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EDITOR’S DEPARTMENT. -*f “T*” Tff'l ‘jz 1... ::’ -. W\S - N.'^'^-^'**° an ‘^ %,^“^ . . W ‘ t . ”“’ ’^ W ' A/VV, ' /S ‘ \THENS, SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1849. | To our Subscribers. This number closes the first volume of the South ern Literary Gazette, and, on the next Saturday, will be issued the first number of anew series—en larged and otherwise improved—under the title of Richards’ Weekly Gazette. At this point in our career, as a literary journalist, it is proper that we say certain things to those who have received the Gazette for a year past. We shall endeavor to be brief, and we shall certainly be candid. Contrary to the expectations of, perhaps, a ma jority of its subscribers, and we may add, with ex cusable pride, contrary to the predictions of croak ing friends and jealous foes, the Gazette has lived and flourished, so that it will begin its second year under brighter auspices, and with multiplied claims upon the public favor. This, we conceive, is to have accomplished much, for if it is “ le premier pas quicoutc” then assuredly our first step has produ ced tangible results, and is an augury of future suc cess. We know, as well as any one, the difficulties of our enterprize, and we are frank to eay that we have “ counted the cost.” Our dependence for suc cess is not upon Southern pride, or Southern liber ality, for these have been appealed to a hundred times in vain ; but it is upon our own indefatigable exertions, our fixed and irrefragible purpose, to suc ceed in the task we have begun. We shall thank fully avail ourself of every manifestation of Southern pride, and cheerfully acknowledge every exhibition of Southern liberality in behalf of our efforts; but observation and experience have taught us that these agencies are utterly inefficient to accomplish the design wc cherish. Let our friends, then, un derstand that we depend upon ourself, while we ear nestly invoke their cooperation, for the establish ment of a permanent weekly Journal of Letters in the South. And no‘r7 let us offer to those subscribers, who have proved themselves patrons, our grateful thanks | for their support, and our solicitations for a con- i tinuar.ee of it. Believe us, kind friends, when we i sav that ire cannot spare your sympathy or your j aid. If ire have failed, in aught, to come up to the j standard of your wishes, judge us kindly, and hear j yet with us, that we may have opportunity to “ re- : deem the time.” Os those subscribers who are yet in arrears, there J are doubtless many who have not intentionally neg- 1 looted us, and who will at once relieve our solicitude ; and their own consciences. To such ivc would glad ly say, in the language of Sliakspeare, ‘'You owe me no subscription!” To those who have intentionally withheld from us the miserable pittance —to them individually—of our subscription price, and who have no scruples of conscience in so doing, we can only suggest the beau-; tiful precept of the New Testament—that rule ap propriately called “ Golden.” “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” We need, absolutely need, every dollar that is due lo us, and whosoever fails to pay us, is not only un just to himself and to us, but to the ivhole South, *0 deeply concerned in theperpeluity of such an organ of improvement as the Gazette aims to be. Be true to yourselves, to us, and to the cause of Southern Literature, oh ! ye delinquents, and send us, with out delay, the amount of your indebtedness So will you reap the reward of the just. Kind friends, suffer one word more. Do not light ly abandon the Gazette, just as it is beginning to feel the breeze of popular favor swelling its sails, and, under its freshening impulse, to move easily and proudly on the sea of success. Do not, we pray you, for light cause, “ give up the ship. ” Editorial Correspondence. Charleston, April 16, IS 19. My dear - : My last let ter, bearing date on fy two days earlier than this, was redolent of the balmy breath of Spring—and told you of festive ■'•cones amid the fine old trees of Mount Pleasant. £ince then, however, not only has “a change pa-s ----* and o cr the spirit of my dream,” but also over the whole aspect of nature, and positively as I now “rite, the caves of the house are dripping with melt 's snow—whilea cold north-westerly wind is sweep ,ng through the City, and wailing out its ominous ®TiaS IB p Ha 3IfiSIR A[R Y 8 ASS TITS. intimations of blighted orchards, ruined crops, and despoiled gardens. Yesterday, snow fell for some hours, and every- j thing assumed the guise of mid-winter. This is one of the strangeet freaks of that usually staid person age, “ the clerk of the weather,” I have ever seen recorded —and “ the oldest inhabitant” told me this 1 morning, as he stepped into the sitting room of the “ Pavilion” to warm his toes at the grate fire, that there was nothing in his “memory” to equal it. I Wednesday, April is. , If I seem to have made an abrupt termination of! i the foregoing paragraph, you will please imagine that my fingers actually froze. Our city journals are filled with lamentations, from the interior and i from afar, about the devastations of Mr. John Frost., I who has recently appeared among us in a humor so | stern and irate, as to admonish me not to speak of him so familiarly as I used to do, when he was less , eccentric than at present. I must really pack up my trunk and be off to the country, to see for my self the traces of his destructive footsteps. Before I go, however, let me finish my glimpses of the City. I did not fail to visit “Temperance 11 all” on Monday night, to hear Dr. Robertson's lecture op the “ Artesian Well.” I must confess, however, that I was disappointed in the style of the lecturer. It lacked perspicuity —that quality of all others most important in popular scientific addresses.— There was, evidently, an effort on the speaker's part to be perspicuous, but whether from the comprehen siveness of his subject and the perpetual discursive ness which it prompted —or from some other cause— he did not appear to me to invest his theme with its natural interest. The whole address was devoted to the preliminary geological data involved in the theory of the Artesian Well. It was quite too brief to admit of its becoming a bore. j Not to mention the Charleston press would be un pardonable, since it is quite an important part of the | City. There are three daily papers, all of which are published also tri-weekly and weekly for the country. The Courier and Mercury are the oldest and largest, and are both excellent commercial Jour nals—well filled with intelligence from all parts of the world. The Evening News is a sprightly and growing paper, deservedly popular both in city and country. These represent the commercial interest; and besides them are The Southern Baptist, The Southern Christian Advocate, a Methodist Journal, and a paper devoted to the fellowship of Rome—the name of which we do not remember —as the expo nents of the religious interests of the City. The Southern Quarterly Review and the Charleston Medical Journal and Review, arc the only periodi ! cals with which lam acquainted. Both of these deserve to be better supported than they are, and will, I hope, flourish abundantly. A great change has been brought about in Charles- ■ ton by the agency of Steam Navigation ; and I can ! excuse the pride with which her citizens regard their various Atlantic steam-ships, as altogether reason able. I have seen all the fine vessels now on the dif ferent lines—the Northerner and Southerner on the New York, the Columbus and the Osprey on the Philadelphia, and the Isabel on the Havana routes. The regularity aud uniform quickness of all these packets (excepting only the Osprey, as yet almost untried,) have won the confidence of the traveling public. You will recollect to have admired the fine steeple of St. Michael’s, while sailing up the bay. Al though unequalled in proportions, it will be sur passed in height by that of St. Phillips, a neigh boring Church. In addition to a fine chime of bells, an ingenious musical clock is to be ci-ected in the i belfry of St. Phillips’. It is the workmanship of i Mr. Stein, a watch-maker of the city. The chimes 1 of St. Michael’s are among the pleasantest sounds of | this city, especially in the calm Sabbath mornings. In bidding adieu to the Palmetto city, I must not forget to acknowledge, once more, the hospitality and courtesy of its citizens, of which I have received so many grateful tokens. At the risk of seeming ungrateful to find fault at the very moment of part ing, I will venture to hint to the South Carolina Rail Road Company, that their Depot, (or station house, as it should be called,) in Charleston, is not among the architectural ornaments of the city ; and, !i n behalf of travelers, who are accustomed to the commodious and somewhat ornamental ‘‘station houses” of New Ei gland, and who might be, not ! unreasonably, surprised at that of Charleston, I would express the hope that the enterprxsmg Com ! pany will, ere long, erect one in a style correspon -, ; ing to the rank and character of its important Road -1 Woodlands, April 19. A dusty ride ‘upon the rail’ of seventy-two miles : brought me to Midway Station, where, among the „. ou p of expectant villagers, I recognised the hear- I tv face of my esteemed friend, Mr. Simms, whose , ■ guest I had promised to be for a brief turn y-four I L., Woodlands,” already described m the C.a- I ettc is the residence of Mr. Simms aud his excel . * V t VIPr in law Mr. Roach. It is nearly two miles fp.m the < Station,’ and the mansion stands. amid fine old oaks, every one a study for a pamter I I fihd my friends resting from a fierce combat, in , which they have been engaged, With a very subtle I and dangerous enemy, who threatened their dc * struetioH. Not very remote from the dwelling, tho woods are on fire, and during the past night, the spread of tho conflagration was terrific, so that the whole plantation force was compelled, in the graph ic language of the combatants, to “fight fire.” This is done by raking tho woods at such points as i will cut off the fire from fences or exposed places, | and by kindling opposing fires to arrest tho march of the destroying element. Between the frost, which haS cut off every plant in the cotton fields and blighted the corn, and tho fire, which now menaces the fences ami out-houses of the plantation, the chances of a plentiful harvest at Woodlands aro somewhat circumscribed, though I trust that the result will bo less disastrous than may be reasonably apprehended. I find Mr. Simms breathing somewhat freeer, af ter his recent arduous labors in putting the ‘Re view’ once more upon its feet, and strengthening it for its onward career. In his hands, if m any one’s, the work must prosper. lie is almost the only pro fessional author in the South, and his name carries weight in the literary circles. His industry is un paralleled, and no other man has achieved either half so much or half so well, in the Southern field of Letters. 1 shall bring you a copy of his new edition of “ Atalantis,” which he lies re-written, and 1 think vastly improved, lie has anew work nearly ready for the press. lain glad to find him in excellent health and spir its. The poet, Bryant, shared his hospitalities only a few evenings ago. To-morrow, I commence my journey homeward — and, if the mail is not very prompt, 1 may be with you as soon as this letter, for I shall not tarry long by the way. I must he back in season to say the last kind word to those of our patrons, with whom we must part —few in number, wc hope, however — upon the first of May. Till then, adieu ! Yours n-coming, B - <Dur ©osstp Column. This is the last time, dear readers, that wc shall greet you in the guise under which we have grown so familiar during a year past, and it may be, that with some of you we shall hold pleasant converse no more. The thought is a saddening one —for it is ever a source of regret to sunder pleasant ties, and forego wonted pleasures. To those of you who feel constrained to dispense, henceforward, with our cheerful “ gossip,” we would say, in parting, “May every good attend you and, if a sense of what you lose in bidding us adieu should compel you to return to your oil haunts, we will give you a cor ; dial welcome. To those of you, who enter with us upon another year, we offer our heartfelt thanks, and our cai-nest assurance that wo shall spare no pains and remit no exertion to deserve your con tinued and increasing regard. .. . The follow ing paragraph is from the ‘ Atlas :’ —“ Mr. Lanrnan, formerly connected with the New York Express, and more recently with the National Intelligencer, a gentleman of fine talents and excmpkiry charac ter, has been appointed by the Secretary of War Librarian of the War Department.” —We congratu late our fi*iend Lanman upon his good fortune in be ing appointed to a post so congenial to bis taste as that of Librarian—one which will afford him such ample intellectual gratification. Mr. Lanman lias met with no inconsiderable favor as an author, some of his books having been re-published in England in very elegant style. A volume, entitled “Legends and Traditions of the American Indians,” is now- in press in London. We wish him abundant success-. .... After reading J. Bayard Taylor's Rhymes of Travel the other day, and while their pleasant music still haunted us, we happened, very accident ally, to stumble upou the following —probably the first recognition, “by one in power,” of of the Printer Poet—in an old number of Willis’ | Now Mirror: j “ Our thoughts ave entirely occupied this morning j with two poets. It must be a pleasant book that we take for company the first hour after w-aking, and to-day, with his new volume of Poems open on our dressing-table, we dressed and read Lowell. — I Thence he went with us to a tete-a-tete breakfast, j (for we chanced, else, to be breakfasting alone,) and iwe w ere reading him with a cup of coffee in one hand and his book in the other, whon the letters ! came in from the Post—and one letter was fro'm a poet new-plumaged, of whom we had never heard, i and who had probably never heard of himself, (as a poet,) but still indubitably a poet—albeit “ an np -1 prentice-boy in a printing-office” in a small village in Pennsylvania. We read bis timid letter and two sweet pieces of poetry enclosed within it,tmarked the poetry “good” tor the Mirror, and then revert ed to our breakfast and book. * As to Bayard Taylor, we had a great deal to say to him —sympathy, encouragement, promise of watchfulness over his fame, etc., etc. But he will need no special kindne.-s yet awhile. Love is plenty for lxew-found poets. Many people love little chick ens vvlio arc insensible to the merits of cocks and hens, and we reserve our friendship till he is matur ed and envied. (Meantime* if he waiits our opinion that he is a poet,’and can be, with toil and study— immortal—he has it. Ills poetry is already worthy j of long pre'serving—apprent.ce-boy though he be.”) The Mirror from which wo copy is dated Jan. 20, .... \\ c ask the attention of the friends of edu cation to the calls for National and FHate Common School Conventions, which we publish in another column. Ihe movement poems to us a very impor tant one, and one that may ho made to result in in calculable good to one country. It appeals to n* sectional, party or denominational interests, but ti the highest feelings of patriotism and philanthropy We trust that Georgia, and the South generally, will not be slow to respond to this appeal. Measures should bo taken at once to call State Convention* <d the friends of Common Schools. . . . > The Kihnistc family have been giving.a stories of Conceits at the Town Ilall, which were attended by large and fashionable audiences. We have al ready expressed- our surprise and admiration at she singing and acting of Little Emma, who, though a child of only eight years, exhibits a cultivation and I address which would bo approved in an adult. She is certainly a gifted child, and wins ail hearts by her pretty accomplishments. The eldest sister, Lliza, play’s skilfully on the haip, and dances with unu-ual grace. Os the youngest of the trio, a child of only three years, it is enough to say that she gives prom ise of excellence not inferior to that of her sisters. The father is tho instructor of these children, and occasionally lends his aid in the comic department to display the powers of his daughters. Our best wishes attend the Kihniste family, go where they may ; and wo cordially commend thorn to’our read ers everywhere In immediate connection with tho preceding notice, we beg leave to ask tbos< young gentlemen , who made so much noise at one or more of the Kilmiste entertainment*, if they are really ignorant of the fact that they were guilty of the veriest rowdyism up on tho occasions alluded to, and that they not only annoyed the respectable I op tion of the audience by their unmannerly conduct, but conveyed to the minds of the i erformers an im pression Very discreditable to the character of our | population/? Had they been “blind minstrels,” they would certainly have been warranted incoming i to the conclusion that aprortion of the audience were savages, from the barbarous yells which ever and anon rent the air. it dot’3 seem passing strange to us, that young gentlomon, by profession, should be willing to prove themselves any thing but gentle men, by their practice. Virbum sapienti ‘ (Due JSooU (Ea&lc. The Child's First Book in Gec.grai-hv, designed as an Introduction to R. M. Smith’s New Com mon School Geography. Illustrated with eigh teen Maps and upwards of one hundred beautiful Engravings. Giigg, Elliott & Cos. If Geography can be taught by pictures, then L this little book the best juvenile text.book in Geog raphy we have ever met with, for there is not a page i of the book without either a map or an illustration. The really important matter, however, is the de i acriptive portion, which appears to us to be simple j and sufficiently comprehensive to make it acceptably 1 as a first book. —,—— 1. History ok Queen Elizabeth. Rv Jacob Ab- I bott. 2. History of Hannibal, the Cakth \oiman.— By Jacob Abbott. Each otic- vul. Now York: Harper & Brothers-. Wo have more than once noticed Mr. Abbott's Lives of Historic* for young people, in terms of uu -1 qualified approbation. The two volumes named above, ary the fourth aud fifth in oivler, and we think (bom fully equal to the preceding volumes.— 1 The “History of Queen Elizabeth’’ is so attractive, that we read it at one sitting, and wore much pleas ed, not only with the style of the book, but with the writer’s estimate of the character of England's greatest Queen —who was, nevertheless, a woman ii t whom shining qualities were greatly dimmed, if lxot cntirely eclipsed, by glaring and almost unpardona ble faults. The History of Hannibal is invented by Mr. Ab bott’s ready pen with an uncommon dcgi-co of inter est, when it is considered that the subject lived in ,so remote au age of the world. Wo read the whole book with sincere pleasure and thanks to the author for his graphic account of exploits which seem tc put to shamy the feats of modern heroes. Special Notice. We call the attention of our readers to the follow ing provisions of the Law, concerning newspaper and periodicals: 1. No person can stop a paper until all arrearage are paid. 2. If notice of intention to discontinue is not giv en upon receipt of the first number of a volume, or year, the publisher will not be bound to regard it To stop your paper, supposing that all arrearage, are paid, you have only to return the first number, in perfect order, to the publisher, or request your postmaster to order it to be discontinued. If you are inarrears, however, you must enclose, with the notice to discontinue, the amount due for the past year, viz : Three Dollars. Four Dollars will be received from ax;y sub scriber in payment for the first and second years of the Gazette, provided it be sex:; ; ittrfn the mouth of May, and post-paid. 401