But he says there are two sides to the matter, a fact which he proceeds to illustrate:

"THIS kind o' sogerin' ain't a mite like our October trainin',
Where a chap could clear right out, ef it only looked like rainin';
Where the Cunnles used to kiver up their shappoes with bandanners,
And send the Insines skootin' off to the bar-room with their banners,
(Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted.) and a feller could cry quarter
Ef he fired away his ram-rod, arter too much rum-and-water.
Recollect what fun we had-I and you and EZRY HOLLIS-
Up there to Waltham Plain last fall, a-havin' the CORNWALLIS?
This sort o' thing ain't jest like that: I wish that I was furder!
Ninepunce a day for killin' folks comes kind o' low for murder.
(Why, I've worked out to slaughterin' some, for Deacon CEPHAS BILLINS,
And in the hardest times there was I always fetched ten shillin's :)
This goin' where glory waits yer' hain't one agreeable featur',
An' ef it warn't for wakin' snakes, I'd be home ag'in, short metre:
O, wouldn't I be off, quick time, ef 't warn't that I was sart'in
They'd let the day-light into me, to pay me for desartin'?'

HOSEA is not the only one, probably, who has lately ascertained that militia trainings and CORNWALLIS' sham-fights are quite unlike the actual pomp and circumstance of glorious war.' . . . THE following anecdote of the DUKE OF WELLINGTON, which we derive from an original source of the highest respectability, 'may be relied upon as entirely authentic: Lord WELLINGTON was dining at a public dinner at Bordeaux, given to him by the authorities, when he received a despatch from Paris, informing him of the abdication of NAPOLEON. He turned to his aid-de-camp, FREEMANTLE: Well,' said he, in his knowing sportsman tone, we 've run the fox to his hole at last.' " What do you mean?' said FREEMANTLE. NAPOLEON has abdicated.' Hush! not a word!'

FREEMANTLE uttered an exclamation of surprise and delight. said WELLINGTON; 'let's have our dinner comfortably. He laid the letter beside him, and went on calmly eating his dinner. When the dinner was over, There!' said he to Monsieur LYNCH, the Mayor of Bordeaux, there's something will please you.' The mayor cast his eye over the letter, and in an instant was on the table announcing the news. The saloon rang with acclamations for several minutes. The mayor then begged leave to give a toast: WELLINGTON, the Liberator of France!' It was received with thundering applause. The Spanish consul rose, and begged leave to give a toast. It was the same: 'WELLINGTON, the Liberator of France!' There was another thunder of applause. The Portuguese consul did the same, with like effect. The mayor rose again, and gave' WELLINGTON, the Liberator of EUROPE!' Here the applause was astounding. WELLINGTON, who had sat all the while picking his teeth, now rose, made one of his knowing civil bows to the company round: JACK,' said he, turning to FREEMANTLE, 'let's have coffee.'' . . . We have been looking over this morning, at the establishment of those enterprising and tasteful bibliopoles, Messrs. BARTLETT AND WELFORD, a copy of the First Edition of Shakspeare that was ever published. Just think of that for one moment; appreciate how near we were brought, by the rough paper and coarse types, to SHAKSPEARE himself; and then judge whether we enjoyed the rare sight or no. We have satisfied ourselves that several modern readings of the Great Bard are incorrect; but of these more Our present purpose is to present two new renderings' from 'HAMlet,' which an innovating Yankee actor at the west considers authentic readings. He defends the first, upon the ground that the same spirit which had abused' HAMLET had previously treated his friends discourteously, kept them up at night, and prevented their sleeping on their posts. Hence thus HAMLET :'

anon.

THE spirit that I have seen

May be a devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me too damn-me!'

This is quite different from the usual reading, and is as much an 'improvement' upon the original as any of Mr. HUDSON's modern versions. The rendering in the subjoined passage from the same play is defended on the ground that HAMLET looked up to HORATIO, in his weakness and his melancholy,' as a father, and therefore he addressed him by a diminutive of that endearing term:

'HAM. Dost thou think ALEXANDER looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

'HOR. E'en so.

'HAM. And smelt so, Pa?

'HOR. E'en so, my lord.'

We submit these readings to the hosts of SHAKSPERIAN commentators who infest society.

'CAN A TERRIER BE SWORN?-'Can a dog lend moneys?' asked SHYLOCK; but the question is now raised, Can a terrier be sworn? L'Helvétie,' a Swiss journal, says that M. BOIS LE COMTE, the French ambassador, has addressed to the Bernese government a menacing note, in which he demands satisfaction, because a terrier-dog which was on the Engi, walking by the side of M. JENRIC, editor of 'Le Charivari,' wore suspended to its collar two crosses, one of which he pretends was the cross of the Legion of Honor. It is said that the terrier's collar was in fact adorned with something like two pieces of tin, more or less resembling two crosses. 'It will be necessary, no doubt,' remarks L'Helvétie,' 'in order to undeceive M. BOIS LE COMTE, to produce the collar and tin crosses, and perhaps it will be necessary for the terrier itself to give in its oath.'

THE above calls to recollection Things by their Right Names, or the Victim of Ambiguities,' a little work written some years since by QUARLES HENRY, the Cheltenham Chemist. The hero was everlastingly getting into queer predicaments, one of which, attendant on his being summoned as a juryman in London, is thus described: 'He told me that my only course was to render my excuse for non-attendance to the judges in person. Accordingly, the next morning I appeared in court, armed with my physician's certificate and a two-days' beard, by way of what lawyers call 'cumulative testimony' of illness. But it was all thrown away: the court was engaged in an important jury trial; an action for trespass, as the door-keeper kindly informed me, which would probably last all day. I listened for a few moments to the defendant's counsel, a fat-headed man, who at the time of my entrance was proceeding in a drowsy tone of voice to show what is technically termed 'a right of way;' but hearing nothing from him that especially interested me, I began to retrace my steps, and had just reached the door, when I heard him say with considerable emphasis that he intended to produce in evidence an ancient terrier! Had my ears deceived me? No; I could not have been mistaken: the words were pitched on the speaker's highest key; so much so as to awaken for an instant the senior judge, who had up to that moment been indulging in a quiet slumber, leaving the duty of taking notes to his associate on the right, who was reading the morning paper. But my doubts, if I had any, were soon dispelled by the sudden interruption of the plaintiff's counsel, who jumped up very much after the manner of the witness whose testimony he was about to oppose, and declaimed for an hour against the introduction of an ancient terrier! Yes, those were his words, and no mistake. How I went, heart and soul, for the defendant! How I feared lest his extraordinary testimony might be ruled out! How I reproached myself for having mentally set him down for an old proser, before I had heard him utter those magic words; and when he replied, which he did successfully, how I hung upon his accents, and once caught myself saying, almost aloud, singed cat!' And yet no sensation seemed created by this to me most novel and startling debate. The lawyers all looked on without betraying any signs of wonderment; the old judge had subsided into blessed forgetfulness, which he appeared to take in broken dozes; the associate was engaged in cutting an advertisement from the newspaper; the clerk had peeled an apple, and was sharing it with the crier; in fact, all things seemed to wear an every-day appearance, as though nothing uncommon were happening, or about to happen; and yet here, in the nineteenth century, in an enlightened community, was the question agitating as to whether a brute- a quadruped-no matter how sagacious, should be admitted to counterbalance, for aught court or bar might know, the evidence of an alderman!

'Presently the old judge mumbled out the decision of the court, of which the only words that I could distinctly hear were 'Plaintiff's clothes,' 'rents,' and 'let them produce the ancient terrier!

'But these few words seemed to throw some light on the subject. My mind had been dreadfully exercised in striving to divine how a dog, young or old, could prove a right of way: 'How could his dumb testimony avail?' reasoned I; but when I heard the judge talking about the animal in connection with the plaintiff's clothes and rents, my imagination, already on the stretch, was not slow in conjuring up the phantom of a plaintiff with torn pantaloons flying from the aged canine protector of the defendant's premises. Yes, that must be the point. Fresh to my recollection came BEVIS, the noble hound of the Scottish knight, who throttled LEOPOLD of Austria, the dastard insulter of the English standard: the dog of MONTARGIS barked across my memory: long-dormant anecdotes of the sagacious quadruped were awakened, and began to arrange themselves in my mind, now prepared to witness what before I had only seen in print.

'While all this was revolving within me, the trial seemed to be 'progressing' in the old way again: the judges had resumed their former occupations of sleeping and reading; the clerk was peeling another apple, in which the crier seemed to take quite as much interest as was decorous in an officer of the court: every thing had assumed the same appearance, with the exception that now the witness' stand was occupied by a short puffy-looking man, very red, very much frightened, with a very musty roll of parchment documents in his hands. Many and dreary were the questions put to him, and oft and drearily did he turn over the mouldy-looking records and make response. I began to grow nervous. There seemed to be no end to it. I looked at my watch and found that my dinner hour had long since passed. Night was coming on: what would they think at home? What would my wife say? When I left her in the morning, by way of practising for my lying apology to the court, I complained to her of feeling unwell; she told me I looked so; that cursed beard which I had suffered to grow for the purpose of mystifying the judges, came up in judgment against me. She was just the woman to send out a bell-man. And now I really began to feel ill. I had once been seized with a determination of blood to the head, and the excitement under which I had been laboring for the last five hours produced symptoms which I thought indicated another attack: the old judge, as he nodded, began to look like a magnified mandarin; the clerk was peeling a pumpkin; the witness swelled, and the jury appeared packed. I could stand it no longer : in an under-tone I addressed a quiet-looking person who sat next to me :

When will they bring in that dog?' said I.

"That what?' replied the man, with as much surprise as could be thrown into a whisper. "That dog,' I reiterated; the terrier- the ancient terrier that they quarrelled about so long.' The rush of blood that had been hanging about me seemed all at once to be paying the stranger a visit: his face at first grew red, and then purple; his cheeks distended; his eyes watered, and his whole frame shook: it was nearly a minute before he recovered from the paroxysm sufficiently to say to me, in a something between a sob and a hiccough, The parchment roll in the hands of the witness is what is called in law an ancient terrier.'

'I could not have had my senses about me, for I recollect distinctly of having made such loud use of the word 'd-n!' as to make the very walls echo: the old gentleman on the bench started from his sleep; the newspaper dropped; so did the clerk's apple and the crier's countenance.

'How I reached my own house has always been a mystery to me: but that night I had one continuous dream of trying to climb a genealogical tree to get out of the way of a Pope's bull!'

If our legal readers, and those who are not legal, do n't enjoy the foregoing, take away our commission as seer, and place us among the false prophets.. 'Hoo's a'

wi' ye the day, mon?' we said to honest ARCHIE GRIEVE, as he was entering his birdstore in John-street, near Broadway, the other morning. Brawly, brawly,' he replied, 'thank ye for speerin'; come, walk in and see the birdies;' and in we went. A greater variety of rare birds, of every variety of form and plumage, (some of them agreeable 'conversationists,' several very perfect imitators, and many of them expert musicians,) we have not elsewhere seen. Mr. GRIEVE'S assortment' is complete; and some idea may be formed of the extent of his trade, from the fact that he imported at one time seven hundred canaries. Birds, cages, seeds, and all the accessories of a well-supplied bird-fancier may be found at GRIEVE's, to whom, well assured of performing a public service, we commend our readers. . . . O PSHAW! (that was what we said when we read it, and we may as well write it down here,) '0 pshaw! who's going to peruse, with any thing like satisfaction, such muling pseudo

sentimental, sheepish rhymes, as the 'Stanzas to Her I Love? Who 'protest' more than ROMEO and his JULIET? But are you nauseated with their soft endearments and fond and fervent vows? Not a bit of it! Some how or other the old masters' of English literature understood the expression of the tender sentiment, and the exquisite language of delicate compliment, better than their successors. Observe for example this hyperbolically-beautiful tribute from 'rare BEN JONSON' to his inamorata:

'HAVE you seen the white lily grow,

Before rude handes have toucht it? Have you mark'd the fall of snowe Before the earth haths mutcht it? Have you felt the woll of beaver,

Or the swann's downe either;

Or have you smelt the budd of bryer,
Or the narde in the fier;

Or have tasted the bagg of the bee?
Oh! so white, oh so softe, oh so sweete,
So sweete, so sweete is shee!

'Have you seen the faire chrystal rocke,

When a gentle dew hath dasht it?
Or AURORA's goulden locke

When a morninge May hath washt it?
Or did you ever softely steale

To heare poore PHILOMEL;

Or have you smelt to the breath of fishes,
Or the nunn when she kisses;

Or have seen the blossomes of the tree?
Oh! so cleare, oh so bright, oh so faire,
So sweete, so sweete is shee!'

WE passed an hour in the Sing-Sing State-Prison the other day; and while regarding with irresistible sympathy the wretched inmates, we could not help thinking how little, after all, of the actual suffering of imprisonment is apparent to the visitor. The ceaseless toil, the coarse fare, the solemn silence, the averted look, the yellow-white palor, of the convict; his narrow cell, with its scanty furniture, his hard couch; these indeed are visible to the naked eye.' Yet do but think of the demon THOUGHT that must eat up his heart' during the long and inconceivably dismal hours which he passes there in darkness, in silence, and alone! Think of the tortures he must endure from the ravages of that pleasantest friend but most terrible enemy, Imagination! Oh, the height, the depth, the length and breadth, of a sensitive captive's sorrow! As we came away from the gloomy scene, we passed on a hill, within the domain of the guard, the Prison Potters'-Field, where lie, undistinguished by head-stone or any other mark, the bones of those who had little else to lay there, when their life of suffering was ended. There sleeps MONROE EDWARDS, whose downward fate we had marked in successive years. We first saw him when on his trial; a handsome, well-dressed, black-whiskered, seeming-self-possessed person, with the thin varnish of a gentleman, and an effrontery that nothing could daunt. Again we saw him, while holding court with courtezans at the door of his cell, at The Tombs,' the day before he left for Sing-Sing; clad in his morning-gown, with luxurious whiskers, and the manners of a pseudo-prince receiving the honors of shamsubjects. The next time we saw him he was clad in coarsest felon-stripe;' his head was sheared to the skull; his whiskers were no more; a dark frown was on his brow; his cheeks were pale, and his lips were compressed with an expression of remorse, rage and despair. Never shall we forget that look! He had a little while before been endeavoring to escape, and had been punished by fifty lashes with a cato'-nine-tails; four hundred and fifty stripes on the naked back! Once again we saw him, after the lapse of many months. Time and suffering had done their work upon him. His once-erect frame was bowed; his head was quite bald at the top, and its scanty bordering-hair had become gray. And thus he gradually declined to his melancholy west of life,' until he reached his last hour; dying in an agony of terror; gnawing his emaciated fingers, to convince himself that he was still living; that the appalling change from life to death had not yet actually taken place! And now he sleeps in a felon's grave, with no record of his name or fate. Is not the way of the transgressor 'hard?' . . . SOME benevolent person, whom we should like

to take cordially by the hand, has written in the 'Spirit of the Times' literary and sporting journal an admirable 'Plea for Horses' against the cruel creatures who are more brutes' than the animals they drive. Read the article in 'The Spirit' for September the twelfth, for it will well repay perusal. Some kindred spirit, with proper sympathy for an animal who has all man's nobler attributes and none of his bad ones,' propels upon the town the following benevolent advertisement:

OATS! Wanted, by an Old Horse, one of KIPP AND BROWN's best, a few Oats. He will be will

ing, for a chance at a peck, to put any old gentleman through in ten minutes, from the Greenwich station to the Park fountain.

'N. B. The horse knows beans when he sees them.'

APROPOS (and yet to digress) of horses: why is it that we do not see more Male and Female Equestrianism among us? Bating a few proficients among our friends, who ride like centaurs, and who would n't hesitate to mount any thing that possessed a back, we cannot perceive that this noble exercise, graceful and healthful as it is, is at all general. Riding,' says NASH, one of the quaint writers of England's golden age, in his subtilely-excogitated Quarternio :'

RIDING is an exercise in which, in my youthful days, I took much delight, and still commend it as a manly and warlike exercise: to see a young gentleman at the age of fifteen, to be able with his skill and cunninge, by his voyce, rod and spurre, better to manageand command the great Bucephalus, than the strongest MILO with all his strength; one while to see him make him tread, trot and gallope the ring; and one after to see him make him gather up roundly, to bear his head steadily, to rupne a fulle carrere swiftly, and to stop on a sudden lightly; and one after, to see him make him advance, to goe backe and side-long, to turne on either hand, to gallope the gallope-gullied, to doe the capriole, the chembetta, and daunce the curvetty; I have thought an houre to passe in a moment. When I was young, wee thought it a kind of solæcisme, and to savour of effeminacie, for a young gentleman in the flourishing time of his age to creepe into a coach, and to shroud himself there from winde and weather. Our delight was to out-brave the blustering BOREAS upon a great horse: to arme and prepare ourselves to goe with MARS and BELLONA into the field was our sport and passtime; coaches and caroches we left unto them for whom they were first invented; for ladies and gentlewimmen, and decrepit aged and impotent people.'

THE following reaches us from an occasional correspondent, attached to one of our smaller vessels of war:

'Philada., Augst 19. and his mo

'ONORABLE SUR. i have a Son on borde of your Ship, by name GEORGE G -R. ther is in very bad helth, and would like to See him. if you can low him time to com, i will be ancerable for his re turn in time, and by so duing you will ablidge his mother, G. GE' 'South-west conor of T- and R-Steet.

Here, friend C,' writes our correspondent, you have a real genuine, bonafide curiosity of literature,' and you can put it in the Gossip.' Funny, is 'nt it? It seems that G R's mother knew he was out.' The letter, as you will perceive, was sent to Captain B, and he read it; after which, with a hearty laugh, he threw it on the floor of the cabin, where I found it, and now send it to you.' Funny, is n't it? No, Sir! We see nothing funny, nothing amusing in it; nothing that should have excited the risibility either of your commanding-officer or yourself. Is it any thing very funny' that a desolate sick mother should desire to see her son, who, after a long absence, had reached the United States from the seat of war? Because the poor woman could n't spell, must it be inferred that she could n't feel? 'Funny!... A KIND and distinguished friend, at present residing in this country, mentioned to us the other day this anecdote, which we herewith 'transmit unimpaired to posterity. He was walking many years ago in the vicinity of St. Cloud, no distant remove from Paris, with the poet MOORE, who had a cottage in the neighborhood, and LUTTERELL, the famous wit. The chat turned upon the then recent fatal night ascent in a balloon by Madame BLANCHARD. Isn't it dreadful!' said Moore;