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to say that no woman, or man either, so he be a true one, can listen to it without tears. The poem, which is in three parts, (The May-Queen,'' New-Year's Eve,' and the Conclusion') was not long since mainly given in this department of the KNICKERBOC'The Miseries of Travelling' we think will pass to the 'accepted' port-folio. The writer is certainly a man of patience if not of humor. One of his grievances is well illustrated by a wag, who has drawn a very vivid picture of a departing coach, surrounded by the usual crowd of nondescripts,' who seem to consider, Heaven knows why, that it is quite impossible any man can mount a coach, or get into a rail-car, without requiring at least a sixpence worth of oranges, a pen-knife, a pocket-book, a last year's annual, a pencil case, a piece of sponge, a cane, and a small series of caricatures.'... OUR excellent friend and long-time correspondent, HARRY FRANCO,' has `assumed the editorship of a new weekly paper, entitled The Broadway Journal,' published by Mr. JOHN BISCO, at No. 153 Broadway. Unlike our other weekly gazettes, it is to be entirely original, and will consist of essays, criticisms on art and literature, and foreign and domestic scientific and literary intelligence. Of FRANCO's ability it is certainly unnecessary for us to speak; our readers have had very many 'tastes' of his 'quality,' and we trust they will have many more. He is assisted by able collaborateurs, while the publisher, (likewise long and favorably known to us,) presents the Journal' in acceptable externals to its subscribers. We wish this new candidate for public favor the amplest sucTHE paper containing the Exercises' of two persons pitted to pun' can't possibly be permitted! It is really dreadful. 'Sitting down' to elaborate a play upon words is a very unprofitable employment. Here is a better specimen of a thing in this kind, which we have from a friend, than any to be found in the entire six pages before us. One of our metropolitan wits, speaking to a guest of a mutual friend who had a broken (and upon whose entire aspect of face the former had animadverted with a good deal of severity,) observed: 'I don't agree with you, exactly; I think his face would be quite passable, if he had a bridge to his nose!' .. WE regret to learn the death of our late contemporary, of the 'The Ladies' Companion,' WILLIAM W. SNOWDEN, Esq. He conducted that magazine, in conjunction with Mrs. SIGOURNEY and Mrs. EMBURY, with liberality and success. Mr. SNOWDEN was a frank, ingenuous man, who carried his heart in his hand;' and his death will be lamented by many personal friends, and especially by numerous periodical contributors, good, bad and indifferent,' whom his kindness has heretofore befriended. THERE can be no truth in the report of the strike' by

cess....

nose,

the writers for PUNCH.' There is no falling off in its attractions. We subjoin a little 'testimony' as to its present standing. The following after the manner of 'CAMPBELL'S 'Mariners of England,' will suit the meridian of New-York as well as London:

'YOUNG gentlemen of England,

That only mind your ease,

Ah, little do you think how hard
Young ladies try to please!
Give ear unto the Milliners,
And they will plainly show
How the waist must be laced,
By the Fashion-books to go.

'She who'd attract attention

Must laugh at common sense,
For when one goes to choose a dress,
One musn't mind expense;
Nor think how Pa will scold one,
Whene'er he comes to know

How he's let into debt,

By the Fashion-books to go.

'What terrible privations

Young ladies must endure,
A lovely face and form of grace
From damage to secure!
Their appetites they must control,
Lest they too stout should grow,
And in vain strive and strain
By the Fashion-books to go.

In days of bitter weather,
Which winter doth enforce,
One cannot think of such a thing
As good thick boots, of course;
With instep undefended,

In rain, and hail, and snow,
All so bold one gets cold,
By the Fashion-books to go.'

6

PUNCH illustrates De minimis curat Lex' in this wise: How true it is, that the law of England protects the humblest as well as the highest species of property, throwing over the poor man's turnip and the rich man's pine-apple an equal shield! Nothing is so insignificant or comparatively valueless, that it cannot be rendered safe in the hands of its

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owner; and we know of no stronger illustration of this than the fact, that at the bottom of the title-page of GEORGE JONES's Tecumseh appear the words, 'COPYRIGHT SECURED!'' A bachelor, who has been asked by a young husband to give him candidly' his impressions of his wife, among other things, writes him: You were wont to praise your wife's temper. I have so much respect for your judgment, that I am sure no artifices of courtship could blind you to a defect. And yet, my dear fellow, the whole education of woman from the cradle to the altar is one long course of-no, hang it! I will not say deceit. Bachelor as I am, and intend forever to be, I will not put down that ugly word. Nevertheless, it is extraordinary how women can hide their real temper until the parson, as they think, gives them a legal right to show it. It is really wonderful to know how very long talons may sleep in the velvet paw of courtship before the amen' of the clerk calls them out. I cannot think it is thus with Mrs. SIMPSON: Oh, no. Still I watched her; and my heart had a slight misgiving when I saw her frown at your ventured opinion, that the sweet sauce was a little burnt. However, perhaps it may have been only her peculiar mode of look, and not a frown. You, my dear boy, know best; for who, indeed, ought to judge between man and wife?' By the by, speaking of bachelors: elegant cards, we perceive, have already emanated from that corps of choice spirits, the Gotham Bachelors, for their annual ball on the eve of St. Valentine's Day, at the Astor-House. It will be a most recherché festival; for they are the boys' to effect such a result, OUR young Saratoga correspondent must excuse us, if we speak plainly, since our sole object is to benefit him. He has taken nothing for a subject, and written it to death. He starts upon stilts, and does not descend from them for a moment - not even in his note to the Editor. Common-places are expanded to tenuity, by the use of twenty big words, where six simple terms would more than have sufficed. The product of the whole is nil, whether we regard matter or manner. The verse which bears the same initials has feeling, and is much better written; still, it lacks force, and in some of its stanzas, melody. WHOSO loves good eating, good health, and good writing, let him read Sanderson's "Mirror for Dyspeptics,' from the Diary of a Landlord' — meaning himself, the prince of his class. If we should ever have the heart to visit once more the city of Brotherly Love,' (there was more than one meaning to us once in that fraternal name,) we shall test at the FranklinHouse the practical bearings of the various culinary matters discussed by our friend. We should not omit to mention the very appropriate and clever design which forms the frontispiece to the work, from the pencil of JOHN Ross Dix. .. WE know of no humane institutions in this country, in which there are displayed greater energy and skill than in our asylums for the insane. The last North-American Review' has an excellent paper upon the Jurisprudence of Insanity,' which we heartily commend to the perusal of our readers. The abuse of the plea of insanity, in criminal cases, is among the matters touched upon. The reviewer observes: The accused is acquitted, though he has committed an unprovoked murder, attended with circumstances of most shocking barbarity. The more terrible the nature of the crime, the more savage and motiveless, the more destitute of palliating circumstances, the greater is the probability that 'None but a madman could have committed it." The savage CLEM, who recently burnt a poor woman alive in this city, and the brute M'CURRY, who recently at Baltimore cut a fellow-lodger's throat, and beat in his skull with an axe, we have no doubt will be thought to come under this category! One phase of insanity is well depicted in the following passage:

'To remove the check which the will has over the thoughts is like taking away the balance-wheel from a watch, which then runs down with a hurried and irregular motion, no longer taking note of time. Every thinker perceives this effect, if he abandons himself to a fit of reverie, when the most heterogenous ideas chase each other in quick succession through the mind, without coherency or method, and leaving hardly a trace on the memory. Startle him from this state of dreamy abstraction, and he looks round bewildered, and requires a moment of effort, before he becomes conscious of his situation, and of the presence of surrounding things. Except the depression of spirits, he feels for an instant as LEAR did, when wakening to a gleam of sanity, as the clouds which had obscured his intellect are for a moment parted. How admirably are the bewilderment of mind, and the effort to

recall and fix the attention upon the by-standers here depicted! It is the struggle of the will to regain its ascendancy:

PRAY, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish, fond old man,

Fourscore and upward; and to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man;

Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is; and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night: do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child, CORDELIA.'

It would have melted a heart of stone to hear MACREADY give this passage, in his personation of LEAR. The third number of the American Journal of Insanity,' from the State Asylum at Utica, sustains the high character which we predicted the work would acquire. Among its many valuable papers, is one by our old correspondent, PLINY EARLE, M. D., Physician to the Bloomingdale Asylum, upon The Poetry of Insanity' — well written, and full of variety and interest. It seems hardly possible that poetry so tender and touching as the Address to Melancholy,' should have been written by an insane female. We annex a brief specimen:

'SPIRIT of darkness! from yon lonely shade,
Where fade the virgin roses of the spring;
Spirit of darkness! hear thy favorite maid,
To sorrow's harp, her wildest anthem sing.
Ah! how has Love despoiled my earliest bloom,
And flung my charms as to the wintry wind!
Ah! how has Love flung o'er the trophied tomb
The spoils of genius and the wreck of mind!
High rides the moon the silent heavens along;

Thick fall the dews of midnight o'er the ground;
Soft steals the lover, when the morning song

Of wakened warblers through the woods resound.
Then I with thee my solemn vigils keep,

And at thine altar take my lonely stand;

Again my lyre unstrung I sadly sweep,

While Love leads up the dance, with harp in hand.'

HAIL, Melancholy to yon lonely towers

I turn, and hail thy time-worn turrets mine,

Where flourish fair the night-shade's deadly flowers,

And dark and blue the wasting tapers shine.'

The poetry of all lunatics, however, is not quite as good as this; as is proved by several cited samples;' among them some stanzas of NAT LEE, which are as guiltless of all connection as any thing from the disordered brains of our modern 'original' bardlings:

'I GRANT that drunken rainbows, lulled to sleep,
Snort like Welch rabbits in a fair maid's eyes;
Because he laughed to see a pudding creep,
For creeping puddings only please the wise.

'Not that a hard-roed herring dare presume
To swing a tithe-pig in a cat-skin purse;
Cause of the great hail-stones that fell at Rome,
By lessening the fall might make it worse.'

Some of the fancies of the inmates of the Bloomingdale Asylum are amusing enough; for example: Instances are not wanting, in which the unfortunate subject of maniacal delusion has supposed himself to be the Father of all Evil. Hoo!' exclaimed one of these, as I approached him, 'hoo! I am the DEVIL; I am the DEVIL; what time is it?' Being informed that it was about four o'clock, he ejaculated, 'Four o'clock! I've engaged to be in hell at six!' A GREAT number of communications are awaiting immediate examination; several, in prose and verse, are filed for insertion; among them, "The Ranger's Adventure' and the Chapter on Lines.' 'Dark Elspeth's Life-Tale,' which will be found to be as weird and wild as 'Glimpses in the Mountains,' a story in the same vein, from a late English magazine, will be concluded in two more numbers. We hint it with some trepidation, but we suspect that AMBROSINE will prove to be 'the very DEVII. himself!' We shall soon know all, however.

NEW PUBLICATIONS, ETC.-Messrs. LEA AND BLANCHARD, Philadelphia, have laid the public under obligations to them for a very beautiful edition of CAMPBELL's poems, with his life by WASHINGTON IRVING. The volume is printed upon the best paper, in the best manner, and is illustrated by very numerous and excellent engravings. The same enterprising publishers have forwarded to us a specimen-sheet of the new and voluminous work of Lieut. WILKES, a 'Narrative of the Exploring Expedition.' Truly, this will be a great national work; and the beauty and quality of the typographical execution and matériel, and the superb character of the engravings, afford abundant evidence that its externals are to be in good keeping with the rare and interesting character of the varied subject-matter. We have lately, from the high house of the HARPERS,' among other publications, the following: 'Wilton Harvey, and other stories, by Miss SEDGWICK,' being a collection of tales and sketches, heretofore published in American annuals and magazines, (the KNICKERBOCKER among the number;) the whole forming a volume replete with interest and valuable 'lessons of life;' a new edition of ' ALISON on Taste,' a work too well known to require comment; BURKE on 'The Sublime and Beautiful,' to which the same remark will apply; 'Arthur Arundel, a Tale of the English Revolution,' by the Author of 'Bramblety-House;' The Nevilles of Garretstown,' by LEVER; Married and Single,' and 'Lovers and Husbands,' two excellent moral little volumes, by T. S. ARTHUR; and an excellent Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews,' by our friend Major NOAH, of which we shall have more to say hereafter. Messrs. APPLETON AND COMPANY have sent us a small but corpulent volume, containing an admirable History of the French Revolution, its causes and consequences, by F. MACLEAN ROWAN: the same work in two volumes is included in the same publishers' 'Library for my Young Countrymen;' The Life and Correspondence of Rev. THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D., of Oxford University,' by ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M. A.; the first American from the third English edition; as is also another new volume, blending instruction with entertainment, entitled 'PHILIP RANDOLPH, a Tale of Virginia.' The Two Apprentices, a Tale for Youth,' by MARY HOWITT, from the same house, is a little work full of interest, and conveying most valuable lessons. It contains two excellent engravings. Messrs. SORIN AND BALL, Philadelphia, have just issued a remarkable work, which we can barely announce, at the late period in the month at which we receive it. It is from the pen of JOHN B. GORMAN, M. D., and is entitled, Philosophy of animated Existence, or Sketches of Living Physics,' with discussions of philosophical physiology, and a medical account of the middle regions of Georgia. The author of this volume approached and has prosecuted his task with an evident sense of the dignity and weight of his great themes. In a glance, necessarily cursory, over the pages of the work, we are led to fear that the writer has indulged too freely in the use of highsounding or uncommon words, where the employment of simpler terms would have expressed his meaning with more force, and been far more acceptable to the general reader. We may take another occasion to refer more particularly to the volume... THE DOUAY BIBLE, publishing in numbers by Mr. EDWARD DUNNIGAN, Fulton-street, is one of the most admirably illustrated editions of the Catholic Bible that we have ever encountered. The engravings, which are numerous, are executed on steel, in the finest style of the art, from pictures that are almost immortal; the cover is exquisitely designed and printed in colors; and the pages of the work are impressed with a clear and well-cut type, upon paper of an excellent color and texture. The enterprise deserves, and we are glad to learn receives, the amplest encouragement. The same publisher has issued a valuable work for Catholics, containing the lives of Saint IGNATIUS and his first Companions,' by Rev. Charles CONSTANTINE PISE, D. D., a fine scholar and able writer; whom by the way we are sorry to see employ such a word as 'lengthy' in his preface. An educated gentleman like himself should be a 'strengthy' advocate of correct English. AMERICAN works are beginning to be appreciated as

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they deserve to be abroad. The excellent translation of the 'Letters and Despatches of CORTES,' by Hon. GEORGE FOLSOM, State-senator, which was received with such favor in this country, has proved equally popular in England: We perceive by Messrs. WILEY AND PUTNAM's late 'circular, that a new edition of the work has been called for, to supply the increasing demand for it in England... Mr. LYMAN COBB has just published his Fifth Reader,' which completes his Series of Reading Books, of which favorable mention has heretofore been made in the KNICKERBOCKER. The selections in this work are made almost entirely from the writings of American authors; and Mr. COBB, in his preface, very justly remarks: The United States have political and civil institutions of their own; and how can these be upheld and sustained, unless the children and youth of our country are early made to understand them, by books and other means of instruction? In the

present, as in all the previous numbers of the series, all the new words which occur in each reading lesson are formed into a spelling lesson, each word being divided, accented, pronounced, and defined, so that the scholar will be able to read understandingly. The author has also taken great pains to select such pieces as had a tendency to improve the heart as well as the head; for, as he observes, 'The youth of our country caunot enjoy the blessings of our free institutions, or aid in perpetuating them, unless they are morally as well as intellectually educated.' At the close of each reading-lesson, are questions, intended for exercising the scholars upon what they have read, for the purpose not only of calling into action their thinking and reasoning powers, but also of impressing deeply on their minds the principles inculcated in the lessons thus read. We commend the work cordially to public acceptance. ・・・ A VERY acceptable and timely little volume has been issued by Messrs. STANFORD AND SWORDS, entitled 'Halloween, a Romaunt; with Lays, Meditative and Devotional. It is from the pen of Rev. ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE, author of 'Christian Ballads,' etc., a poet of much versatility and fire.... FROM the new publishing house of FARMER AND DAGGERS, Number Thirty, Ann-Street, we have a new edition of Mrs. MARY CLAVERS' last admirable work, 'Forest Life;' GALT's entertaining 'Life of LAWRIE TODD,' with a new and characteristic preface by GRANT THORBURN, (who in a late 'original' essay 'cribs' without acknowledgment a certain 'Quaker' story of ours ;) 'The Book of British Ballads,' edited by S. C. HALL, a rare and costly work in the English edition, yet complete in the present at a moderate price, with the addition of a well-written introduction by PARK BENJAMIN, Esq.; and the Poems of Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, collected and arranged by C. DONALD MACLEOD. The collection is made from his novels dramas, and poems, and embraces nearly all that is worthy the writer's poetical reputation. The works to be issued by Messrs. FARMER AND DAGGERS are to be chosen by Mr. PARK BENJAMIN ; whose known taste and experience will insure a good selection from the better publications of the day.. MR. SCHOOLCRAFT'S 'Onéota' has reached its fifth number. This is a production of value as well as of interest. Every thing in relation to the Red Race, from the pen of this gentleman, may be relied upon as entirely authentic. The traditions, tales, legends, descriptions of customs, etc., which are here to be found, were gathered from the lips of the aborigines themselves, or from personal observation during a residence of more than twenty years among them. The work will, when completed, supply a most important desideratum in the history of those who were once 'monarchs of all they surveyed' on this great continent.... We have just been glancing over a long mislaid copy of Mr. HORACE GREELEY'S 'Address before the Literary Societies of Hamilton College,' in July last. We have encountered enough however, even in a cursory perusal, to convince us that the orator of the occasion urged, with his usual directness and force, the true dignity of honest labor; and that in all his inculcations, he had at heart the best interests of his kind. We commend the performance, thus hastily despatched, to the attentive regard of all our readers... The Monthly Rose' is the pretty title of a pretty periodical, sustained by the present and former members of the Albany Female Academy, the first number of which lies before us. The articles are well written, both the prose and verse, and the editress-es perform their new duties with grace and apparent ease. Sweet young ladies! if you would but admit Mynheer DEIDRICH into your editorial councils, you should have all the aid of his long experience in your profession, in consideration of the simple gratification which a glance at your sparkling eyes and bright faces would afford him. Dear fellow-laboress-es! is it a vote?'. . . GOLDSMITH's Gems of Penmanship,' a large and handsome quarto, containing numerous specimens of his plain and ornamental writing, will attract public attention to his professional merits. His plain round hands, fine and coarse, are excellent examples for learners; we trust, however, that he does not generally teach his 'flourishing' style in his flourishing academy. Such a hand-writing, in the eyes of a business-man, would seem like the ornamental touches' of a French dancing-master, eliminated' or thrown off in a walk along Broadway. Mr. GOLDSMITH's essay upon 'The Pen,' and his remarks upon, and directions for, good penmanship, are sensible, and well put forth... SOME of our weekly contemporaries are putting on beautiful garments with the new year. The 'ALBION,' so long established, and so favorably known throughout the United States, has donned a very handsome dress, and added to its other attractions an agricultural department, under the supervision of Hon. J. S. SKINNER. Apropos of the 'ALBION:' its last engraving is a full-length likeness of the great NELSON, a superior work of art, of very large dimensions, and in all its accessories truly admirable. It is alone worth a year's subscription to the popular journal which it adorns. ・ ・ ・ MESSRS. GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, Boston, have published the Life of GODFREY WILLIAM VON LEIBNITZ, on the basis of the German work of Dr. G. E. GUHRANER. BY JOHN MACKIE. It is for sale in NewYork by Mr. MARK H. NEWMAN, Broadway.

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