The irritability of " Iracundus" provokes a smile.

He cannot bear

That paltry scribblers have the public ear,

That the vast universal fool, the town,

Should cry up Thickskull's stuff, and cry him down.

Much of the poetry now in vogue on this side of the Atlantic is well described in the ensuing lines:

The verse in fashion is, when numbers flow,
Soft without sense, and without spirit slow:
So smooth and equal that no sight can find
The rivet where the polish'd piece was join'd.
So even all with such a steady view,

As if he shut one eye to level true.

Whether the vulgar vice his satire kings,
The people's riots or the rage of things,
The gentle poet is alike in all,

His reader hopes no rise, nor fears no fall.

X is afraid of the ardent gaze of the public, while Y replies in the language of DRYDEN,

Oh but 'tis brave to be admired, to see

The crowd, with pointing fingers, cry THAT'S HE:
That's he, whose wonderous poem is become,

A lecture for the noblest youth of Rome!

Who by their fathers is at feats renown'd,
And often quoted, when the bowls go round,
Full fed and flushed, exulting they rehearse,
And add to wine the luxury of verse.

In that department of the Port Folio, the description and delineation of American scenery, experience has long convinced us that our countrymen find equal scope for their pleasure and their pride. Our landscapes, our rivers, and our cataracts challenge the admiration of every lover of natural beauty. This taste we have bestowed some pains to gratify; and the delineator, the engraver and the publisher of a short series of native views have already been amply rewarded by a bounteous measure of public approbation. In our last month's magazine, we presented to our patrons an engraving and description of the Yellow Springs, a

chalybeate fountain,* memorable in the vicinity of this metropolis, as the occasional retreat of the votaries of Fashion, Idleness, and Hygeia. The plate, on intuition, will be instantly perceived to be a pictura loquens ; and if possible, will add to the reputation of one of the most accomplished artists in America, The drawing was made on the spot, by Mr. JOHN ANDREWS, merchant of this city, and is highly creditable to his taste and genius. The description, which is almost as graphical as the engraving annexed, is from the pen of a gentleman, who, with the most excusable enthusiasm might exclaim, "I also am a painter." His style, though it rises to the florid, is no rhapsodical mode of detailing the beauties of a lively landscape. We know that its features are not overcharged, but that our friend's delineation is as accurate, as it is elegant.

By one of those capricious gales, which sometimes urge men like ships, out of their common course; by a sort of accident such as might appear to fully support the doctrine of Lucretius concerning Chance and Fate, the Editor of the Port Folio found himself, many years ago, breathing, for a few moments, amid the mountains which overhang the Emerald vale, whence gush the salubrious waves of the Topaz Springs. It was permitted him, by a sort of fortuitous benignity of malicious Fortune, to leave the dinsome town awhile, and in the happy language, and with all the rapture of Dryden,

To his lov'd AQUINUM to repair,

And taste a mouthful of sweet country air.

• He who has gazed at the pellucid transparency of its crystal bosom, or been animated by its invigorating power, might be tempted to exclaim with Horace,

O Fons Bandusiæ, splendidior vitro,

Dulci digne mero, non sine floribus,

but, unhappily, when the writer of this note was by the brink of this fountain, in the autumn of 1804, the dulci mero, which, even the country gentlemen might aptly call sweet wine, or mountain Malaga, was so far from being attainable when called for, as a libation to the Yellow nymph, that, horresco referens, mine host of the garter brought, in its stead, a big bowl of—Irish whisky!

Great was his astonishment on discovering himself thus strangely divorced from his desk, thus unaccountably hurled from a printing office into the midst of wood nymphs, water nymphs, and other nymphs too tedious to mention; and thus whimsically metamorphosed from a galley slave into a Forester. He was precisely in the situation of an ancient knight, who, immured in a dank dungeon, and closing, for an instant, his wearied eyes, finds on a sudden, that the spell is subdued. The sameness and straightness of the walls disappear; the key flies, the bar falls, the gates expand, and all is life and joy, and LIBERTY. The visible horizon of health is before him, and warbling water, vocal wood, and ruddy fruitage are by his side.

One of our friends and correspondents, the darling of Fancy, always reminds us of a description, which, in the true spirit of Parisian vivacity, paints the features of a great original.

His actions are always the effect of a spontaneous impulse; he understands men and things from a sudden inspiration, and appears to be guided by flashes, rather than by rays of light.

OBITUARY.

On Friday evening, the 13th July, at the seat of Samuel Chase, Esq. at Baltimore, departed this life in the 21st year of his age, CHARLES YATES, son of major Thomas Yates, of Baltimore.Mr. Yates has added one other unit to the sad list of young Americans, who have fallen victims to the climate of the West Indies, whence he had returned but a few days since.

Never did the pen of friendship dwell upon a more melancholy event than the death of Mr. Yates! I have no talents at panegyric; they are not required. The virtues, the amiable, inesti. mable qualities of this excellent young man, will live long in the memories of his acquaintance, and will speak his eulogy! His feeling heart sympathised in the misfortunes, and delighted in the

happiness of his friend. His liberal hand was open to the relief of the distressed, and his noble soul bounded with eagerness to serve a friend. His fine countenance beamed with honest pleasure at the success of worth and virtue, and frowned with indignation at the schemes of meanness. I knew him, and I loved him. I knew him noble, generous and brave. I knew him cheerful and gay, and I loved his manly spirit. It was but yesterday I knew him such! God of Heaven! look on the reverse! In the bloom of youth, of health, and manly beauty, on the threshhold of this world's vocations, on which he had stepped with an enterprising zeal and ambition, honourable to himself and gratifying to his friends, we see him, in an instant, fade from this life, we hear his name enrolled among the dead, and the clod of the valley rests upon his bosom. Such are the awful examples which Divine Wisdom places before our view. Rarely, if ever, has it visited us with one more difficult for human imperfections, to look on with submission and with fortitude. But however inscrutable the Almighty's dispensations may seem, let us meet them with resignation. Yet it is not denied to a friend to weep over the remains of the man he loved, to cherish the sweet remembrance of his virtues and to sympathise in the feelings of the unhappy parent who has to mourn the loss of so good, so worthy and so dear a son. Alas, he is gone! No more shall the anxious eye of paternal affection gaze with ecstasy upon the rising excellencies of this darling son! no more will the tender heart of sisterly love bound to meet this amiable brother! no more will the honest hand of Friendship grasp him to its bosom. No, he is gone!

He has gone to join the kindred spirit of Sterett, in the regions of the happy, where the "just are made perfect." Within one short twelvemonth the hand of death has snatched them both, in the vigour of their manhood, from their friends and their country, and consigned them to the silent mansion of the tomb. We will remember them! we will lament them, we will emulate their virtues.

(With a Plate, representing the Liboya seizing a tiger ; from a painting by Ward.) ·

THIS gigantic family of the serpent race is distinguished by having plates, or undivided scuta, both on the belly, and beneath the tail, the latter of which, unlike the Crotali, does not terminate in a rattle. The species are not very numerous. Gmelin, in the Systema Naturæ, enumerates ten; Dr. Russel, in a recent publication on the serpents of India, adds four more; and Dr. Shaw has increased the list by the addition of another; making in all fifteen species.

The Box, taken collectively, exceed in magnitude all the other tribes of serpents. The powers of certain species, like their stature, are prodigious. These enormous kinds are principally the inhabitants of the burning regions of Africa, whose fame, in this respect, was celebrated in ages of remote antiquity. History speaks of these tremendous serpents in terms that stagger credibility; but travellers of our own times, who have had the oppor. tunity of observing these creatures in their native haunts, and D d

ROL. IV.