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1852.]
‘all to be guilty, and went by the name
of iW , the murderer. The owner of
the gig consented to take Mr. Webster
with h m, and they started, chattering on
on various subjects, until suddenly, at a
very lonely part of the road, his compan
ion turned abruptly toward Mr. Webster,
and said : ‘Do you know who you are
riding with V Without a moment’s hes
itation. Mr. Webster answered : ‘Yes—
with M , the murderer and, in his
turn, asked : ‘And do you know’ with
whom you are riding?’ M at once
answered: ‘Yes, —with Daniel Webster;
and 1 believe, too, the only man in the
United States who would dare say to me
what you have just said.’ The boldness
<>f the answer suited the savage spirit of
M , and he often afterward related
the anecdote. A. R. T.”
A MAN EATEN BY MACKEREL.
In “Ross’s Yacht Voyage to Norway,”
is the following extraordinary story: —
Near the village of Sand, in Norway,
lived an old woman who was constantly
rowing about in the Fiord. She rowed
her pram round the same circle, never
deserting the spot, but whistling and
chanting by turns; she kept her face
turned in one direction that she might
watch the central surface or the water.
“What means that old woman ?” asked
R. of several men who were observing
her, and, clustering round the pilot,
seemed to be gathering all the informa
tion he could give. “She is mad, my
lord,” the sailor made reply. “Mad?—
why mad ?” repeated R. “The pilot
says, my lord, that she is so, and look
mg for her husband,” the cockswain re
plied. “Where’s her hu^b^nd? Is he
drowned eh ?” continued R. “No, my
iord,” the sailor said, twitching up his
trowsers and walking aft towards the
quarter-deck ; “her husband was cjrfi>fjer
.nan, and lived hard-bv, my lon?—up
there. About fifteen years ago the man
was bathing hereabouts and was eaten
up by the mackerel; but the old woman
thinks, my lord, he has only dived, and
will soon rise again.” And so indeed
the legend goes. One morning, fifteen
summers past, the poor fisherman plunged
into the element that had been his
sole sustaining friend from youth, to
bathe, and before scarce fifteen minutes
had e apsed, surrounded by a shoal of
mackerel, and in sight of home and her
who had made home pleasant, was de
voured by these ravenous fish. When
he raised his arms out of the water, to
show the dreadful fate that threatened
him, and to arouse the alarm of his un
conscious wife, a hundred mackerel hung
like plummets from the flesh. The fish
erman sank, and was never seen or heard
of more. From that morning until to
day, his widow, having lost her reason,
SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE.
ever rows her husband’s pram about the
spot where he perished, in full persuasion
that he has gone to seek a sunken net,
and in a little while will emerge again ;
and so she prays the crew r of every ves
sel sailing by, to stay and see the truth
of what she relates. — Christian Advocate.
THE MOUTH.
The mouth, like the eyes, gives occa
sion to so many tender thoughts, and is
so apt to lose and supersede itself in the
affectionate softness of its effect upon us,
that the first impulse, in speaking of it, is
to describe it by a sentiment and a trans
port. Mr. Sheridan has hit this very hap
pily—see his “Rivals:” —
“Then, Jack, such eyes ! Such lips ! Eyes so !
We never met with a passage in all the
poets that gave us a livelier and softer
idea of this charming feature, than a
stanza in a homely old writer of our own
country. He is relating the cruelty of
Queen Eleanor to the Fair Rosamond :
“With that she dash’d her on the lips,
So dy6d double red :
Hard was the heart that gave the blow,
Soft were the lips that bled.”
[ Warner's Albion's England, Book vii. chap. 41.
* Sir John Suckling, in his taste of an
under Jip, is not to be surpassed :
“Her bps were red, and one was thin
Conipaied with that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly.”
The upper lip, observe, was only com
paratively thin. Thin lips become none
but shrews or niggards. A rosiness be
yond t hat of the checks, and a good tem
pered sufficiency and plumpness, are the
indispensable requisites of a good mouth.
Chaucer, a great judge, is very peremp
tory in this matter :
“With pregnant lippbs, thick to kiss precase;
For lippfes ihin, nut fat, but ever lean,
They seive of naught; they be not worth a bean;
For if the base be lull, there is delight.”
[The Court of Love.
A mouth should be of good natural
dimensions, as well as plump in the lips.
When the ancients, among their beauties,
make mention of small mouths-and lips,
they mean small only as opposed to an
excess the other way ; a lault very com
mon in the south. The sayings in favoui
of small mouths, which have been the
ruin of so many pretty looks, are very
absurd. If there must be an excess ei
ther way, it had better be the liberal one.
A petty, pursed up mouth is fit for noth
ing but to be left to its self-complacency.
Large mouths are oftener found in union
with generous dispositions, than very
small ones. Beauty should have neither;
*As exquisite as Sir John Suckling’s, is the
following description, (translated, we think, from
Tasso,) of a beautiful mouth :
“A crimson shell where pearls of snowy sheen
Appear its smooth and curved lips atween.’’
but a reasonable look of openness and
delicacy. It is an elegance in lips, when,
instead of making sluup angles at the
corner of the mouth, they retain a certain
breadth to the very verge, and show the
red. The corner then looks painted with
a free and liberal pencil.— Hunt.
GALT'S PSYCHE.
# * We take the following account of Galt
and his Psyche from the Argas. It is referred by
that paper to a writer in the Whig.
1 have just returned from a visit to
Galt’s Psyche, now on exhibition at the
room of the Historical Society in the
Athenaeum.
To say that I was pleased, would but
faintly express my feelings. I was more
than gratified. 1 was charmed, and the
more closely and earnestly 1 studied it;
the more powerfully were the magic
touches of the chisel exhibited. One by
one, beauties before unseen became de
veloped, till at last the wonderful whole
burst upon me, and I felt that here in
deed is a master piece of art; here truly
is the embodiment of soul.
The works of mail are never perfect;
but claiming to possess some taste in
matters of tliis kind, 1 say with truth, 1
have never seen a piece of statuary to
surpass it. The faculties, features, the
heavenly expression, the folds of the dra
pery, that inimitable little ear, itself a
study for an hour, have established be
yond cavil, the reputation of the artist.
But who is Mr. Galt ? This question
will not be asked twelve months hence.
Mr. Galt is a Virginia boy, born in Nor
folk. From earliest boy hood he exhibited
remarkable talent for sculpture. Amongst
the miscellaneous collection usually found
in a school-boy’s pocket, is a piece of
chalk for chalking his taw —this was the
capital stock on which young Galt com
menced business; his pen knife was his
graver, and many a pretty little figure
did he rough hew out of this coarse ma
terial. His next effort was in alabaster.
Here genius began to develop itself, till
finally he aspired to the more elevated
art of cutting cameos from the conch
shell; and many a fair bosom amongst
his particular friends is at this time
decked with the efforts of his youthful
labour. Four years ago he went to Italy,
w here he is now enthusiastically pursu
ing his profession. His first effort in
marble was a bust of Virginia, which was
purchased by the Art Union in New-
York, and is now on exhibition there,
and greatly admired.
Psyche is the second piece, and be
longs to a company of gentlemen in
Norfolk. He is now engaged on a Bac
chante and a Columbus, for gentlemen of
Philadelphia and Virginia. His Bacchante
was exhibited at the late annual meeting
of the Society of Arts in Florence, and
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