says Mr. DEAN, that neither of the writers had any knowledge of the other's production, the coincidence of thought must be regarded as remarkable. Without claiming for the lines high poetical merit, I must nevertheless consider them as beautiful and appropriate tributes to the admirable composer and vocalist to whom they are addressed.' The ensuing stanzas are by Miss FRANCES JANE CROSBY, who since the age of six weeks has been totally blind: OH! what is the spell now entrancing each soul? On the swift wing of time must each glad moment roll, Oh, Music! what art thou? we bend to thy sway; Oh, why must a dream so enchanting be broke? There is music in nature; the light summer gale At ev'ning that sighs through each green-wood and bow'r, Then sleeps in its cradle, the bell of a flower! 'Of fair Caledonia, thy dear native shore, The songs thou hast sung we can never forget; 'Yet once we entreat thee those echoes to breathe, It shall rest there in bosoms now sighing for thee. 'Kind minstrel, but feebly can language express Miss CYNTHIA BULLOCK, who wrote the following lines, was born without eyes. No glimpse of light ever reached her; 'no sun, no moon, no stars — all dark!' OH! welcome, kind stranger; our hearts, long expectant, Have sigh'd for thy tones, so enchantingly sweet; Emotions of pleasure each other succeeding, As delighted we hastened thy coming to greet. 'Sweet Music! in ages remote thou wert given, Our griefs to assuage, and our pleasures endear, All ages, all nations, thy sceptre acknowledge; 'Yet sing of old Scotland, her summer-clad valleys, 'Our lips cannot utter the grateful emotions That swell as we list to thy soul-thrilling lay; And, oh! may we meet where thy harp shall be telling 'Hereafter,' adds Mr. DEAN,' when the thoughts of the delightful vocalist shall recur to the past, they will perhaps rest for a moment on this Home of the Blind ; let him think then how much enjoyment he has conferred upon the inmates, and with how much of grateful feeling he is remembered there.' We can answer, we think, for our friend DEMPSTER, that he will never sing the touching words, I am blind, O! I'm blind!' without recalling to mind the scene we have permanently re corded here. GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. We have just risen from the perusal of a recent volume from the press of Messrs. APPLETON AND COMPANY, with the honest title of 'A Plea for Amusements.' Its author is Mr. FREDERICK W. SAWYER; and it is not too much to say, that he deserves the cordial thanks of every well-wisher to his country's happiness, individually and nationally, for the excellent manner in which he has discharged the task he had imposed upon himself. His argument, at the beginning, is, that 'our CREATOR has seen fit to surround us with a host of influences; and he who has the wisdom to justly appreciate all of them, and the disposition to employ all of them in their proper places, may gather from life all the sweets that it is capable of affording, and lie down at last educated for happiness in a brighter sphere' Mr. SAWYER goes back to the early ages, and proves from the Bible that under the Mosaic dispensation the tendency of the whole feast-day and holy-day economy was to bring the people together in social worship and rejoicing, and that there was nothing tending to drive them asunder and into solitude. It was the Pharisees only who eschewed the common enjoyments of life; who made long prayers, and announced a new way to heaven through self-imposed tribulations and tears; scouring the outside of platters and whitewashing the outside of sepulchres. But CHRIST came eating and drinking;' he was at the great rejoicing at the marriage-festival in Cana, in Galilee; he was social in his habits and character, and hence was denounced by the Pharisees as gluttonous and a wine-bibber,' and a friend of publicans and sinners. The difference between the creed of the Pharisees and that of CHRIST and his apostles was, that the former required their disciples to appear holy, while the latter required theirs to be holy. A few centuries after the Christian era came an order of ascetics, who were dissatisfied with nature as it was, and insisted that this world was no place for them; that it was an entire mistake in putting them here; and hence shut themselves up in monasteries and nunneries, to correct the evil as far as they could. They made a world of their own, cold, dark, dreary, uncomely, inhospitable and unsocial, which, with a few torments of their own seeking, was to fit them for heaven, whose joys were to bear an exact proportion to the absence of all comfort and happiness below. The prejudice against amusements, says our author, is the growth of eighteen hundred years' constant teaching. The seed was sown by the Pharisees some two or three centuries previous to the Christian era; its growth was choked by the teaching of CHRIST and his apostles, but grew and flourished throughout the middle ages, and was only checked, not rooted out, by the reformation. Amusements have led a sort of gypsy life, hanging upon the outskirts of religious society, poaching now a little here and then a little there. Thrust from the presence and firesides of the religious, and those under their influence, there seemed to be no other places for such enjoyments save public halls and saloons; not the most fitting places to raise up pure, innocent and healthy amusements. Hostility to pleasure and amusements is the great distinguishing feature between the religious man, technically speaking, and the man of the world. Men pass from the world into the church, without abating one hair's breadth of their devotion to the pursuits of ambition and gain. In most cases, the only change in their former pursuits is in their pleasures and amusements. They are as early, as late and as eager in the arena of distinction or on the mart as before, but less often or never at the festive board and at public and private diversions. The new calls upon their time made by their religious duties are generally eked out from their hours of recreation and diversion, seldom from those of their business. The bounties of Providence, it is justly contended, and the pleasures of life, are not corrupt, but our pampered appetites, our perverted tastes, that misuse them. It is the latter that are to be denounced and guarded against, not the former. Amusements are the natural allies of our race, in training us physically, morally, intellectually, socially and religiously for happiness. We should be glad to follow our author more in detail; and yet we desire rather that the reader should see for himself, in the volume under notice, how admirably and thoroughly this important subject has been treated. Well and truly does Mr. SAWYER remark, that in order to break up the eternal round of labor, by old and young, by rich and poor, as though an invisible power impelled them to it, we need more stated holidays, when they may lay aside their usual avocations, and join in rejoicing: The ALL-WISE GOVERNOR of the Universe has made it a law of our being that the attainment of the greatest degree of bodily health and the highest moral, religious, intellectual and social culture, shall depend in some degree on the aid of daily amusements. Children brought up without amusements soon lose their loveliest characteristics, and become thoughtful, cold, calculating, and hardened in all the selfish ways of the world. We commend the author's remarks on the great crime of dancing, to the consideration of the prize-writer against it, in the American Tract Society's pamphlet: Dancing is calculated to be an efficient aid in improving and refining the manners of a people, and smoothing the way to that free and respectful and delicate intercourse between the sexes, that is so necessary for their highest happiness.' . . . SOMEBODY in the Boston Chronotype' impugns in verse the assumption of our friend and correspondent SAXE, in his Rail-Road Lyric,' that it is pleasant riding on a rail.' His experience is quite of a different character: 'SMASHING through the forests, Rolling down the ridges, Jumping into ditches, Tumbling over bridges! 'Passengers are vainly Trying to get out; Threatens he will kick her; Gentleman that's drunk Says he 'd like to lick-ker! 'Gentleman in black, Standing rather tall; Legs and boots and all! Gentleman in blue, Feeling for his hat, Cannot find his head! 6 But SAXE makes no reply, for he had 'the initial' in the argument. CHARLES DICKENS, in his Parlor Orator,' has accurately sketched the type of a class who by the aid of unlimited brass and fluent declamation pass off their ignorance for knowledge upon bumpkins still more ignorant. There are too many of the same sort in this country; only, instead of confining themselves to politics, they will descant on every thing within the compass of literature or science. One of these specimens sat behind us the other night at COLLIER's exhibition. He was bear-leading a green couple from the west, who listened to him as if he had been BROUGHAM OF WEBSTER at the very least. And how he did talk! There was a French Marquis near us, one of those interesting personages who are sent out by a club with two changes of raiment on the chance of catching a Yankee heiress, and he used his tongue pretty rapidly, as most Frenchmen do; but our domestic article would have out-talked three of him. We tried our best not to hear him; but, as Mrs. CLUPPINS says, the voices was very loud, and forced themselves upon the ear.' He announced himself as a contributor to the Review,' and proceeded to talk little paragraphs from his contributions. All the great men of England and France he despatched after this way: HALLAM's books, though badly written, are nevertheless,' etc. 'Yes, that book has the same fault as all of Guizor's,' and so on. In the same dashing and decided manner he compared and criticized SHAKSPEARE and SCHILLER. You would have thought French, German and Italian were at his finger's end; only his conversation was a series of assaults and batteries upon the President's American. Finally, he observed with an oracular air, that it was an error in the bill to say only two fragments of SAPPHO remained, for there were five or six extant.' This was a little too much; so we shifted our position just as he was delivering a synopsis of AGASSIZ's last lecture. . MANY English writers,' says a quaint old author, ‘ ,' by using strange words, as Latin, French and Italian, do make all things dark and hard. Once I communed with a man which reasoned the English tongue to be enriched and increased thereby, saying: Who will not prayse that feast, where a man shall drink at dinner both wine, ale and beer?' Truly (quoth I) they be all good, every one taken by himself alone; but if you put malmseye and sacke, redde wyne and white, ale and beere, and all in one pot, you shall make a drink neither way to be known, nor yet wholesome for the body.' Precisely, 'good mine Ancient;' and we wish that all modern writers were of your way of thinking, and would set it forth and show it accordingly... THAT'grief which passeth show' is finely hinted at, nay painted, in these three lines of Sir SAMUEL TUKE, who in CHARLES the Second's time, we venture to say, had not the slightest idea of being quoted at this time in the KNICKERUnderstand; we may be wrong, but that is our opinion :' BOCKER. 'I HAVE observed the signs of smothered grief; A WELCOME Correspondent writes us as follows from a flourishing town in Illinois, near one of those vast billowy oceans of verdure so well described by BRYANT. He can scarcely conceive how nearly he has touched us by his little reminiscerce, which is as fresh in our memory as if it were but yesterday: 'I had the pleasure of meeting you one evening at General B's, in P, in the autumn of 1833, when your late twin-brother was present; and either you or your brother, in kindness to a graduating college-boy, confidentially told me how I might distinguish the one from the other during the evening; for you were both dressed alike, and the great personal resemblance between you made some sign necessary to me. The collar of your (perhaps his) coat was of velvet, the other of cloth. Mrs. P, then S- M. B was there; and, by the way, some of the extracts from her diary and papers, published in the KNICKERBOCKER, I recognize as copies or originals of parts of notes and letters addressed to me, during the continuance of an unclouded friendship, the loss of which, by her death, I shall always deplore. This 'taik' is intended in some sort to excuse the request I have made, for I need no introduction to you. You are ever freshly before me in print; but as the West' has not yet sent me either to the penitentiary or to congress, I have no right to suppose that you ever saw or heard of me. I can claim only an introduction, followed by the obliviscatory hiatus of fourteen years. Fourteen years! - how much has happened to both of us since that to me distant period! . . . QUITE grateful to Wooster-Street;' but we have not the slightest desire to penetrate the mystery of NELSON, the Astrologer,' or Madame ADOLPH, the Fortune-Teller.' When we desire to know more of our fortune than is developed in the regular progress of time, we shall adopt the experiment recorded in " Two Noble Kinsmen :' 'WOULD I could find a fine Frog; he would tell me By east and north east to the King of Pigmies, PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS,' whose private 'I' is so frequently obtruded upon the public eye; who covers a larger piece of bread with a smaller piece of butter than any writer with whom we are acquainted; who, by reason of an inveterate and querulous cacoethes scribendi, stands most of the time before the metropolis in a small tub of exceedingly hot water, having always been shamefully ill-treated by some utterly discomfitted antagonist whom, in his capacity of Moral and Theological Gladiator, he has dragooned into a contest with him; 'Professor TAYLER LEWIS,' we say, has published a long and very labored response to the brief criticism of Mr. BRISTED upon his Plato Contra-Atheos,' in a late number of this Magazine. This response is prefaced by a characteristic letter, equally courteous and truthful, in which our volunteer Disputant-General complains of the EDITOR hereof for declining to permit him farther to occupy the pages of the KNICKERBOCKER with his verbose recriminations, in which not one in ten of our readers have a particle of interest. Let us look at this matter for a moment. In the first place, we admitted, without the slightest claim on the ambitious Professor's' part that we should do so, some dozen closeprinted pages in reply to a line and a half — embraced in an elaborate article upon a work by another writer-in which a merely incidental reference was made to a single error in Mr. Lewis's book. Our critic had certainly a claim upon us to be permitted to reply briefly to a labored article, so slightly based, which not only accused him of falsifying himself in the particular instance cited, but made several new and totally irrelevant issues. He was entitled, as every reader will perceive, to sustain his original charge, and to show that he was justified in alluding to a particular portentous blunder, since (as was made abundantly apparent by invariable reference to page and passage) it was far from standing alone in the evidently defective work under consideration. Personally, we knew little of Mr. LEWIS and less of Mr. BRISTED, and were not then, and are not now, under the slightest obligation of any sort to either of them. As the case stood, the Professor' had had ten pages and upward to our critic's four; and having in fresh remembrance the 'patient sufferance' of our friend the editor of The Tribune' daily journal, under sundry long and wordy inflictions |