Southern literary gazette. (Athens, Ga.) 1848-1849, December 02, 1848, Page 235, Image 3

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young Count. He told how he had hastened io the castle to deliver the unwelcome tidings, but that the eloquence of the Baron had in terrupted him in every attempt to tell his tale. How the sight of the bride had completely captivated him, and that to pass a few hours near her, he had tacitly suffered the mistake to continue. How he had been sorely per plexed in what way to make a decent retreat, until the Baron's goblin stories had suggested his eccentric exit. How, fearing the feudal hostility of the family, he had repeated his visits by stealth —had haunted the garden beneath the young lady’s window —had woo ed —had won —had borne away in triumph— and, in a word, had wedded the fair. Under any other circumstances, the Baron would have been inflexible, for he was tena cious of paternal authority, and devotedly ob stinate in all family feuds ; but he loved his daughter; he had lamented her as lost; he rejoiced to find her still alive; and, though her husband was of a hostile house, yet, thank Heaven, he was not a goblin. There was something, it must be acknowledged, that did not exactly accord with his notions of strict veracity, in the joke the knight had passed upon him of hi.s being a dead man; but several old friends present, who had serv ed in the wars, assured him that every strat agem was excusable in love, and that the cavalier was entitled to especial privilege, having lately served as a trooper. Matters, therefore, were happily arranged. The Baron pardoned ihe young couple on the spot. The revels at the castle were resumed. The poor relations overwhelmed this new member of the family with loving kindness; he was so gallant, so generous —and so rich. The aunts, it is true, were somewhat scan dalized that their system of strict seclusion, and passive obedience, should be so badly exemplified, but attributed it all to their neg ligence in not having the windows grated.— One of them was particularly mortified at having her marvelous story marred, and that the only spectre she had ever seen should turn out a counterfeit; but the niece seemed perfectly happy at having found him sub stantial flesh and blood —and so the story ends. (Eclectic of tl)it. From the London Charivari. THE PHILOSOPHY OF BORROWING. You ask me to supply you with a list of books, that you may purchase the same for your private delectation. My dear boy, re ceive this, and treasure it for a truth : no wise man ever purchases a book. Fools buy books, and wise men —borrow them. By respecting, and acting upon this axiom, you may obtain a very handsome library for nothing. Do you not perceive, too, that by merely borrowing a volume at every possible oppor tunity, you are obtaining for yourself the reputation of a reading man; you are inter esting in your studies dozens of people who, otherwise, would care not whether you knew A, B, C, or not % AYith your shelves throng ed with borrowed volumes, you have an as surance that your hours of literary medita tion frequently engage the thoughts ofalike, intimate and casual acquaintance. To be a good borrower of books, is to get a sort of halo of learning about you not to be obtained by laying out money upon printed wisdom. For instance, you meet Huggins. He no sooner sees you than pop, you are associated with all the Caesars; he having —simple Hug gins!—lent you his Roman History, bound in best historic calf. He never beholds you but be thinks of Romulus and Remus, the Tar peian Rock, the Rape of the Sabines, and ten thousand other interesting and pleasurable events. Thus, you are doing a positive good to Huggins by continually refreshing his mind with the studies of his thoughtful youth; whilst, as I say, your appearance, your memory, is associated and embalmed by him with things that “ will not die.” Consider the advantage of this. To one man you walk as Hamlet; why ? You have upon your shelves that mans best edition oi Shakspeare. To another you come as the archangel Michael. His illustrated Paradise Lost glitters among your borrowings. To this man, by the like magic, you are Robin son Crusoe; to this, Telemachus. I will not multiply instances; they must suggest them selves. ‘ Be sure, however, on stumbling up on what seems a rare and curious volume, to lay your borrowing hands upon it. Ihe book may be Sanscrit, Coptic, Chinese; you m ay not understand a single letter of it; for which reason, be more sternly resolved to carry it away with you. The very, act of borrowing such a mysterious volume implies that you are, in some respects, a deep fel* §®©lTEllß{&ia iUIf&IEAiBY ®&8B IF T l§. low—invests you with a certain literary dig nity in the eyes of the lending. Besides, if you know not Sanscrit at the time you bor row, you may before you die. You cannot promise yourself what you shall not learn ; or, having borrowed the book, what you shall not forget. There are three things that no man but a fool lends—or having lent, is not in the most hopeless state of mental crassitude, if he ev er hope to get back again. These three things, my son, are —books, umbrellas, and money! I believe, a certain fiction of the land assumes a remedy io the borrower; but I know” no case in which any man, being suf ficiently dastard to gibbet his reputation as plaintiff in such a suit, ever fairly succeeded against the wholesome prejudices of socie ty- In the first place, books being themselves but a combination of borrowed things, are not to be considered as vesting even their authors with property. The best man who writes a book, borrows his materials from the world about him, and therefore, as the phrase goes, cannot come into court with clean hands.— Such is the opinion of some of our wisest law-makers; who, therefore, give to the me chanist of a mouse-trap a more lasting pro perty in his invention than if he had made an Iliad. And why'! The mouse-trap is of wood and iron : trees, though springing from the earth, are property; iron, dug from the bowels of the earth, is property : ) r ou can feel it, hammer it, weigh it: but what is call ed literary genius is a thing not ponderable, an essence (if, indeed, it be an essence,) you can make nothing of, though put into an air pump. The mast, that falls from beech, to fatten hogs, is property -; as the forest laws will speedily let you know, if you send in an alien pig to feed upon it; but it has been held, by wise, grave men in Parliament, that what falls from human brains to feed human souls, is no property whatever. Hence, pri vate advantage counsels you to borrow all the books you can; whilst public opinion abundantly justifies you in never returning them. I iiave now to speak of umbrellas. Would you, my son, from what you have read of Arab hospitality—would you think of count ing out so many penny-pieces, and laying them in the hand of your Arab host, in re turn for the dates and camel’s milk that, when fainting, dying with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, he hastened to bestow upon you 1 Would you, I say, chink the copper coin in the man’s ear, in return for this kindly office, which the son of the desert thinks an “in strumental part of his religion ‘!” If, with an ignorance of the proper usages of society, you would insult that high-souled Arab by any tender of money, then, my son —but no ! I think j'ou incapable of the sordidness of such an act —then would you return a hor 10wed umbrella! Consider it. What is an umbrella but a tent that a man carries about with him—in China, to guard him from the sun—in Eng land, to shelter him from the rain ? Well, to return such a portable tent to the hospitable soul who lent it—what is it but to offer the Arab payment for shelter; what is it but to chaffer with magnanimity, to reduce its great ness to a mercenary lodging-housekeeper and Umbrellas may be “ hedged about” by cob web statutes; 1 will not swear it is not so ; there may exist laws that make such things property; but sure I am that the hissing con tempt, the loud-mouthed indignation of all civilized society, would sibilate and roar at the bloodless paltroon, who should engage law on his side to obtain for him the restitu tion of a—lent umbrella! We now come to — money. I have had, in my time, so little of it, that I am not very well informed on monetary history. I think, however, that the first Roman coin was im pressed with a sheep. A touching and sig nificant symbol, crying aloud to all men, “Children, fleece one another.” My son, it is true, that the sheep has vanished from all coin; nevertheless, it is good to respect an cient symbols: therefore, whatever the gold or silver may bear—whatever the potentate, whatever the arms upon the obverse, see with your imaginative eye nothing but the sheep; listen with your fancy’s car to nought but— “fleece,” “fleece!” I am aware that a prejudice exists amongst the half-educared, that borrowed money is as money obtained by nothing; that, in fact, it is not your own : but is only trusted in your hands for such and such a time. My son, beware of this prejudice; for it is the fruit of the vilest ignorance. On the contrary, look upon all borrowed money, as money dearly, richly earned by your ingenuity in obtaining it. Put it to your account as the wages of your intellect, your address, your reasoning or seductive powers. Let this truth, my son, be engraven upon your very brain-pan. To borrow money is the very highest employ ment of the human intellect; to pay it back again, is to show yourself a traitor to the ge nius that has successfully worked within you. You may, however, wish to know how to put ofl your creditor; how to dumbfound him, should the idiot be clamorous. One answer will serve for books, umbrellas and money. As for books, by the way, you may always have left them in a hackney-coach. (This frequent accident of book-borrowers, doubt less, accounts for the literary turn of most hackney-coachmen.) Still, 1 will supply you with one catholic answer. Hopkins once lent Simpson, his next-door neighbor, an umbrella. You will judge of the intellect of Hopkins, not so much from the act of lending an umbrella, but from his insane endeavor to get it back again. It poured in torrents. Hopkins had an ur gent call. Hopkins knocked at Simpson’s door. “I want my umbrella.” Now, Simp son also had a call in a directly opposite way to Hopkins; and with the borrowed umbrella in his hand, was advancing to the threshhold. “I tell you,” roared Hopkins, “I want my umbrella.” “ Can't have it,” said Simpson, at the same time extending the machine dedicated to Ju piter pluvius. “Why, J want to goto the cast-end, it rains in torrents; what”—screamed Hopkins— “what am I to do for an umbrella !” “Do!” answered Simpson, darting from the door; “doas I did—borrow one!” ©mural ©clcctif. THE SUFFERINGS, PERSEVERANCE AND TRIUMPH OF GENIUS. There is at present in England an Ameri can, who went to that country to endeavor to interest the capitalists in anew bridge which he has constructed. He is a native of Vir ginia. An account of his progress is given by himself, in the following letter to the late Dixon H. Lewis, and is published in Hunt's Merchants’ Magazine: Stafford, England, August 15, 1848. Mi) Dear Sir , —l should have written sooner, but that I had nothing pleasant to say. I reached London on the Ist of Janua ry, 1847, without money or friends, which was just the thing I desired when I left Amer ica, and just the thing, I assure you, 1 will never desire again. I commenced operations at once, on the supposition that in this over grown city I would at least enlist one man. But Englishmen are not Americans. An Englishman will advance any amount on an absolute certainty, but not one penny where there is the slightest risk, if he got the whole world by it. I spent the first five months looking for this man, with unparalleled per severance and industry, living for less than three pence per day. I am convinced that few persons in London know so much of that incomprehensibly large city as myself. But, alas! my wardrobe was gone, to supply me with wretchedly baked corn bread, on which I lived entirely. I slept on straw, for which I paid a half pen ny per night. I became ragged and filthy, and could no longer go among men of busi ness. Up to this time, my spirits never sunk, nor did they then; but my sufferings were great —my limbs distorted with rheumatism, induced by cold and exposure —my face and head swelled to a most unnatural size, with cold and tooth-ache ; and those who slept in the same horrid den as myself were wretched street-beggars, the very cleanest of them lit erally alive with all manner of creeping things. But I was no beggar. I never beg ged, nor ever asked a favor of any man since I came to England. Ask George Bancroft, whom I called upon two or three times, if ev er I asked the slightest favor, or even presu med upon the letter you gave me to him. I did write him a note, asking him to come and witness the triumph of opening the Bridge at the Gardens, and delivered the note at his own house myself; although Prince Albert came, I never got even a reply to my note. If Ban croft had come, and been the man to have on ly recognised me, in my rags as I was, it would have saved me much subsequent suf fering. I will not believe that Bancroft ever saw my note, for his deportment to me was very kind. The succeeding three months, after the first five, 1 will not detail, up to the time I com menced to build the bridge. I will not har row up my feelings to write, nor pain your heart to read, the incidents of those ninety days. My head turned grey, and I must have died but for the Jew*, who did give me one shilling down for my acknowledgment of £lO, on demand. These wicked robberies have amounted to several hundred pounds, every penny of which I had to pay subse quently ; for, since my success at Stafford, not a man in England who can read, but knows my address. It cost me £lO to ob tain the shilling with which I paid my admit tance into the Royal Zoological Gardens, where I succeeded, after much mortification, in getting the ghost of a model made of the bridge. The model, although a bad one, as tonished every body. Every engineer of ce lebrity in London was called in to decide whether it was practicable to throw it across the Lake. Four or five of them, at the final decision, declared that the model before them was passing strange, but that it could not he carried to a much greater length than the length of the model. This was the point of life or death with me. I was standing amid men of the suppo sed greatest talents, as civil engineers, that the world could produce, and the point deci ded against me. This one time alone were iny energies ever aroused. I never talked be fore—l was haggard and faint for want of food—my spiritssunk in sorrow of my mourn ful prospects —clothes I had none—yet, stand ing over this model, did I battle with those men. Every word I uttered came from my inmost soul, and was big with truth—every argument carried conviction. The effect on these men was like magic—indeed, they must have been devils not to have believed under the circumstances. I succeeded. My agree ment with the proprietor was, that I should superintend the construction of the bridge without any pay whatever, but during th# time of the building I might sleep in the Gar dens ; and if the bridge should succeed, it should he called “ Remington’s Bridge.” I lodged in an old lion's cage, not strong enough for a lion, but, by putting some straw on the floor, held me very well, and, indeed, was a greater luxury than I had had for sev eral months. The carpenters that worked on the bridge sometimes gave me a part of their dinner. On this I lived, and was compara tively happy. It was a little novel, howev er, to see a man in rags dircctinggentlemanly looking head carpenters. The bridge tri umphed, and the cost was £B, and was the greatest hit ever made in London. The mo ney made by it is astonishingly great; thou sands and tens of thousands crossing it, pay ing toll, besides being the great attraction to the Gardens. Not a publication in London, but what has written largely upon it. Al though I have never received a penny, nor never will, for building the Bridge, I have no fault to find with Mr. Tyler, the proprietor, for he has done all fully that he promised to do—that is, to call it “ Remington’s Bridge.” The largest wood-cut, perhaps, ever made in the world is made of the Bridge. Every letter of my name is nearly as large as my self. The Bridge, to this day, is the promi nent curiosity of the Gardens. You can’t open a paper but you see Remington's Bridge. Soon after it was built, L have frequently seen hundreds of men looking at the large picture of the Bridge at the corners of the streets, and envying Remington, when I have stood unknown in the crowd, literally starv ing. However, the great credit of the Bridge gave me some success with a tailor. I got a suit of clothes and some shirts—a clean shirt. Any shirt was great, but a clean shirt—o,, God, what a luxury ! Thousands of cards were left for me at the Gardens, and men came to see the Bridge from all parts of the Kingdom. But with all my due-bills in the hands of the hell-born Jews, of course I had to slope, and come down to Stafford. I first built the mill, which is the most pop ular patent ever taken in England. The cof fee-pot, and many other small patents, take exceedingly well. The drainage of Tixall Meadows is the greatest triumph I have yet had in England. The carriage-bridge of Earl Talbot is a most majestic and wonderfully beautiful thing. Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Lords, &c., and their ladles, are coming to see it from all parts. I have now more or ders for Bridges from aristocracy than I can execute in ten years, if I would do them. Indeed, I have been so much among the aris tocracy of late, that, what with high living, being so sudden a transition from starving, I have been compelled to go through a course of medicine, and am just now convalescent. Os course, anything once built precludes the possibility of taking a patent in England, but its merits and value are beyond all lion. A permanent, beautiful and steady Bridge, may be thrown across a river half a mile wide, out of the reach of floods, and without anything touching the water, ata most incon siderable expense. The American patent is well secured at home, 1 know. I shall con tinue to build a few more Bridges of larger and larger spans, and one of them a rail-road Bridge, in order that I may perfect myself in 235