Part 15

The misty expanse which was spanned by this bridge opened at length, it will be remembered, at the farther end; where, thronging the Islands of the Blessed, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and 'interwoven with shining seas that ran among them,' were seen 'innumerous persons, dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers;' and there was a confused harmony of singing-birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. 'Gladness,' exclaims the rapt dreamer, 'grew in me, upon the discovery of so delightful a scene! I longed for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats!' But there was no passage to them, except through the gates of death, that were opening every moment upon the bridge. Happy are they who can say, in the fullness of faith and hope, 'Come the hour of reünion with the loved and lost on earth! and the passionate yearnings of affection shall bear us to that blessed land! Come death to this body!--this burthened, tempted, frail, failing, dying body!--and to the soul, come freedom, light, and joy unceasing!--come the immortal life!' * * * THE '_Tale_' of our Zanesville (Ohio) friend is too long for our pages. It is well written, however; and especially the third chapter, which describes the progress of a Yankee pedler through the 'Buckeye State,' thirty-five years ago. But for the injunction of the writer, we should have ventured to appropriate this chapter entire. The ''cute trick' upon the _honest_ farmer was capital, and a fair _quid pro quo_. It was not better, however, than the following, which is equally authentic. A gentleman from New-York, who had been in Boston for the purpose of collecting some moneys due him in that city, was about returning, when he found that one bill of a hundred dollars had been overlooked. His landlord, who knew the debtor, thought it 'a doubtful case;' but added, that if it _was_ collectable at all, a tall raw-boned Yankee, then dunning a lodger in another part of the room, would 'annoy it out of the man.' Calling him up, therefore, he introduced him to the creditor, who showed him the account. 'Wal, 'Squire, 'tan't much use tryin', I guess. I _know_ that critter. You might as well try to squeeze ile out o' Bunker-Hill monument, as to c'lect a debt o' him. But any how, 'Squire, what'll you give, s'posin' I _do_ try?' 'Well, Sir, the bill is one hundred dollars. I'll give you--yes, I'll give you _half_, if you can collect it.' ''Greed!' replied the collector; 'there's no harm in _tryin'_, any way.' Some weeks after, the creditor chanced to be in Boston, and in walking up Tremont-street, encountered his enterprising friend: 'Look o' here!' said he, ''Squire, I had considerable luck with that bill o' your'n. You see, I stuck to him like a dog to a root, but for the first week or so 't wan't no use--not a bit. If he was home, he was 'short;' if he _wasn't_ home, I couldn't get no satisfaction. By and by, says I, after goin' sixteen times, 'I'll fix you!' says I; so I sot down on the door-step and sot all day, and part o' the evenin'; and I begun airly _next_ day; but about ten o'clock, he g'in in. _He paid me my half, an' I 'gin him up the note!_' * * * WE invite the attention of our readers to the following spirited lines. We shall be glad to hear again from the writer, when he returns to his 'several places of abode.' He tells us that his physician, 'after giving him a little of every thing in his shop, and doubly jeopardizing his life by a consultation, has advised a change of air.' We shall less regret his temporary indisposition, if we can be made the recipient of his pleasant letters from the Southern Springs. In the stanzas annexed, not unmixed with one or two infelicities, are several fine pictures. The chant pealing from the choir of the North Winds; the fierce armies of the pole issuing from their battlements of snow to ravage the fair fields of the temperate regions; the hail-stones beating the march of Winter on the hollow trees; the snow falling silently in the garden of the dead; all these are poetical conceptions, graphically expressed:

WINTER.

BY THE SHEPHERD OF SHARONDALE, VALLEY OF VIRGINIA.

AND art thou coming, Winter! In thy wild and stormy might To cast o'er all earth's lovely things Thy pale and withering blight? Ay, here he comes o'er the dreary wold; I feel his breath--ah me! how cold! He wears the same wild, haggard brow Which he wore when in his prime; And he singeth the same shrill, wailing song, Which he sang in the olden time; The same hoarse moan o'er field and fell-- Ah! ha! old WINTER! I know thee well!

Thou art coming, icy Winter! To tell the same sad tale, Of bright things passing from the earth, With sigh and moan and wail; Of fair flowers fading, one by one, As thy sable banners cloud the sun: A chant from the polar choir peals out, Wildly, and full of wo, As march thy fierce escadrons forth From their battlements of snow: A requiem 'tis o'er pale Summer's form, Or the deep war-cry of the gathering storm!

Thy cohorts with their night-black plumes Shut out the bright blue sky; All nature mourns the fast decay Of Summer's blazonry: Now murmuring low, now shrieking wild, She sorrows o'er her dying child. The lips of the prattling brook are sealed, And the singing birds have flown Away, away to some bright land To thee and thine unknown; And even man in his pride grows pale, And trembles at thy fierce assail.

Thy trumpet rings through the mountain pass, With a fitful, wild halloo; And the hail-stones drum on the hollow trees, With a mournful rat-tat-too! Oh spare, in thy fearful marches, spare The fruitful field and the gay parterre! But the fierce battalions, filing on, Nor heed nor hear my cry; And a dirge for the fair and flowery field Swells through the darkened sky: And showers of icy javelins fall, The only answer to my call!

But ho! a flag of truce hangs out In spotless folds on high; And the snow-flakes wheel in light platoons Through the dark and troubled sky: And now, like the ghosts of murdered flowers, They seek the earth in countless showers; They fall on the mountain's giddy height, In the dark ravine they fall, And o'er the distant city's domes They spread their radiant pall; That beauteous snow, like a winding-sheet, Is spread over forest and field and street.

On the storied monument it falls, Blots out the studied verse, And covers all the high and low With one unsculptured hearse. Methinks it lies more lightly on The grave of the broken-hearted one. The folds of a Paynim turban now The village spire doth hide; And see! it dresses the old yew-tree As gay as a bonny bride; With an ermine-cloak it wraps the plain, And shuts the blast from the growing grain.

Come on! come on! old Winter! Spring wears a winning smile, And Summer has a lulling art To charm and to beguile; And Autumn is in beauty drest; But thy rough form I love the best! Thou tellest me 'of long ago,' Of childhood's spotless day; Of boyhood's freaks by th' old fire-side-- Of friends now passed away: Albeit to me thy accents drear Tell that LIFE'S winter draweth near!

* * * * *

THE '_Tribune_' daily journal finds the October number of the KNICKERBOCKER 'well filled with readable and pleasant papers, upon a gratifying variety of topics;' its 'Literary Notices extended and interesting;' and 'its Editor's Table admirably filled, as usual, with whatever is light, graceful, and pleasing.' We hold ourselves bound to be duly grateful for praise so much beyond our deserts; but we cannot permit the young associate-editor of that print, howsoever prompted, to misrepresent us, as he has done, in the notice from which we derive the encomiastic tributes we have quoted. We are accused of 'going out of our way' to attack the writings and the fame (Heaven save the mark!) of the author of '_Puffer Hopkins_;' and of being actuated in this by a spirit of malevolence and personal pique. We choose, for the nonce, to occupy space which we could much better employ, in opposing a _point-blank denial_ to this charge. Such a course is not the wont of the KNICKERBOCKER; a fact no better known to our readers themselves than to the absent senior editor of the 'Tribune,' with whom for ten years and upward we have walked hand-in-hand in the support and encouragement of such native literature as was worthy of the name. Were this Magazine accustomed to be swayed in its judgments by private pique, its adverse opinions would need no corrective; its 'sneers' would be impotent; its 'satire' unavailing. No; our sin consists in exposing, without fear, favor, or hope of reward, the literary pretensions of one who has no claim to be regarded as an 'American author;' who has foisted upon the community such works as we have elsewhere considered; and whose efforts to establish a literary reputation are of a kind to heighten rather than to lessen the effect of his uniform failures. We are gravely told, that this writer has 'just conceptions of what an American literature _ought_ to be; of _the mission_ of the American writer,' and so forth. We have had and have nothing to say of his 'conceptions' of what our literature should be, nor of his ideas of literary 'missions;' but we _have_ had something to say of his _performances_, and of the manner in which they have been presented to and received by the public; and for this reason, and this alone, are we accused of being actuated by private prejudice. But so it has always been. 'Tell these small-beer littérateurs,' says CHRISTOPHER NORTH, 'that they are calves, and sucking calves too, and they low against you with voices corroborative of the truth they deny.' We should like to know whether _all_ who hold our own opinions touching 'Puffer Hopkins' and the other 'writings' of its author are _also_ actuated by 'personal pique.' If so, there is a goodly number of us! ''Fore Heaven,' as DOGBERRY says, 'we are all in a case;' for we can truly say, that we never heard an individual speak of these productions, who did not agree with us _entirely_ in the estimate we had formed of them. 'Personal pique!' Was it this which led the kindly 'Boston Post' to pronounce 'Puffer Hopkins' 'about as flat an affair as it ever tried to wade through?' and the 'Poem on Man' a 'mere pile of words,' in which even poetical thoughts were 'completely spoiled by verbiage?' Was it this which prompted our own lively 'Mercury' to say that Mr. MATHEWS had 'no more humor than a crying crocodile,' and that his short-lived _Arcturus_ 'died of a lingering 'Puffer Hopkins?'' Was it this which caused a monthly metropolitan contemporary to declare, that his writings were 'characterized by an air of pretension, and an eternal succession of futile attempts at humor, which at once disposed the reader to dislike him and his works?' Was it 'malevolence' which prompted the publishers of 'Behemoth,' (over whom the writer had 'come the evil eye,') when they saw his proposals for a '_new_ edition,' to advertise _their's_--'four years old and complete'--at half the money? Was it 'personal pique' which caused the house whose name appears as publishers on the title-page of his last work, to complain that it had previously been used by him without their consent, and to object to its being again employed?--on the ground, too, that they did not desire their names to appear upon any of his productions? Was it 'malevolence' which suggested a new title-page, at the publisher's expense, from which their names might be omitted? As well might 'the disaffected' upon whom a humorous 'work' of the author had been inflicted abroad, be accused of acting from 'personal pique' in deciding that for them at least 'one such fun, it was enough!' ÆSOP is dead, but his frog is still extant; and if we were not at the end of our tether, we could 'illustrate this position' to the satisfaction of every body save Mr. MATHEWS himself. As it is, we take our leave of him, with no fear that he will write less creditably, and no hope that he will print less frequently, than heretofore; for such is his _cacoëthes scribendi_, that we verily believe he would be an author, if he were the only reader in the world. Indeed, we even hear of _another_ edition of his writings, 'at the risk of the owner,' to be sent forth from his stereotype-plates, by our friends the HARPERS! We had intended a word or two touching Mr. MATHEWS'S position in the 'Copy-right Club'--for we hear there are two sides to _that_ matter--but we wish well to a cause of which this Magazine was the earliest, and has been a constant advocate, and to Mr. MATHEWS'S efforts in it; and if he _is_ to prepare an address to the public, we earnestly hope that it may be clear, simple, and direct, as becomes the plain truths it should present; and that 'giants, elephants, '_tiger-mothers_,' and curricles, angels, frigates, baronial castles, and fish-ponds,' will be carefully excluded from its arguments and its expostulations. By the by: this reminds us that we have an error to correct, alike unintentional and immaterial. It was at the Society Library, _not_ the Tabernacle, that Mr. MATHEWS'S great lecture on copy-right was delivered. On this point, the following passage from an editorial paragraph in the 'New World' may be deemed pertinent by many readers, and _impertinent_, perhaps, by one or two: 'The 'Tribune' accuses the KNICKERBOCKER of mistaking the Tabernacle for the Society Library, as the place where Mr. MATHEWS delivered his lecture on copy-right to a beggarly account of empty benches, last winter, after placarding the town with the fact that 'the author of '_Puffer Hopkins_' was to be heard and seen at that place. But is the _fact_ altered by this trifling error? Was there not a 'capacious edifice' almost empty, and tickets numbered as high as twelve hundred, and not fifty persons in the room?--and half of those 'dead heads?'--as dead as the lecturer's? If _this_ is denied, it can easily be _proved_.' * * * WE are obliged for the kind wishes and intentions of our friend and correspondent 'F.;' but he must allow us to say, that his '_Sketch of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell_' embodies many anecdotes of that learned and eccentric person, which are already familiar to the public. The story of the semi-black man is 'as old as the hills.' The following, however, which we segregate, is quite new, at least to us: 'JARVIS, celebrated no less as an artist than as a pleasant social companion, walking one sultry summer morning with a friend down Murray-street, encountered the Doctor, with a pound of fresh butter upon a cabbage-leaf. 'I'll lay you a small wager,' said he to his companion, 'that I'll cross over on the sunny side, and engage the doctor in conversation, until his butter has melted completely away!' No sooner said than done. JARVIS entertained him with _inquiries_ upon abstruse themes, which Dr. MITCHELL took great delight in answering in detail, as well as the objections which JARVIS occasionally urged against the correctness of his conclusions. Meanwhile, the butter dripped slowly away upon the walk, until it was utterly wasted. The waggish painter then took leave of the Doctor, who now for the first time glanced at his cabbage-leaf, exclaiming: 'You've almost made me forget my errand, JARVIS; I started to get some fresh butter from WASHINGTON-market!' * * * WE shall venture to hope that in declining the '_Stanzas to my Boy in Heaven_' we shall give no pain to the bereaved author. The _feeling_ of the lines is itself eloquent poetry; but their _execution_ is in certain portions marked by deficiences in rythm and melody. Will the writer permit another to express for her the very emotions which she evidently depicts with her 'heart swelling continually to her eyes?'

'THE nursery shows thy pictured wall. Thy bat, thy bow, Thy cloak and bonnet, club and ball; But where art thou? A corner holds thy empty chair. Thy playthings idly scattered there But speak to us of our despair.

'Even to the last thy every word, To glad, to grieve, Was sweet as sweetest song of bird On summer's eve; In outward beauty undecayed. Death o'er thy spirit cast no shade. And like the rainbow thou didst fade.

'We mourn for thee, when blind blank night The chamber fills; We pine for thee, when morn's first light Reddens the hills: The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, All, to the wall-flower and wild pea, Are changed--we saw the world through thee!

'And though, perchance, a smile may gleam Of casual mirth, It doth not own, whate'er may seem. An inward birth; We miss thy small step on the stair; We miss thee at thine evening prayer; All day we miss thee, every where.

'Yet 'tis sweet balm to our despair. Fond, fairest boy! That heaven is GOD'S, and thou art there. With Him in joy; There past are death and all its woes; There beauty's stream for ever flows; And pleasure's day no sunset knows.

'Farewell, then--for a while farewell-- Pride of my heart! It cannot be that long we dwell, Thus torn apart; Time's shadows like the shuttle flee; And, dark howe'er life's night may be, Beyond the grave I'll meet with thee.'

THE '_Lines to Niagara Falls_' are very far from being worth double-postage from Buffalo. They are termed '_descriptive_;' but they afford about as much of an idea of the Great Cataract as the 'magnificent model' of the Falls which was 'got up at an enormous expense' at the American Museum last winter. _That_ was a sublime spectacle! We saw it, it is true, under very favorable circumstances. The whole hogshead of water had just been 'let on,' and the wheezing machine that represented the 'sound of many waters' was in excellent wind. Indeed, so abundant was the supply of cataract, (as we were afterward informed,) that a portion of the American fall, to the amount of several quarts, leaked down into the barber's-shop below. A lisping young lady present was quite carried away with the exhibition. Some one inquired if she had ever seen 'the _real_ falls, the great original?' She had not, she said, 'but she _had heard them very highly thpoken of_!' They _are_ clever, certainly; and if their real friends would occasionally 'say a good word for them,' they would doubtless soon become very 'popular!' * * * WE were struck (and so we recorded it at the time) with the felicitous remarks of Mr. Consul GRATTAN, on 'Saint PATRICK'S Day in the' evening. He said he could not help wondering sometimes how the dear old country looked in her new temperance dress; remembering as he did how becoming to her was the flush of conviviality and good fellowship. 'When I picture to myself,' said he, 'the Irishman of the present day seeking for his inspiration at the handle of a pump, I cannot help thinking of the Irishman I once knew, who couldn't bear cold water at all, unless the half of it was whisky; without which they considered it as a very depreciated currency; a sort of liquid _skin-plaster_, in comparison with the healthful circulating medium of grog and punch.' This is both lively and witty; and we do not wish to derogate from either quality; but if the reader will permit us, we will ask him to glance at the following passage from CHARLES LAMB'S '_Confessions of a Drunkard_:'

'THE waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth to whom the flavor of his first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly-discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will; to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruin; could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's repetition of the folly; could he feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered; it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation; to make him clasp his teeth,

----'and not undo 'em To suffer WET DAMNATION to run through 'em.'

'Oh! if a wish could transport me back to those days of youth, when a draught from the next clear spring could slake the heats which summer suns and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood, how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the drink of children, and of child-like holy hermit! In my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment purling over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence, only makes me sick and faint.'