured to lay this humble wreath upon his urn.

C. 7. 8.

WE forbear to mingle any memento of our own with this votive offering, so well deserved, so well bestowed. . . . HOSEA BIGELOW,' a volunteer down to Saltillo,' writes home (in verse) to a Yankee friend, that he is 'sorry he 'listed.' He was induced to swell the ranks of patriotism by a speech which he heard 'up to Waltham,'

ABOUT our patriotic pas, and our star-spangled banner;
Our country's bird a-lookin' on, and singin' out 'Hosanner!'

*THE writer of the present article, we are informed, had a public discussion with the deceased upon this general theme in the journals of the time. ED. KNICKERBOOKER.