believeth all things; which like MIDAS' finger turneth what it toucheth to gold; which findeth what it seeketh. And could we be brought to explore even Sing-Sing in the right mind, we might ofttimes discover fragments of nobility and germs of goodness, and find that though all is tarnished, all is not utterly corroded and destroyed. But we fear our charity runneth not this way with any marked current. In few words, when men commit those sins of which prisons are cognizant, we are done with them. Their probation is over; they are ruined; and however GOD may regard them, by man they are abandoned. They may wish to return to the paths of virtue, but we warn them off; that path is appropriated to better people. O for some HOWARDS and FRYS, in these times of vaunting benevolence, to visit with an enlarged spirit of love and hope the prisoner, the outcast, the rejected of men!'

Doubtless there is many a one at this moment groaning in spirit in the Sing-Sing prison, to whose dark heart the key might be found; but who, aware that he is shut out alike from sympathy and from the world, feels that he already knows the utmost which fate can give or take away. Hope has no blandishments in store that can seduce, nor fear a threat that can appal:'

'MAD from life's history,

Glad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurl'd;
Any where, any where
Out of the world!'

...

It was the Mohawk, not the Hudson, that was the scene of the Herculean wag JOHNSON'S exploit, as recorded by D.' of Detroit. He laid a wager that he could throw a half-witted blustering fellow over the Mohawk. The verdant person took the bet, and the stake was placed in the holder's hands. A large crowd went to see the performance. JOHNSON with great composure seized the man by the nape of the neck and the slack of his breeches and pitched him about six feet into the river. He came out puffing and blowing, sputtering out, 'You've lost your bet.' 'I'll be d―d if I have!' said JOHNSON. 'I only want to get the heft of you; and I'll throw you all day, but I'll get you over at last!' OUR readers will find The Advocate Loubet, or the Evening of Saint John,' to be one of the most stirring and dramatic narratives that they have for a long time encountered in our pages. It is no mis-application of an abused and hackneyed word, to term it 'thrilling.' It is translated from the French, by the same correspondent to whom we were indebted for "The Innocence of a Galley-Slave.' It will be concluded in our next. Do you know of a greater bore, reader, than your professed story-teller, who at a dinner or other party spreads an all-embracing ambush to entrap, one after the other, each story in his miscellaneous collection; who waits for neither appropriate time nor place; but who says to himself, with COLERIDGE'S 'Auntient Marinere,' whenever he encounters a strange guest:

"This is the man that must hear me,
To him my tale I'll teach ?'

...

One of the most accomplished and agreeable table-companions in England has well said, that after all, the pleasantest people at table are those who seldom tell stories. The merest trifle that springs from the occasion is worth a hundred of the best jokes that ever were transplanted.' It is the same upon the stage. The moment when Mr. A., bringing two chairs down to the foot-lights, says to Mr. B., Pray be seated,' and sprawling out his legs, commences with, 'It is now fifteen years since I first became acquainted with your father, then on foreign service: at the commencement of our friendship an incident occurred -'and so forth; that moment a buzz of inattention becomes general, and old theatre-goers begin to dislocate their jaws with yawning. In a discourse upon The Sabbath and its Observances,' delivered recently in this city by the eloquent Dr. NoTT, of Union College, the orator, among other things, remarked:

'THE laborer needs the rest of the Sabbath. Let him claim it. Let him have it. The friend of the Sabbath is the poor man's friend. The enemy of the Sabbath is the poor man's enemy. Shall the men who have changed the face of our country by their toil, and those who dig our canals and grade our rail-ways; shall those who, in the work-shop change the rough material into ornaments for our use, or those who plough the mighty ocean to furnish the conveniences and luxuries of life; shall these men be denied the day of rest which the CREATOR designed for their comfort and their highest

improvement? A seventh part of the laborer's time belongs to GOD. To claim it, therefore, is oppression and sacrilege: nor is there a power on earth, that has any right to deprive him of that rest and those sacred privileges which God has given him. He needs this day for the cultivation of his immortal nature. In this respect he is allied to angels; and his emancipated mind may hereafter shine with a lustre no less resplendent than theirs. He as well as his employers, has an account hereafter to render; and an arrangement therefore to deprive him of his rest and of his highest privileges, is not only oppression; it is treason against the community. It is undermining the foundations of society, opening the flood-gates of iniquity, and exposing the nation to the righteous judgments of Heaven. Every where but in the sanctuary the conflicting passions of men are called into exercise: here, all is hushed. In the presence of GOD there is a perfect equality. All distinctions except those of virtue and vice are unknown; and every assembly sends up a mingled note of praise to the Father of the Universe.'

Has Dr. NOTT ever passed any of our fashionable churches' (fashionable churches! what a term, yet what more com mon!) during the morning service? Has he remarked the liveried coachmen and footmen, lounging in listless indolence upon or in the sumptuous carriages of their devout masters and mistresses? Are coachmen and footmen 'past praying for,' or incapable of receiving benefit from religious instruction? Or is the ostentation of their pious employers a matter worthy of more regard? We know what Dr. Norr's reply to this query would be; but it might prove a knotty question to the parties interested. We have a right to command the services of our servants at all times; why not, we should like to know?' would doubtless be their response. Dr. NOTT is not going to prevent our display of humble piety in high life.' DOES the arrant old bachelor, who sends us A Response to the Ecstacies of Julian' expect us to insert his churlish heterodoxies? Does he take us for one of his forlorn fraternity? Unfortunate man! mistaken individual! His motto depicts a not more unreal vision: Had a horrid dream last night; viz., that I was engaged to be married - -some politic arrangement. Introduced to my bride, a simpering young woman, with flaxen hair, in white gloves. Just going to declare off, coute qui coute, when to my inexpressible relief I awoke! The hand-write' puzzles us; and it is barely possible that some young lady has usurped a signature, to 'whet the almost blunted purpose' of some non-proposing swain. Is it so? WE are doing

...

a good service, we are quite certain, to readers of taste in the metropolis and elsewhere, by calling public attention to the establishment of Mr. BASHAM, modeller, plaster, cement and scagliola-worker, at number 408 Broadway. This gentleman is an artist of fine taste and practised skill, who gets up architectural ornaments to any design, for the finishing of the interior of buildings. His varieties of mouldings, consols, centre-flowers, rosettes and capitals; his statues for halls and niches; his fountains and garden-ornaments, have long been the admiration of hundreds who daily pass his depository. He excels also in taking busts, whether of the dead or living. We have examined lately a bust from his hand of the late lamented GARDINER, who was killed by the explosion on board the Princeton. It is remarkable for its dignity, freedom and ease; and is pronounced an unexceptionable likeness by the friends of the deceased. RADNOR' misuses personification sadly in his 'Ode.' The twelfth and fifteenth lines exhibit an amusing union of the tenses; and in the close, persons and things are intermingled in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.' A bad actor, who had been 'coughed down,' but who was not quite sure that he was not the victim of an epidemic, remarked to a friend, that if he thought the public meant to insult him, he 'd pull it's nose. The public has no nose,' said a little dapper farce-writer at his elbow, whose play had recently been hissed off the stage. 'How do you know that?' asked the other. Because,' was the reply, I have found by experience that it has no bowels; I therefore infer by parity of anatomy that it has no nose.' If' RADNOR' has not made the jewelled sky' put on bowels of compassion' in his seventh line from the bottom, we are utterly unable to understand his meaning. WE should be glad

to be informed who it was that penned the lines commencing thus:

VOL. XXIV.

'I OFTEN think each tottering form
That limps along in life's decline,
Once bore a heart as fresh and warm,
And full of ardent thoughts, as mine:

12

And each has had his dream of joy,
His own unequalled, wild romance,
Beginning when the blushing boy

First thrilled at lovely woman's glance.'

Whoever wrote that little poem, deserves the applause of the aged, in all time. We never see a form bowed with years, that its benevolent teachings do not rush at once upon the mind. He who realizes whither, in the providence of GOD, his own footsteps must at last tend, will feel the truth once beautifully expressed by one who was then young, but now is old: The eye of age looks meekly into my heart; the voice of age echoes mournfully through it; the hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresistibly for its sympathies. I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sundown of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.' ADVICE, we are well aware, is one of those things which it is more blessed to give than to receive;' yet we cannot help saying to our Philadelphia correspondent, that the labor he has bestowed upon his punning epistle would, otherwise directed, have sufficed for the production of an article that could scarcely have failed to reflect credit upon his evident talents. Labored puns and conundrums are very hard reading. It is not less a labor to laugh at them than it is to write them. Look at this wretched thing: 'Why is a man looking for the philosopher's stone like NEPTUNE?' 'Give it up' at once, and let us pass on, and not offend you' farther. 'Cause he's a sea-king what don't exist! It is of such stuff that modern puns are made. There is such a thing as a practical conundrum, which is not amiss. 'Look a-hea', SAM,' said a western negro one day to a field-hand over the fence in an adjoining lot; 'look a-hea', d' you see dat tall tree down dar?' 'Yaas, JIM, I does.' 'Wal, I go up dat tree day 'fore yes'dy to de bery top.' 'W'at was you a'ter, SAM?' 'I was a'ter a 'coon; an' w'en I'd chased 'im cl'ar out to t' odder eend o' dat longes' limb, I hearn sumfin drop. W'at you guess 't was, SAM? D' you give 'm up? 'Twas dis d-d foolish nigga! E-yah! e-yah! Like to broked he neck; been limpin' 'bout ever since!' A GOOD lady in a rail-road car put in the hands of a correspondent of ours the other day, a little folio-tract, on the last page of which all dancing' was denounced as 'pernicious and sinful.' Now we join issue on this question. We hold with a pure-minded and exemplary friend, now alas! in his grave, that ‘if human virtues are put up at too high a price, nobody will bid for them.' Not a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Testament, but a great deal in favor of it. MIRIAM danced; and DAVID danced before the LORD with all his might;' to be sure, the manner of his dancing was not quite so commendable, according to the fashion of our climates; and in the New Testament, to give enjoyment to the dance, water was changed into wine. Beware of 'cant,' ye ultra reformers! There is not a more innocent or beautiful sight than a family of blooming daughters, dancing, after tea, of a pleasant summer evening, to the music of a piano and their own 'most sweet voices.' THAT is a modest request of 'C.'s of Montreal! We have Native American' writers enough, who are considered rather clever than otherwise, whose communications, far better than his, await insertion, and who do not require us to bleed' quite so freely as himself. And so, good Sir, 'get thee to yon!' .. WE laughed consumedly' the other day over a business-card of a drygood's 'drummer.' Disdaining affectation or disguise, he had his business specified by a vignette over his name, representing a little drummer in full rub-a-dub,' and customers flocking up as if at roll-call; and we presume that such may be the result of an ingenuous frankness, so rare among his fraternity. Doubtless he will succeed, and make a good thing of it.'... 'L.' of P— has complied with our wishes' with a vengeance! We know not whether to attribute the result to undue personal modesty, or something less amiable. Either way, his course is reprehensible. 'Will you keep an eye on my horse, while I step in and get a drink?' said a stranger to a lad, as he dismounted and took the boy's word in the affirmative, and walked into a tavern. Coming out, he found his horse

6

...

gone.

Where 's my horse?' said he, in evident consternation. 'He's run'd away, Sir,' replied the lad. 'Run away! Did n't I tell you to take care of him, you young scamp!' 'No, Sir; you told me to keep my eye on him, and I did, 'till he was clean out o' sight: le run like a trooper!' This little anecdote came to our mind, when we received our correspondent's favor, not in manuscript, but in a distant country gazette. It deserved, and should have had, a place in the KNICKERBOCCKER. A LATE number of FRAZER', Magazine' has an excellent paper entitled The Sliding-Scale of Manners;' showing the distinctions observed in the reception and treatment of guests by the heartless fashionables of London. A plain untitled gentleman is treated with 'the most perfect and polite impertinence,' while the empressé courtesy of pleasure is extended only to those who have 'a position,' no matter by what means gained. We are glad to he informed, however, that <English society at large is never long imposed upon by the affectation and pretension of the sliders.' The true coin only rings clear. Character is displayed in every attitude and gesture; in the voice, tone, and manner of every word uttered; as well as in every step, bow, look, or move, of the best-drilled followers of fashion. The sliding scale lowers the general tone of social intercourse, and furnishes invariable amusement to the mischievous. It is really afflicting to think how some of the grandest sliders are occasionally laughed at by wicked wags, who were thought to have been almost annihilated by the superlative bearing of the very objects of their merriment. Generally speaking, the best and highest breeding is to be found in the highest circles; the border-clans, uncertain of their exact position, anxious to be included among the somebodies, invariably contain the greatest number of insufferables. The most prominent 'sliders' are always the 'parvenus;' a class which has been well described by one who was among them but not of them :'

6

"THE parvenu is that half-bred, ill-conditioned little-minded individual who, placed by the hand of fortune in one of the upper ranks of life, would be a disgrace to the lowest. He is quite conscious of the doubtful ground upon which he stands, and therefore attempts to support himself by the assumption of a piddling refinement, which he mistakes for the distinguishing mark of a gentleman. Although he may have lived so long within sight of good examples as to be exceedingly passable in society as to manners, yet he is essentially vulgar; his ideas, his sentiments, his opinions are vulgar; at bottom the man is a snob. He fears to deviate from a certain set line of conduct lest he should lose his way, and betray the shallowness of his pretensions. A thousand things that a gentleman and a man of sense does every day, the parvenu, in his petty code of propriety, sets down as impossible. The fear of losing caste is continually before his eyes. A sixpenny ride in an omnibus is beneath him; he supports his gentility by paying half a crown for a cab. He deems it unbecoming a gentleman to receive copper change. He thinks it very vulgar to do any thing for himself. He will lose his passage in a steam-boat, or his place in a coach, rather than carry a carpet-bag a hundred yards. To take a paper parcel home in his hand is out of the question. Abroad, he is of the nil admirari school. He is very careful of letting himself down by the expression of a favorable opinion. On the contrary, he sometimes exhibits a refinement of taste in his condemnation which is quite edifying. We remember a parvenu entering the Pantheon at Rome, who looked round the building with half-shut eyes, and slapping his boot with his cane exclaimed, 'D―d humbug!'

Now and then we hear of the non-reception of our Magazine by its distant western subscribers. We have marvelled at the cause of this, as our numbers are always carefully enveloped in strong wrappers. If however the custom mentioned below obtains to any great extent at the west, the matter is easily explained: 'It is said there is a post-master in Arkansas who can't read; and when the mail comes in, is under the necessity of measuring it. He sends three pecks to Little-Rock, two pecks to Batesville, and dwindles down to a peck to the out-counties!' THE Summer Theatres of the metropolis are organized, and in the full tide of success. Matchless MITCHELL, of the Olympic,' with his troupe, presides at NIBLO's, where he has already brought out a succession of pieces that have taken the town.' We shall have something particular' to say of the performances at this charming resort in our next. Mrs. TIMM, a very clever actress, has taken the capacious 'Vauxhall;' and with that versatile and excellent actor, Mr. WALCOTT, Miss KATE HORN, and one or two other of the Olympic' favorites, is meeting with much success, as we perceive by the journals. At the PARK, BOOTH was the most recent attraction; while at the BOWERY, Mrs. SHAW, a beautiful and gifted actress, and a deserved favorite, has been winning the cordial greetings of enthusiastic audiences. OUR stalwart contemporary, INMAN is he hight, has recorded his opinions against the omnibus-riding of so

many of our idle citizens, whose health would be promoted by walking from their dwellings to their several places of business. An additional reason why the omnibii ought to be discouraged is, that they are killing off the population by a much more summary method than that of creating incurable invalids. It is our belief that secret companies exist in Gotham, as in the French capital, for 'running over people,' and that the drivers are the principal stockholders. How many victims to this great evil does the reader suppose have fallen in this city within the last month? We don't know... THERE is one stanza of great beauty in the six which are contained in the Lines on the Death of an Infant.' The fifth verse runs into the sixth like a pure brook into a muddy stream. It is simple and touching; and reminds us not a little of those quaint and charming lines of the old English LYDGATE' upon a kindred theme:

AH! weladay! most angelike of face,
A childe, young in his pure innocence,
Tender of limbes, GoD wote full guiltilesse,
The goodly faire that lieth here speechlesse.
A mouth he has, but wordis hath he none;
Cannot complain, alas! for none outrage,
Ne grutcheth not, but lies here all alone,
Still as a lambe, most meke of his visage :
What heart of steele could do to him damage,
Or suffer him die, beholding the manere
And look benign of his twin eyen clere?'

THERE is a paper upon BEAU BRUMMELL in a late foreign periodical. Aside from the sad lesson taught by the closing years of the impudent trifler, there is nothing in the article of any great interest. The only new and characteristic anecdote that we encounter is this: 'His valet was coming down stairs one day with a quantity of tumbled neck-cloths under his arm, and being interrogated on the subject, solemnly replied, 'Oh, they are our failures!"" PUNCH states that a statue of BRUMMELL is to be erected in Trafalgar Square, London, in kindly neighborhood with that of his old friend GEORGE the Fourth. Their lives were lovely, and their joint memories will be appropriately eternized in congenial bronze. The grandson of the pastry-cook and the descendant of the Guelphs will be reconciled by the good offices of posterity, and the peculiar virtues that each possessed be brought out in stronger relief by the association. Looking at BRUMMELL, we shall remember with glowing admiration the man who seldom failed in his tie.' Beholding GEORGE the Fourth, we shall not readily forget the man to whom all ties were equally indifferent.' The Miller Prophecy, a Satire,' in several passages borders upon the hubut as a whole it is as great a failure as the subject; and we say so frankly,' as morous, desired. We always had our doubts of MILLER'S end of the world, until we heard one of his hymns sung by our merry and musical host of the K. P. H., by G. L.,' in the Second Avenue. We thought then that 'GABRIEL was gwine to blow' in good earnest. At a chanticleer tournament, in the sporting-season, G. L.' might rejoice the spectators with this song, as a militant aria.' It would take,' no doubt. OUR senior' friend of

the St Louis Reveillé,' (a lively, sparkling daily journal, recently commenced at the Missouri capital by the well-known brothers FIELD,') by boasting of his divided duty' as a father and underrating the theme of JULIAN'S paternal raptures, has drawn down upon himself the following, which is too good to be wasted solely upon us. Parts of it, however, it must be confessed, touched us nearly: As to your St. Louis friend, who vaunts his double arrivals, his rose and two buds,' him advise not to 'aggravate' too much. Choke him down, Sir, and let me hear no more of his babbling, for surely he is beside himself. Have his wits clean gone out, I wonder, that he finds two halves better than a whole? - that he presumes to do well more than one thing at a time?-and that he cannot himself see the duplicity, the double-dealing of his transactions? Remind him, Sir, of our differences of meridian, of mothers, and still wider, of morals. Twins may have been tolerated in ancient and barbarous times: the early Greeks may have permitted them: it is even possible that their dual number was twinnishly suggested; and they may do at the west, that country of the largest liberty, where population is an object, and all mathematics is reduced to mul