cannot write a page of good English, nor even spell well such English as he can write.' -THE noblest rivers come down from the loftiest mountains; and the most useful lives flow from the highest aspirations and desires in youth.'.

6

Judge SMITH'S interest in the young, his power of entertaining them, and his familiar intercourse with them, form to our view one of the pleasantest features of his character. In this respect he was like Chief Justice MARSHALL. An interesting fact or two will illustrate this: A lady, at whose house he was, asked her daughter, about three years old, to go to another room for her father. I will,' she said, when Judge SMITH is not here.' A little fellow, just beginning to talk, was so entert ined by him that every time he paused, he called out, 'Man, talk more; man, talk more.' Another little girl, with whom he had been playing and talking some time, being asked to go out with her mother, said, 'No, no; I want to stay here; I want to hear what he will say next.' This pleasant and simple character of the Judge is well exemplified in an incidental picture which is drawn of his chamber, with a little child of vicious and dissolute parents, sleeping in her little crib, in one corner of it. The sight of the little creature,' says his biographer, 'seemed to double the enjoyment of his own comforts. When he saw her put to bed at night in her flannel night-gown, or dressed in the morning before the cheering wood-fire, he always manifested the liveliest pleasure; exclaiming again and again, 'A brand snatched from the burning! a brand snatched from the burning!' He was accustomed to say that it was natural that old people should not be beloved, if they were every day gradually withdrawing their confidence from the young; for,' he adds, it is confidence, unsuspecting confidence, which begets love between the young and the old.' A kind and good, as well as a distinguished man, was the late Judge SMITH of New-Hampshire. . . THE paper on Modern Literature,' with many facts well set forth, contains altogether too sweeping denunciations of many gifted authors of the present day. The writer is one of those who can see only one side of a question. He should have lived in CHARLES the Second's time; for then Sir SAMUEL TUKE and himself might together have denounced all books:

"THESE little black books do more devils raise

Than all the figures of the conjurors.

.

Curse on the inventor of that damned device
Of painting words and speaking to our eyes!
Had I a hundred daughters, by this light
Not one of 'em should ever read or write!'

Some people, Mr. L-,' can never labor gradually in the circle of any reform; they must rush at once to the periphery. ・・・ WE heard the other afternoon, from a proved raconteur, who has no rival, either orally or with pen in hand, a story of JARVIS's, the distinguished painter, which made us quite 'elastic' for half a day. A mercurial yet misanthropic Frenchman, who, to save himself from himself,' used often to call upon JARVIS, had an Old Master,' a wretched daub, whose greatest merit was its obscurity. Being ignorant of the hoax which had been played upon him in its purchase, he set a great value upon it, and invited JARVIS to come to his room and examine it. JARVIS did so; and to prevent giving its possessor pain, he avoided the expression of an opinion upon the merits,' but advised the owner to have it cleaned; it being so dirty that one might easily mistake it for a very ordinary painting.' Some four or five days afterward the Frenchman called upon the painter; and the moment he entered his apartment, he exclaimed: Ah! Monsieur JARVEES, I'ave some'sing to tell you! My graänd picture is des-troy'!-no wors' a d—n

any more! I get ze man to clean him: ver' good; he wash him all out wis de turpentime! Ah! if I could only catch him!-I would kick him p-l-e-n-t-y!' 'Heavens!' exclaimed JARVIS; can it be possible that that great picture is spoiled? You must have been in a towering passion when it came home in that condition.' 'No, no, Monsieur,' replied the Frenchman, in a lachrymose, pitiful tone; 'I am not strong man to be angry. I was s-i-c-k !' ・ ・ ・ IT is one of those warm, lowcloudy, fine-rainy days of late October. Young KNICK, an hour ago, in a grassy ravine of a hill-side grove, now almost bereft of its summer honors, helped us to brush together a thick bed of faded leaves; and on that fragrant couch we have been lying, looking off through the thin blue drizzle upon the dying woods over the Tappaän Zee, and the patches of fall-wheat, of matchless green, that edge them, toward the river. Returning, after much pleasant chit-chat with the little JUNIOR,' we find a pacquet of letters and communciations from town (to which we did not repair today) upon our table; and lo! the first one we open is what HALLECK terms

'A HYMN o'er happy days departed
A hope that such again may be.'

Our esteemed correspondent, in kind compliance with the Macedonian-call in our ast, has certainly touched us at this moment in a tender point. He expresses our sentiments exactly:

Whoever shall visit DOBB's' the ensuing winter, and the pleasant domicil which we inhabited there, will on examination find pieces of Old KNICK.' sticking to the door-posts; retained there in the disparting struggle of the final adieu.... WE derive the following capital anecdote from an esteemed friend who' was there,' and who never yet permitted a good thing to escape his observant eye. A stagecoach, well freighted with passengers, was once travelling from London to York. Among those on the outside was a dry-looking gentleman in rusty black, and very taciturn. According to custom, he soon got a travelling-name from his dress; and from some accidental whim, the passengers seemed to take a pleasure in playing upon it. Whenever they stopped there would casual questions be asked: Where's the Gentleman in Black? Won't the Gentleman in Black come by the fire.'' Perhaps the Gentleman in Black would like a bit of the mutton?' In short, the Gentle

·

man in Black became a personage of consequence, in spite of his taciturnity. At length, in the middle of the night, crash! went the coach, and the unlucky outsides' were sent headlong into the ditch. There was a world of work in repairing damages, and gathering together the limping passengers. Just as they were about setting off, the coachman was attracted by a voice from a ditch, where he found some one, white as a miller from rolling down a chalky bank. The Unknown prayed in piteous voice for assistance. Why who the deuce are you?' cried coachee. Alas!' replied the other, in a tone half-whimsical, half-plaintive, 'I'm the Gentleman in Black!' . . . A letter-writer from New-Orleans, in one of our daily journals, mentions as a gratifying fact that duelling has well nigh gone out of fashion, not only in that city but in portions of the south and south-west where it was formerly the most frequent. A distinguished southern statesman once informed us that not a few, if not the greater part, of the duels which had occurred in his section of the country had been prosecuted to a fatal termination by the officiousness or obstinacy of the seconds. One of the British essayists mentions an English peer, who used to tell a pleasant story of a French gentleman who visited him early one morning at Paris, and after great professions of respect, let him know that he had it in his power to oblige him; which in short amounted to this, that he believed he could tell his lordship the person's name who jostled him as he came out from the opera; but before he would proceed, he begged his lordship that he would not deny him the honor of making him his second. The English lord, to avoid being drawn into a very foolish affair, told him that he was under engagements for his two next duels to a couple of particular friends. Upon which the gentleman immediately withdrew, hoping his lordship would not take it ill if he meddled no farther in an affair from whence he himself was to receive no advantage.' Of such 'friends' to be shunned there are but too many in every community. . . . We do n't know when we have been more amused than in the perusal of a little pamphlet-book recently reprinted from the London edition by Messrs. CAREY AND HART, Philadelphia, entitled 'The Greatest Plague of Life, or the Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant. The records proceed from a married woman who has been almost worried to death;' and they are so characteristically jotted down, and the events are evolved from contingent causes so naturally, and are so irresistibly ludicrous, that they will amuse all and instruct many readers. A meddling mother-in-law, a spoilt child and inexperienced, added to a series of shocking servants, are matériel enough for any book; and in the present case they are most adroitly handled. We hope the work may be generally read; for as the writer, in her sweetly-pretty style remarks, she is the pilot of young wives, to steer their fragile little barks through the rocks and precipices of domestic life, and prevent their happiness being wrecked at their own firesides, and their household gods turned neck and crop into the streets, to wander to and fro without so much as a place to put their heads in!' . . OUR correspondent S.,' who sends us the Chapter on Noses,' has probably not read the paper entitled Nosology,' which appeared some volumes back in the KNICKERBOCKER; for if he had done so, he would have found some of his positions anticipated. The unfortunate woman who was almost worried to death' says, that just as the infantile pug is bent the full-grown nose is inclined; that at the tender age of baby-hood the nose is as plastic as putty, and can be drawn out like so much india-rubber; that Nature has kindly placed the infant's nose in its mother's hands, and left it for her to say whether it should be blessed with an aqualine or cursed with a snub; that it may be grown to any shape, like a cucumber; in short,

that it is only for the mother to decide whether it shall be allowed to run wild and twist itself into a turn-up,' or by the process of cultivation be forced to grow strait, and elongate itself into a Grecian.' All which may be possible; for who knows what the writer knows about the Nose, to which his researches have been so laboriously directed? . . . THE sea is His, and He made it! Now there is conveyed in this sentence, to our poor conception at least, a kind of mysterious sublimity; and we never stand by the solemn shore of the great ocean, without hearing in every wave that, as it rolls pouring onward and expanding side-wise, breaks at the ends of its emerald cylinder into a musical foam, without taking up the burthen of that pervading Voice, and exclaiming, 'The Sea is His, and He made it !' And it is pleasurable to think that this impression, if not general, is at least not uncommon. We have remarked, with unwonted sympathy, in DICKENS's last story, how the waves, 'hoarse with the repetition of their mystery,' affect his heroine, as they roll the dank sea-weed at her feet, while she stands by the resounding shore. Even thus, too, had they awakened a vague yet sublime sense of the Infinite and the Eternal' in the minds of FLORENCE and her little brother, gone home to GOD.' What thoughts of the departed, what spirits of the Past, what dim foreshadowings of the Future, are evoked by the sight of the illimitable ocean, and the voices of all his waves! TENNYSON, in a few brief lines, which we have repeated alone on the sea-shore, we know not how often, touches this chord, whose vibrations are so melodious to the soul:

'BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

'O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor iad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill:
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

'Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.'

'Nevermore! nevermore!' . . . We do not know when we have encountered a inore forcible exemplification of the truth, that a soft answer turneth away wrath,' than is afforded in the ensuing anecdote. On one occasion in the Supreme Court of the United States the eloquent Irish exile, Mr. EMMET, and the distinguished orator, Mr. PINCKNEY, were on opposite sides in an important cause, and one which the latter had much at heart, and was desirous of winning by fair or unfair means. In the course of his argument he travelled out of the cause to make observations, personal and extremely offensive on Mr. EMMET with a view probably of irritating and weakening his reply. Mr. EMMET sat quiet and endured it all. It seemed to have sharpened his intellect, without having irritated his temper. When the argument was through, he said, 'perhaps he ought to notice the remarks of the opposite counsel, but this was a species of warfare in which he had the good fortune to have little experience, and one in which he never dealt. He was willing his learned opponent should have all the advantage he promised himself from the display of his talents in this way. When he came to this country he was a stranger, and was happy to say that from the bar generally and the court universally, he had experienced nothing but politeness, and even kindness. He believed the court would do him the justice to say, that he had said or done nothing in this cause to merit a different treatment. He had always been accustomed to admire and even reverence the learning and eloquence of Mr. PINCKNEY, and he was the last man from whom he should have expected personal observations of the sort the court had just witnessed. He had been in early life taught 60

VOL. XXX.

by the highest authority, not to return railing for railing. He would only say that he had been informed that the learned gentleman had filled the highest office his country could bestow at the court of St. James. He was very sure that he had not learned his breeding in that school. The court and the bar were delighted; for Mr. PINCKNEY was apt to be occasionally a little overbearing.' When we take into consideration the merit of resistance against the natural impulse of a warm Irish temperament, we must admire still more the manner adopted by Mr. EMMET. Mr. PINCKNEY, as we gather from WHEATON's life of that gentleman, afterward tendered the most ample and generous apology. The manner,' said he, in which Mr. EMMET has replied, reproaches me by its forbearance and urbanity, and could not fail to hasten the repentance, which reflection alone would have produced, and which I am glad to have so public an occasion of avowing. I offer him a gratuitous and cheerful atonement; cheerful, because it puts me to rights with myself, and because it is tendered not to ignorance and presumption, but to the highest worth, intellect and morals, enhanced by such eloquence as few may hope to equal; to an interesting stranger whom adversity has tried and affliction struck severely to the heart; to an exile whom any country might be proud to receive, and every man of a generous temper would be ashamed to offend.' Now a bitter retort from Mr. EMMET, in the first place, might have engendered enmity in the breasts of these two great men, which would have expired only with their lives. . . . We published, some months since, a sketch entitled 'The Battle of the Wines.' PUNCH, following the hint perhaps, has a somewhat kindred article in verse, which he entitles The Wines, a Drama in one Scene.' It is a dialogue between SHERRY and PORT, which illustrates the parentage of each. Both colloquists have numerous near relatives in America:

SHERRY. Now let me hear the story of your wrongs.

PORT. Listen! You know, I think, my native land?

SHERRY. Yes, 't is fair Portugal.

PORT. Portugal? - pooh!

I'm English, with a touch of foreign blood.

They fancy from Oporto I ani sprung:

They little know me!

SHERRY. I'm all surprise.

PORT. I'l tell my history, even from the cask

Up to my present rich decanterhood.

In crutchéd Friars,

THAT is a delightful correspondent of ours, now travelling in Vermont, who sends us the following 'Jottings on the Way.' Won't he be kind enough to permit us to hear from him frequently if not oftener,' in the course of his journeyings? He will always be welcome: Our friend is writing from Montpelier:

'OH! that I could convey to you an idea of the grandeur and variety of Vermont scenery! From Burlington to this place, where I snatch a few moments to write you, the whole distance of forty miles is one narrow valley, with mountains on your right hand and on your left; some covered with the