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dSliinjism of jdcrn ‘Banks. “SYDNEY SMITH IAN A. From “ Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy,” by Rev. Sydney Smith, M. A., published by Harper & Brothers. SOCRATES. The morality of Socrates was reared upon the basis of rejig on. The prin ciples of virtuous conduct which are common to all mankind, are, according to this wise and good man, laws of God ; and the argument by which he supports this opinion is, that no man departs from these principles with im punity. “It is frequently possible,” says he, “ for men to screen themselves from the penalty of human laws, but no man can be unjust or ungrateful without suffering for his crime—hence 1 conclude that these laws must have proceeded from a more excellent legis lator than man.” Socrates taught that true felicity is not to be derived from external possessions, but from wisdom; which consists in the knowledge and practice of virtue; —that the cultiva tion of virtuous manners is necessarily attended with pleasure as well as profit; —that the honest man alone, is happy; —and that it is absurd to attempt to separate things which are in their na ture so united as virtue and interest. Socrates was, in truth, not very fond of subtile and refined speculations; and upon the intellectual part of our nature, little or nothing of his opinions is re corded. If we may infer any thing from the clearness and simplicity of his opinions on moral subjects, and from the bent which his genius had received for the useful and the practical, he would certainly have laid a strong foun dation for rational metaphysics. The slight sketch J have given of his moral doctrines contains nothing very new or very brilliant, but comprehends those moral doctrines which every person of education has been accustomed to hear from his childhood ; —but two thou sand years ago they were great dis coveries, —two thousand years since, common sense was not invented. If Orpheus, or Linus, or any of those me lodious moralists, sung, in bad verses, such advice as a grand-mamina would now give to a child of six years old, he was thought to be inspired by the gods, and statues and altars were erected to his memory. In Hesiod there is a very grave exhortation to mankind to wash their faces : and I have discover ed a very strong analogy between the precepts of Pythagoras and Mrs. Trim mer; —both think that a son ought to obey his father, and both are clear that a good man is better than a bad one. Therefore, to measure aright this extra ordinary man, we must remember the period at which he lived ; that he was the first who called the attention of mankind from the pernicious subtilties which engaged and perplexed their wan dering understandings to the practical rules of life ; —he was the great father and inventor of common sense, as Ceres was of the plow, and Bacchus of intox ication. First he taught his cotempo raries that they did not know what they pretended to know; then he showed them that they knewtothing ; then he told them what they ought to know.— Lastly, to sum up the praise of Socra tes, remember that two thousand years •1 m \ \r L! 1 a mnv •/* ~ -rl* J— sects which crawled beneath their feet; —two thousand years *go, with the bowl of poison in his hand, Socrates said, “1 am persuaded that my death, which is now ju t coming, will conduct me into the presence of the gods, who •are the most righteous governors, and into the society of just and good men; and 1 derive confidence from the hope that something of man remains after death, and that the condition of good men will then be much better than that ot ‘he bad.” Soon after this he cover ed himself up with his cloak and ex pired. PLATO. Ot all the disciples of Socrates, Pla to, though he calls himself the least, was certainly the most celebrated. As long as philosophy continued to be studied among the Greeks and Romans, his doctrines were taught, and his name revered. Even to the present dav his wi itings give a tinge to the language and speculations of philosophy and theology. Os the Majestic beauty of Plato s style, it is almost impossible to convey an adequate idea. lie keeps the understanding up to a high pitch of enthusiasm longer than any existing writer ; and, in reading Plato, zeal and animation seem rather to be the regu lai feelings than the casual efferves cence of the mind, fie appears almost disdaining the mutability and imper fection of the earth on which he treads, to be drawing fire from heaven, and to be seeking among the gods above, for the permanent, the beautiful, and the grand ! In contrasting the vigor and the magnitude of his conceptions with the extravagance of his philosophical tenets, it is almost impossible to avoid wishing that he had confined himself to the practice of eloquence ; and, in this way giving range and expansion to the mind which was struggling within him, had become one of those famous orators who “ Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook th’ arsenal, and fulmiri’d over Greece To Macedon and Aitaxerxes’ throne.” After having said so much of his language, 1 am afraid I must proceed to his. philosophy ; observing always, that, in stating it, I do not always pre tend to understand it, and do not even en o a 8 e 1° defend it. In comparing the very marks of sobriety and discretion with the splendour of his genius, 1 have often exe!aimed as Prince Henry did about 1 alstaff’s bill, —“Oh, monstrous! but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack !” His notion was, that the principles out of which the world was composed were three in number, —the subject matter ol things, their specific essences, and the sensible objects themselves.— Ihese last, he conceived to have no probable or durable existence, but to be always in a state of fluctuation : ■ )ut then there were certain everlasting patterns and copies, from which every t eng had been made, and which he de nominated their specific essences. For instance, the individual rose which I n. 1 .? n> * ns t a nt, or a particular U u JP un ‘ v 'bich I cast my eye, are ob existon sense i w htch have no durable of them^hT* 1 indiv V iua l idea I have lv the s i * mo ' aea t is not numerical moment Jf aS ,h ? “Wfh I had the I Zsl. “ 1 J ", s, os the , ivo '’ hi, h l pass now is not the same river which 1 passed half an before, because the in dividual water in which I trod has •rfided away : therefore these appear ances of the rose, and the pony, are of very little importance; but there is somewhere or other an eternal pony, and an eternal rose, after the pattern of which one and the other have been created. The same with actions as with things. If Plalo had seen one. per son make a bow to another, he would have said that the particular bow was a mere visible species; but there was an unchanging bow which had existed from all eternity, and which was the model and archetype and specific es sence of all other bows. But, says Plato, all things in this world are indi viduals. We see this man, and that man, and the other man; but a man —the general notion of a man —we do not, and can not gain from our senses : therefore we have existed in some pre vious state, where we have gained these notions of universal natures. In child hood, where human creatures are go verned by the feelings of the body, these general ideas are forgotten : but in proportion as reason assumes the reins of empire, we call to mind these eternal exemplars , of which our under standing had before taken notice in a previous state of existence. ARISTOTLE. Whoever is fond of the biographical art, as a repositoiy of the actions and the fortunes of great men, may enjoy an agreeable specimen of its certainty in the life of Aristotle. Some w riters say he was a Jew; others, that he got all his information from a Jew, that he kept an apothecary’s shop, and was an atheist; others say, on the contrary, that he did not keep an apothecary’s shop, and that he was a Trinitarian.— Some say he respected the religion of his country; others that he offered sacrifices to his wife, and made hymns in favour of his father-in-law. Some are of opinion he was poisoned by the priests ; others are clear that he died of vexation, because he could not dis cover the causes of the ebb and flow in the Euripus. We now care or know so little about Aristotle, that Mr. Field ing, in one of his novels, saysj “ Aris totle is not such a fool as many people believe, who never read a syllable of his works.’ ****** Aristotle held, that all sensible ob jects are made up of two principles, both of which he calls equally sub stances, —the matter, and the specific essence. He was not obliged to hold, like Plato, that those principles existed prior in order of time to the objects which they afterward composed. They w’ere prior, he said, in nature, but not in time (according to a distinction which was of use to him upon many other occasions). He distinguished also be tween actual and potential existence : by the first, understanding what is com monly meant by existence, or reality ; by the second, the bare possibility of existence. Neither the material es sence of body could, according to him, exist actually without being determined by some specific essence to some par ticular class of being, nor any specific essence without being embodied in some portion of matter. Each of these two prineinlp® however, could exist matter existed potentially which, being endow'ed with a particular form, could be brought into actual existence ; and that form existed potentially which, by being embodied in a particular portion of matter, could in the same manner be called forth into the class of com plete realities. What difference there is between the potential existence of Aristotle, and the separate essences of Plato, and what foundation there is in reality either for the one or the other, 1 confess myself wholly at a loss to comprehend. Virtue, according to this philosopher, consists in the habit of mediocrity ac cording to right reason. Every par ticular virtue, according to him, lies in a medium between two opposite vices; of which the one offends from being too much, the other from being too little affected by a particular species of ob jects. ZENO. Zeno was born at Cyprus, and was the son of a merchant, who, having fre quent occasion in his mercantile capaci ty to visit Athens, bought for his son several of the writings of the most em inent Soeratic philosophers. These he read with great avidity, and from their perusal laid the foundation of his philo sophical fame. In the course of his mercantile pursuits he freighted a ship for Athens, with a very valuable cargo of Phoenician purple, which he com pletely lost by shipwreck on the coast, near the Piraeus. Avery acute man, who found himself in a state of sudden and complete poverty at Athens, would naturally enough think of turning philo sopher, both as by its doctrines it in spired him with some consolation for the loss of his Phoenician purple, and by its profits afforded him some chance of subsistence without it. After at tending various masters of the Cynic school, which was then in high reputa tion. he put forth his own system of opinions upon which was formed the Stoic school, one of the most consider able in ancient Greece. The opinions of the Stoics upon the intellectual part of our nature, were either the same as, or very nearly al lied to, those of Plato and Aristotle ; though they were often disguised in very different language. EPICURUS. Epicurus was the son of a school master and a woman who gained her livelihood by curing diseases by magic, driving away ghosts, and performing other services equally marvelous.— The circumstance which first turned his attention to philosophy is said to have been, that, on reading the works of Hesiod, he consulted his master upon the meaning of the word chaos. The pedagogue, unable to solve the point, instead of scourging him for asking too difficult a question, as is common! the custom, referred him to the philosophers for an explanation. To the philosopers, as soon as an opportunity offered, he had recourse for more information than he could gain from schoolmasters, and acquired all he could glean from Pam philus a Platonist, Nausiphanes a Py thagorean, and Pyrrho the Skeptic.— He was at Athens also a student, while Xenocrates, taught in the Academy, and Theophrastus in the Lyceum.— When Cicero therefore calls him a self taught philosopher, we are not to un derstand by that expression that he w as SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE. never instructed in the tenets of other masters, but that his system of philo sophy was the result of his own reflec tions, after comparing the doctrines of other sects. In the thirty-second year of his age, he opened a school at Myti lene. Not satisfied, however, with the narrow sphere of philosophical fame which this obscure situation afforded him, he repaired to Athens, purchased a pleasant garden w’here he took up his residence and taught his philosophy; — and hence his disciples w-ere called the philosophers of the garden. This philosopher considered the pleasures and pains of the body to be the sole objects of desire and aversion. (Original For the Southern Literary Gazette. THE WIFE * BY GEORGE W. S. NICHOLSON. There are heroes in the nation, Fearless men and heroines, Deeds of bravery round them circling, Such as glory’s chiftain wins, Who have never heard their praises From the trumpet sound of fame— Who have lived, and died forgotten, Save in song—poetic flame. Shake the folds of dark oblivion, Shake the mantle, clear each brow; Let them live in mem’ry’s volume, Share the page of heroes now. Tho’ they never wore the scabbard, Never bathed the sword in light. Yet the laurels shall be planted In the temples with delight. ’Twas a gloomy day in Charleston, Anxious faces gathered round ; And from some the tears were dropping From their eyelids to the ground ; Beating hearts and swelling bosoms, Such as warriors only know, Who have left their homes deserted. To exterminate the foe. All the day the guns were booming, Thundering o’er the dark blue stream ; And the cannons open’d on us, With their deadly, flashing gleam. Still the horrid hail of battle Thickly rattled o’er the wave; • And the waters lash’d in fury For the martyr’d, for the brave Still the soldiers lit their matches With a deep, despairing glow ; And they wheeled their burning cannons To the ramparts of the foe ; And they hurl’d the fiery missiles, Claiming vengeance for each life— Many a warrior brush’d his forehead As he thought of home and wife. All the day these sounds were carried To a warrior’s humble cot; And the matron heard the rattling And the whistling of the shot. Oh! the anguish of those moments. As she hearken’d to the strife ; For she heard not from her husband. Whether still she was a wife! She could bear the doubts no longer; Better death than thus to live, While her thoughts were all embittered For the comfort she could give. With her child, this sorrowing mother Loosed her slender, open bark ; Down tVu> rivor rlror>!H.iibue-JiyiJVlv. Down that lonely, gloomy river, Down with muffled oar3 they float; And the random shots strike nearer. Sprinkling spray above the boat; And she strains her eyes with gazing Through the misty veil of night, While the flying bombs burst round her, Ghastly visions meet her sight. Nearer, nearer sounds the cannon, All the horrors of the war Seem to rush upon her bosom With a never-healing scar. She in fancy sees her husband # Borne along ’midst glory’s train ; And the death-shot bares his bosom, And his life-blood dyes the plain. Darkly as the vale of shadows, Or the stygian river, Death, With its horrid, tomb-like clamor, With its heavy, poisonous breath, Is the passage of the pilgrims Through the vale of deadly strife, Where the groanings, where the moanings Tell the ebbing sea of life. Hark! a voice is close behind her: ’Tis the foemen on the wave; In an instant all is silent, Silent as the midnight grave; They have passed her, and in safety She has freed her muffled oar; And has found her patriot husband. There to rest for evermore. ‘Suggested by an episode in a review of *• Ellet’s Wo men ot the Revolution,” in the Southern Quarterly He view tor July. €lip Brniruirr. For the Southern Literary Gazette. IN MEMORIAM.* The simple but touching title of the volume before us reveals the character of its contents not less certainly and far more eloquently than multiplied w r ords could have done. In Memoriam!— Never laid Genius a more beautiful of fering upon the shrine of Friendship, than that which Tennyson has herein consecrated to the memory of his bosom friend, Arthur llallam, who died in Vienna in the year 1833. Besides the prelude, there are one hundred and twenty-nine poems, or sections of one great poem, most of them very brief, all heavy with the perfume of the mould, and yet so lu minous with the fire of a true poetic inspiration, that, like the diamond in the dark, they flash and sparkle with a radiance only the purer for the gloom in which they w ere begotten ! Were Tennyson anything less than a true poet, the sad theme would have inevitably betrayed him into mono tony, and we should have felt the weight of the pall, of which we are now insensible, by reason of the exqui site harmonies with which the long march to the grave is relieved. We linger with a strange delight in the shadows of the cypress, because they are so subtly interfused with the rays of affection, that they glow like the violet clouds of the sunset. We could willingly give our readers whole pages of his exquisite verses, each of which seems to us like a tear-drop,crystalized by the cunning alchemy of Genius into a pearl of song, but we are compelled to content ourselves with quoting a very few, gathered almost at random from the casket. The poet thus excuses the utterance of his sorrow ; “ I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal, the soul within. But for the unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies : The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold ; But that large griefs which these infold Is given in outline and no more.” lie replies to the vain condolence of a friend in the following gentle and touching rebuke: “ One writes that ‘ Other friends remain,’ That ‘ Loss is common to the race;’ And common is the common-place And vacant chaff will meant for grain. That loss is common would not make My own life better, rather more ; Too common ! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break.” The poet finds a drop of consolation in the fact that the body of bis lost friend found an English grave : “ ’Tis well, ’tis something, we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violets of his native land. ’Tis little ; but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest Among familiar names to rest, And in the places of his youth.” He thus beautifully intimates the excellencies of his friend : “ I leave thy virtues unexpressed In verse that brings myself relief, And by the measure of my grief I leave thy greatness to be guessed. What practice howsoe’er expert In fitting aptest words to things— Or voice, the richest-toned that sings, Hath power to give thee as thou weit! I care not in these fading days To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze ot song To stir a little dust of praise.” The bereaved poet thus states his i quarrel with Death, not that he had i wrought changes on the form and lace of his companion, since these are but parts of the “Eternal process” of the spirit, nor because he bore virtue from ! earth to bloom “ to profit other where.” “ For this alone on Death 1 wreak The wrath that garners in my heart; He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak.” The poet’s friend was betrothed to the poet’s sister, and from many beau tiful allusions to this relationship, we select the following: “ O, somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, That sittest ranging golden hair ; Poor child, that waitest for thy love .’ For now her father’s chimney glows In expectation of a guest, And thinking “ this will please him best,” She takes a ribbon or a rose; i For he will see them on to-night And with the thought her colour burns ; And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right; And even when she turned, the curse Had fallen and her future lord, Was drowned in passing through the ford Or killed in falling from his horse. O, what to her shall be the end ? And what to me remains of good ? To her, perpetual maidenhood, And unto me, no second friend.” We cannot help adding to the already free quotations we have made, the fol lowing little poem, in its completeness: “ Could I have said whiie he was here, * My love shall now no further range, There cannot come a mellower change, For now is love mature in ear.’ Love, then had hope of richer store ; What end is here to my complaint ? His haunting whisper makes me faint, ‘ More years had made me love thee more.’ But Death returns an answer sweet: ‘ My sudden frost was sudden gain, And gave all ripeness to the grain, It might have drawn from after heat.’” We have draw n almost entirely from the poems which are most personal in their complexion, and deem it proper to remark that many of them have a wider scope and a larger comprehen siveness, though always fairly deduci ble from the one great theme. Some times the poet suffers his perturbed spirit to wander in the regions of per plexity and doubt, and he thus excuses his plaints: “ If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, Were to be taken such as closed Grave doubts and answers here proposed Then these were such as men might scorn. Her care is not to part and prove, She takes, when harsher moods remit, What slender shade of doubt may flit, And makes it vassal unto love.” Sometimes he yields to the sweet influences of Nature, and breathes a song in accordance with her moods, when, as he tells us, “ in my breast Spring wakens too ; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest.” Again he indulges in sweet memo ries of the haunts where he and his friend w ere wont to ramble, and of the converse they were wont to hold. He commemorates the Christmas gather ing thus: “ Then echo-like our voices rang; We sung, though every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year; impetuously we sang.” But we have far outstripped the lim its proposed to ourselves for this no tice. We have approached the book with feelings too reverent and tender to allow a thought of criticism to ob trude itself. To others we gladly re sign the task, if any there be who will assume it, to regard the poetry of this book by the rigid laws of verse. To us it is poetry —the unmistakable lan guage of the heart—fraught moreover with the soul-life of Genius, and as such we accord it our unstinted measure of admiration. •Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850. (Original fesaqs. For the Southern Literary Gazette. EG EHI A: Or, Voices from the Woods and Wayside. NEW SERIES. CXVII. Government Tinkers. The world is full of tinkers in government, as if the manufacture of laws *nd institutions were a less difficult matter, requiring less genius and thought than the inven tion of machinery. Philosophers—so called —in their closets ; and politicians along the highways, are continually concocting; and yet there is no success —no stability! But here lies the grand point of difficulty. The statesman who expects stability in his forms of go vernment, while the people themselves are daily advancing to new conquests in mind, morals, and machinery, might as well be an antedeluvian. He cer tainly is no statesman for his day.— Hence the absurdity, which we daily witness, of self-complacent politicians, who are continually insisting upon their superior pretensions to govern the present, because of their superior fa miliarity with the past. The true go vernor for the present is one who has gone beyond it in its ow n tendencies. The essential properties of a govern ment are those which accord with the habits, the necessities and the condi tions of the people —which refer not to the stock from which they sprung, nor to the labours which they have already achieved, but to those, which, under the stimulating presence of their pecu liar genius, they are still capable of achieving. It is because of the sta tionary character of their governments that nations decline and finally perish. It is a law of nature that we should re trograde the moment we cease to go forward. We should always beware | of that fatal delusion which makes us fancy we are perfect. There is no pro gress, no improvement after that!— There is, or should be, a daily revolu tion coiii<r on in all human affairs, or the wheels of a nation become choked, and the body-politic stagnates; at the same time, caution must be taken that, itt avoiding one, we do not fall into the other extreme. There is such a thing as firing one’s vehicle by the too rapid motion of its wheels. cvviri Imputation of Motives. He who in any affair assumes an unworthy motive for the action of his neighbour, would probably, under like conditions, have felt the same motive as the only im pelling cause for his own performance. It is only when called upon to accord credit to our neighbours that we are apt to deny them the benefit of our own standards. CXIX. Blank Verse. It is worthy of re mark, that very few of the poets most distinguished by their smoothness, have ever written in blank verse. Pope, Goldsmith, Moore, are striking exam ples. Campbell is another, with a slight exception. lie has written two small poems without rhyme,—the ‘Lines on the View from St. Leon ard’s,’ and the apostrophe to ‘The Dead Eagle at Oran” —but these are very inferior, and prove his difficult execu tion in the unwonted department.— Blank verse, more than any other spe cies of poetry, as it discards wholly the adventitious aid of the rhyme, re quires the nicest perfection of ear.— Every line must be perfect in itself, or a painful discord runs through the whole sentence, and frequently affects the virtue of an entire paragraph. It is accordingly easier to write in any measure than in blank verse. Rhyme, itself, is rather a help than an obstacle, since the regularly recurring termina tion operates as a sort of rudder, which guides the ear to the euphonious con clusion. The master of blank verse can manage any sort of verse. cxx. Prayer. We say many things to ourselves that we do not ourselves be lieve. Who, for example, praying daily that his life may be still farther spared, ever seriously apprehends that he may die before the dawn? The very fre quency with which a regular form of prayer is repeated, tends measurably to diminish the just impression upon our minds. We pray, unfortunately, rather from habit than from will or thought, w hile the very idea of prayer presupposes a present and earnest in terest in the act which we perform.— We obey a law and custom rather than declare a wish or a fear. No doubt this is evil, yet it is not altogether evil. Better we should pray habitually than curse habitually. There is a farther advantage in the practice. The habitual utterance of a sentiment, in our own ears only, makes it a law unto our selves. What the memory adopts, is apt to become a principle. This we habitually recognize whenever the exi gency comes home to us. Sometimes, even, it may occur to us w hile we pray, that we have invited God himself to an audience. CXXI. Home. The native place is not where the man is born, but where he takes root and flourishes. Thousands in every land are compelled by the foreign influences of home to go abroad seeking a native place among strangers. CXXII. Sympathy. The sympathy which professes to love the master, will never forget to feed his dog. exxiii. Presumption. We may forgive ig norance, but not presumption. He who has nothing to say should say nothing. CXXIV. Help Hurtful. Many sink because ! of the number who strive to save them. CXXV. Deliberation. Deliberation is a vir ture, but not after the battle is begun. dMtr i'rttcrs. Correspondence of the Southern Literary Gazette. NEW YORK, Aug. 31, 1850. The last scene in the drama of hor rors, which will long be remembered as the Boston tragedy, has called forth as intense and breathless an excitement among all classes of our population, as if it had taken place in our own city. For several days, it has been the uni versal ..theme of conversation. Many have been unwilling to believe that the doomed man would meet his fate on the scaffold, supposing that he would anticipate the penalty of the law by suicide. But now all is over, every one is eager to obtain the slighest frag ment of information with regard to the last hours of the wretched criminal. I do not find that he made any farther disclosures, although it is said that he wrote several letters, within a short time of his suffering, which it is thought may contain additional revelations. It seems to be the general opinion, both here and in Boston, that the murder nas premeditated. The confession of Prof. Webster to that effect would hardly strengthen the convictions of many, that he was impelled to the deed by a deliberate purpose. Especi ally is this the case with those who knew the peculiarities of Dr. Parkman. It is greatly to be wished that Webster had possessed the stamina which would have enabled him to make a psycholo gical explanation of the mysterious transaction. It’ he could have left an honest record of his whole relation with the murdered victi n—describing the gradual formation of the iron net work of pecuniary dependence on his i unrelenting creditor —the emotions of I shame, desperation and agony which : were thus produced —the first coneep ! tion of the fell design to relieve him ! self of an intolerable burden by vio lence —the ripening of the thought into the deed—and the mental reaction wmcn followed the accomplishment of his delirious plan —it would have been a chapter on the dark side of the history of human nature, not surpassed in in terest by the most thrilling creations of the master painters of passion.— But Webster was not the man to do this. Though he will he signalized as the author of one of the most extraor dinary crimes which have ever stained the annals of civilization, it had none of the elements of the sublime which are sometimes involved in such ap palling deeds. His character was es sentially frivolous and common-place. With great susceptibility to external impressions, he had no depth of pas sion. You could not see him without feeling that he was one of the most superficial of persons. There was an air of boyish excitement in his man ners, proceeding, not from geniality of temperament, but from the meagerness and poverty of his nature. It seemed impossible that any thing should take a strong hold of his shallow and mer curiel intellect. This was explified by his whole career since the reception of his sentence. He has maintained an unnatural coolness, which, with a less frivolous nature, would have been im possible. During all his imprisonment he has taken his usual meals with a good appetite. His sleep has scarcely been disturbed, even on the night be fore his death. He has lost no flesh through his long confinement, and on the morning of his execution his face was as full, and for the most part, as bright as it ever had been in life. 1 perceive that he went through all the forms of religion prescribed by his ju dicious spiritual advisers, with exem plary decency, but there was no sign of the agony of penitence or the bliss of forgiveness. Surely such little emo tion, under such circumstances, betrays a temperament which is rarely exhibit ed among all the strange varities of life. But 1 will not dwell on this revolt ing subject, of w hich you w ill have the full details in the daily papers, before you receive my letter. I should not now have touched on it so much at length, but that for the moment it al most drives out all other thoughts.— Besides, the week has been one unusu ally barren of interest of all topics properly included in the sphere of your journal. The arrival of Jenny Lind does not | become any less an object of talk and speculation, now that she may be ex pected within twenty-four hours. The Atlantic is confidently looked for to morrow, bearing the chan ting-angel to our shores. Barnum has made • his preparations for her reception on an extensive scale. The papers speak in the most enthusiastic terms of her parting concert at Liverpool. Among her auditors w r as the celebrated Indian Chief, Copway, (Kah-ge-ga-geh-bowh,) dressed in the complete costume of his tribe, and of course exciting no small attention as a genuine lion, alive and fresh from the forest. He was melted into transcendental raptures by the sweet song of Jenny, and describes his experience in language of the most un sophisticated quaintness and naivite. I am told by one of the members of the long-suffering Committee on the prize-songs for Jenny’s welcome, that they are pouring in at the rate of fifty or sixty a day, from our native bards, in all directions. Barnum certainly has a marvellous gift in scaring up all sorts of curiosities, from the Ethiopean who is now changing his skin at the Ame rican Museum, to the conceited poet taster who expects to make his rhymes jingle in tune with the two hundred dollars, the hope of which, in this case, has proved such an efficacious guano to so many fermenting brains. I understand that some of our wits have already a volume of pseudo “Re jected Addresses” in the process of in cubation. The chance of a good joke is too tempting to be resisted, and 1 dare say, a clever duodecimo may be the result. I also learn that a couple of eminent dentists in this city are attempting to get possession of the actual “ Rejected Addresses,” and to publish them, with or without the names of the authors, as they shall succeed in gaining their consent to the plan. Their success in drawing teeth may be a pledge that they will be able to draw the reluctant assent of the aspirants for poetical fame, to have their ill-fated offspring in this way embalmed for immortality. Charlotte Cushman has returned, and performed her favourite character of Meg Merrilies last night at Nibio’s. | She was greeted with an enthusiastic welcome by a crowded house. The stony impassiveness of Meg, broken only by resistless bursts of passion, is well suited to Miss Cushman s peculiar talents, but I must own I prefer her in some of her more human representa tions. She appears in the. “Stranger,” as Mrs. Haller, to-niglu. A dramatic version of George Sand’s Consuelo has been brought out at Bur ton’s, and proved a dead failure. It was altogether too sentimental an affair for Burton’s laughter-loving audience. Mr. G. P. R. James is now in town, having recovered from a serious attack of illness, induced by change of climate, lie now looks bluff and hearty, and in fine spirits. lie tells me he means to deliver a course of lectures in our principal cities, on the History of Civil ization, including a view of the pro gress of literature. You will see him • ireftiic me close or me winter. T. Ink that Resists the Action of Acids and Alkalies. —Shell Lac, 2oz; borax 1 oz., distilled or rain water 18 oz.: boil the whole in a closely cover i ed tin vessel, stirring it occasionally with a glass rod or a small stick, until the mixture has become homogeneous; filter, when cold, through a single sheet of blotting paper ; mix the filtered so lution, which will be about nineteen fluid ounces, with one ounce of muci lage of gum arabie, prepared by dis solving 1 oz. of water, and add pul verized indigo and lamp-black, ad libi tum. Boil the whole again in a cover ed vessel, and stir the fluid well to ef fect the complete solution and admix ture of the gum arabie ; stir it occa sionally while it is cooling ; and after it has remained undisturbed for two or three hours, that the excess of indigo and lamp-black may subside, bottle it for use. Ihe above ink, for documen tary purposes, is invaluable, being, un der all ordinary circumstances, inoes tructible: it is also particularly well adapted for the use of the laboratory. Five drops of kreosote added to a pint of ordinary ink will effectually prevent its becoming mouldy. Is the Earth full of Seeds ? The fact that earth or soils brought up from different depths of the earth have, when exposed to the sun or air, become covered with vegetation, has led many to suppose that the whole earth, from centre to circumference, is full of seeds. This cannot be the case ; but there are, nevertheless remarkable instances of the fact above named. We once threw up a lot of coarse gravel, late in the fall, from a depth of nearly ten feet, and early the next spring it was covered with pig weeds, which grew very luxuriantly. The greatest depth we ever heard of seeds being buried, we find in a recent exchange paper.— In boring for water lately at Kingston upon the Thames, some earth was brought up from the depth of three hundred and sixty feet. This earth was carefully covered w ith a handglass, to prevent the possibility of any other seeds being deposited upon it; yet, in a short time, plants vegetated from it. [English Paper. Mode of Calculating River Ye locity.— The mean velocity of water in a cross-section is equal to 96.3 times the sqaare root of the area of the cross section, multiplied by the fall and divid ed by the perimenter multiplied by the length. For example: If the breadth of the river Mississippi be 2000 feet, the mean depth 80 feet, or the area of the cross-section 1(50,000 square, the peri menter 21(50 feet, and the fall 12 feet in the length of 600,000 feet, the mean velocity will be 3,707 feet per second, and the quantity of water discharged 533,120 cubic feet per second. Again : If the breadth be only 1600 feet the mean depth 100 feet, which will give the same area of cross-section, 160,000 square feet, the perimenter 1800 feet, and the fall 12 feet in the length of 600,000 feet, the mean velocity will be 4,060 feet per second. —De Bow's Review. A woman, charged with being drunk and disorderly, denied the latter of fence, urging that “she was too drunk to be disorderly.” €j)t lomlt Slltor. THE PRAYER~OF _ THE = BET^f H i A lady in the St. Louts Union. 0T ‘ signature of Inez, portrays her thought’ following most beautiful verses, oiuh ■ her marriuge: Father, I come before Thy throne With low and bended knee, ’ To thank Thee, with a grateful ton* For all Thy love tome. ‘ Forgive me, if my heart this hour I give not all to Thee, For deep affection’s mighty power Divides it now with Thee. Thou kno west, Father, every thought That wakes within my breast, And how this heart has vainly sought To keep its love suppress’d. Yet when the idol, worshipped one. Sits fondly by my side, And breathes the vows 1 cannot shun To me. his destined bride Forgive me, if the loving kiss, He leaves upon my throbbing brow Is thought of in an hour like this, And thrills me even now. He’s chosen me to be his love And comforter through life ; Enable me, oh God, to prove A loving, faithful wife. He knows not, Father, all the deep Affections I control— The thousand loving thoughts that sw Resistless o’er my soul. He knows not each deep fount of low That gushes warm and free ; Nor can he ever, ever prove My warm idolatry. Then, guard him, Father—round hisw j The choicest blessings cast, And render each successive day Still happier than the last. And, Father, grant us so to live, That when this life is o’er, Within the happy home you give We’ll meet to part no more. Lesson for Sunday, September 8. THE CHRISTIAN A SOJOURNEi “ Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.”-) In the verse from which these wn are selected, the Almighty is repress ed under a two-fold character, viz t. of a Father and a Judge; and the lationship in which we thus stand him is urged as an argument for. passing the time of our sojourning ht :in fear. Notice The nature of the Christian’s us “ The time of your sojourning hen What a dreadful infatuation has mm man, that he should look upon jj world as his home and his portion! 1 is as if the child on his way to his £ ther’s house should sit down, and, for going the pleasure of the domesticroa please and divert himself with t! fiowers that grow by the wayside, t the night set in, and he lost all tia of the road. It is as if a rich heir, j ing to take possession of his e>vj ; were to stop and spend his time in and ing little children in playing with til and trifles. Three things suggest the! ; selves to the mind with regard t J I believer, sojourning here. View him in his past conditio , Whence has the pilgrim come? Frf the city of Destruction. Bun van. i: j inimitable allegory speak-; l.eautii j on this subject. Contemplate him in his present m ; What is he 1 A sojourner. How i there are who regard this world proper light! It is only a link in great chain of our existence, —an | vista which opens to the wide exp | of otornity ; and an immoderate atfl ment to it deplumes the pinion which alone the soul can soar, and bin it to that which is sfcnsua! and gi ling. The time of our sojourning in i is one of trial, danger, and diffii Travellers must put up with mail conveniences, and the heavenly pilfi must lay hisaccount with manva-i Regard him in his future destim Whither is he going? He is be. for home. How week and imptri are our highest conceptions of the si* ries of the heavenly world! The •ruination of the Christian’s cours-du be associated with all that is magni cent and sublime. Let me net be satisfied till 1 can say, lookingup my heavenly Father, “I am a strain and a sojourner with thee.’’ Christianity not of Human Ohio! To me, when I look to this origj taking its point of departure from! earliest period in the history of i race; when I see it comprising all ti natural religiou teaches, and intr ing anew system in entire liarmd with it, but which could not have M deduced from it; when I see it oJ mending itself to the conscience j man, containing a perfect code of A ral wants, and embosoming the ol true principles of economical and [<| tical science; when I see in it the possible system of excitement and! straint for all the faculties; when ll how simple it is in its principles, | yet in how many thousand way* mingles in with human affairs. I modifies them for good, so that it I adapted to become universal; wb I see it giving an account of the tt I nation of all things, worthy °f <T I and consistent with reason; to ■ when I look at all these things, it l ! more seems possible that the sy I of Christianity should have been o'l nated and sustained by man than fl does that the ocean should have ‘1 made by him.— Pres. Hopkins. Loving the Creature and xt> T Creator. —Strange and sad are tb natural, irrational exercises of hi 1 love. Men love to excess the thin- - earth, even when they are vet urH j and only hoped for; and yet love thamselves, their souls, or their 11 They love things w ithout them things that perish in the using; anC’ love not w hat is within them, an | who is over all, and blessed t'” - ’ \ Men value human friendship “'ben | directed to their persons, and not j purses, to their characters, a® l : to their condition; and yet the} p to love God, while they take u only in his gifts, and are unmim ,u the glorious Giver. Illustrious Exemplars.—’h 11 ' 1 ’ in humble and laborious occupy has been honoured and exaltci world’s greatest benefactors: I “Inearly life David kept ,'bj ther's sheep: his life was a 1,1 ,1 dustry; and though foolish 1111,1 1 it degrading to perform 1 bour, yet, in the eyes ot “ ls . dustry is truly honourable, useful are the happiest. A bour is a man’s natural most favourable to health any vigour. Bishop Hall says: o {^l the destiny of all trades, whet h I brow T or of the mind. God my J lowed a man to do nothing the ranks of industry have the “ l J great men been taken. L oDI