Part 6

For many years Mr. McNaughton was the only justice of the peace in the town where he resided; and a history of the cases which came before him, and of his decisions thereupon, would furnish a new chapter in civil jurisprudence amusing enough. Whatever may have been the landmarks in law which influenced those decisions, it is certain that they generally gave satisfaction, and were considered by the parties in dispute as final beyond resort. Nothing gave the old man more satisfaction in his judicial capacity than to puzzle the lawyer, for we had but one in the county in those days, by the decisions he pronounced, and his frequent reply to the objections urged. 'So ye dinna ken my reasons, ye say, Mr. Bartlett, for the decision I mad' to-day? Weel, weel, I ken them mysel', an' that's a' sufficient in the law, nae doubt!' became almost proverbial in the mouths of the people. I remember two men being brought before him upon a charge of stealing the poultry of a poor widow, who lived in the outskirts of the parish, for whose conviction, Esquire Bartlett, from some personal pique, had made extraordinary efforts. The men had been taken the night previous about ten o'clock, one in bed and asleep, the other sitting up by his kitchen fire. There was but little evidence of their guilt, and the advocate had to make the most of every circumstance, in order to show a semblance of justice in binding the men over for appearance at a higher tribunal. Of course the situation in which each was found was strongly insisted upon as a proof of guilt; and while one was awake at the dead of night, stung by remorse for his crimes beyond the power of sleep to quiet, the other was shown to be even more deep in iniquity, by the utter indifference he manifested in going to sleep upon his pillow, after the perpetration of the horrible deed. Without perceiving the inconsistency of the two parts of his argument, the lawyer rested his case, and waited for the decision, which the old justice was not slow in giving. Calling the two culprits before his chair, he arose and said: 'I dinna ken what lawyer Bartlett would ha'e a mon do, at ten o'clock at night. Gin he sits up by his fire, he is a rogue for sure; an' gin he gang to bed, he is nae honest mon! Here, you John Wilkins, you may gang free this time, only never let me hear you sitting up ayont ten at night again; and you, Sam Wilkins, you may gang free too, gin you promise ne'er to shut your e'en till eleven o'clock, whenever you rob a hen-roost!'

Although Donald McNaughton was the oldest man in the town, yet there was not after all that visible contrast between him and his associates, which a stranger would have expected. At that day, the minister who sat above him in the pulpit, and who, though he did not preach, still deemed himself able to do so, and the deacon who administered the sacramental ordinance, were both nearly a century in age. Of the former, one of that staunch little band of clergymen, who, from the time the constitution was accepted up to the close of the administration of Jefferson, stood manfully on the democratic side, and lived, and preached, and prayed for the people's rights, we have many anecdotes to relate at another time. If any man ever deserved a record in the hearts of freemen, it was he, the faithful pastor, the unswerving champion of the truth; and though it is a long time since

'His labors all were done, And the work he loved the best,'

yet it is fitting to call up from the past the spirits of those who won for us the liberty we enjoy.

But the Deacon, good old Deacon Richardson, was in political sentiment, as in every thing else, the very antipodes of the minister. He too, however, was a veteran of the war of the Revolution; and the stories he told, though not equal in interest to the old Scotchman's, were yet not without their merit. Of his years, the Deacon was the most agile person I ever saw; and up to the age of ninety-four, would mount his horse, and ride over hill and dale to church or tavern, with the speed of a reckless plough-boy. Indeed he had a physical frame which seemed never to feel the effects of old age; one of those lean, tough, shrivelled bodies that wilt early, but decay late, and which, however seared by increasing winters, still cling to life, like the last leaf to the tree. At fifty years the good Deacon looked as old, and felt as old, as he did forty years after. Through Saratoga, and Monmouth, and Breed's Hill encounters, he had escaped unscathed; and but for the untoward fall of the last forest-tree he ever chopped, there was no reason apparent why he might not have lived through another century. Cheerful, merry, and frolicksome as a lamb at midsummer, the dapper little centenarian would frisk about among the matrons and spinsters at our country parties, like the licensed beau of a boarding-school. But with all his partialities for the sex, the Deacon was never married. Why this was so, no one could ever tell, unless, from a habit of stuttering, which nearly overcame him when he was embarrassed, he found it difficult to get out words enough for a proposal. And yet there were those among our lone damsels, who, one would have thought, would have eked out the sentence when it was once fairly begun, for the solitude of no man had ever more commiseration from the gentler sex than did his.

Speaking of the Deacon's stuttering habit of talking, reminds me of a reply he made to some brethren of the church, who had been deputed to converse with him upon his known disaffection to a new clergyman, whom the parish were about to settle. The _real_ objection which he had to the minister was never known, but the _avowed_ one was the inferior mental endowments which the sermons he had preached showed him possessed of. This he urged upon the committee from the church, and this they in turn combated and denied. At last, finding the Deacon's objections to be indomitable, beyond the hope of removing, one of the brethren said: 'Well, Deacon Richardson, let us grant you all that you say, still I think you are wrong. We must not expect a man of first-rate abilities in our little congregation. We must be content with one of moderate talents. You know the Bible says, that 'one star differeth from another star in glory.'

'Humph!' replied the Deacon, 'I sh-sh-shouldn't care if you would give us a _st-st-star_, but we do-do-don't want a _lightning-bug_!' The minister was settled over the flock, however, and the old man lived to overcome all his objections, despite his naturally obstinate disposition.

Although Deacon Richardson was possessed of many excellent traits of character, he was by nature rather inclined to an eager grasping after wealth, a disposition which his solitary state greatly confirmed and increased. For the last twenty years of his life the attainment of wealth seemed to be his ruling passion, and he went on, adding farm to farm, and mortgage to mortgage, until it began to be feared that he would live to gain possession of all the property in town. Apropos to this: I remember that a Methodist clergyman, who had spent the night at my father's house, addressed a little boy, (who happened to be passing while he was performing his ablutions at the 'sink' by the door,) and received his answers somewhat in this wise, greatly to the amusement of all within hearing:

MINISTER. Little boy, what is your name?

BOY. John, Sir.

MINISTER. John what?

BOY. John Berry, Sir.

_Minister._ Don't you think it is time for you to be thinking about your soul, my boy?

BOY. Sir?

MINISTER. Don't you think it is best for you to be making preparation for a future state? Is it not time for you to be thinking about _another world_?

BOY. Yes, Sir; I think it is time, for father says Deacon Richardson's _going to have all there is in this world_!

But the Deacon has long gone to his last home, and far be it from us to recall his foibles, 'or draw his frailties from their dread abode.' He did many a kindly act, and the blessing of the fatherless rested upon his head.

But we have wandered from our subject, and it is too late to resume it now. We believe there is much in that sterling democracy of New-Hampshire, much of real gold, though it lack the guinea's stamp, which has never been revealed to the world. Not only can all that we have claimed for the _physique_ of those hardy yeoman be incontestably proven, but it can be shown with equal clearness, that in intellectual endowments and moral qualities they are seldom equalled and never surpassed. And if, in some simple sketches of these people and their progenitors, we can illustrate a page in our national history which is yet unwritten; if we can impress upon our own age the worth of those who lived before us, not for themselves alone, but to achieve our independence; if we can show what they were who framed the charter of our freedom, and what they would be now in the agitations of this hurrying age, what they did and what they would have us do, our 'chronicles' will not have been written in vain.

SUNDAY AT PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS.

BY REV. WILLIAM B. TAPPAN.

'TIS good for us to rest to-day, And keep the precept well; 'Tis good in village church to pray, At warning of the bell.

'Tis good in fair and noble towns, By brilliant thousands trod, Or where the forests wear their crowns, To stay and worship GOD.

'Tis is good upon the bounding seas To pray with soul and lip; God sees the sailor on his knees, Aboard the merchant ship.

And _here_, where our forefathers sleep, Who crossed of yore the waves, 'Tis good the Sabbath day to keep Among their ancient graves.

'Tis good to dwell where they have dwelt; 'Tis good a while to stay And pray at altars where they knelt, As they were wont to pray.

Though from our rites the thoughtful eye May wander where are seen The tokens of the dead that lie In ranks of summer green:

Who, while we wait upon the LORD, That blessings may distil, For us, their sons, keep watch and ward On yonder silent hill:

We (as did they) in pilgrimage Lean on these Sabbath hours; Theirs, in each past eventful stage, O present GOD, be ours!

THE TOP OF NEW-YORK.

BY S. W. MANSFIELD.

THREE frosts in succession; and now, with extra flannels, a day that was omitted last summer is dropped down here by mistake; and nerves that were braced up to a fine tone collapse to a broken fiddle. Men rush at the soda-shops, looking daggers at each other, and women go careless of corsets, and showing their natural color. Coal falls off again; ice-creams go up; NIBLO has another 'crack night;' the beggars are happy, and so am I.

Do you remember your first julep? The gradual mounting to the brain, like the rush of joy to a sick heart that takes it doubtingly; the quick grouping and glancing of thought from your ideality; the uncorking of fancies bottled in your teens; and at last a sudden ballooning of the whole head, that brings out the stars, and the heavens opening, with angels passing to and fro, (Broadway always, after a julep,) and you forget the dun of the morning, and the girl that jilted you last night out of a week's passion. You forget her as such, but you remember, rather you repeat, the heart-flutterings of the first night; the hand gently withdrawn of the second; the delicious half-embrace (interrupted) of the third; and the fourth, body, soul, and lips, all melting innocently together, with pulses and Fahrenheit mounting the hundred! If after that she gave you the kiss coyly at the door, with ears up like an antelope's, and said it was very naughty, you remember that her dress was too airy to be disarranged; and ah! she's only timing you a little; and so God bless her forever!

Not that such things happen; never. But the julep makes you think so. Well, do you remember the charming confusion of that first julep; its beautiful bewilderment; (I premise, of course, that it surprised an unbrandied stomach;) and would you like to repeat the sensation, without breaking your late pledge? 'Juleps be hang'd!' says you. Very well, you are in trouble to-day. Your wife made you get up first, and the world rolls the wrong way with you; the sun rose in the west, you say. Exactly so. It rose to me, no'th-west and a point off, only yesterday. (Lobster salad for supper; ten devils and a young one for bed-fellows, and the universe knock'd into a cocked hat; saw it myself; every star went past my window; took an observation in the morning: sun in the north-west; the needle running round like a kitten after its tail, and the earth bound to the north star! Fact! Nobody knew it but me; but it's all right now.) Well, the sun rose in the west; your children teething, perhaps, and the nurse has a child of her own, just arrived; and you think it probable that your wife has eloped with her cousin, who urged you to marry her. Are any of these things so?--or, worst of all imaginings, have you _breakfasted badly_? Then, Sir, _Come up to the top of New-York_!

If you have strained your eyes, looking up, half a life-time, take the stair-case, the easiest way in the world of getting up in it, and look down, or overlook, as you like. We have a cream left, and a dash of curacoa that colors better than strawberries. Come up, Sir, and open your lungs to the original element; quick! or you'll be carried away with the rush. A dam across Broadway for half an hour would gather a Waterloo army.

Well, here you are; sit down, Sir, and don't shout, or you will have a park-full looking at you, and probably an alarm of fire. Let the people pass. We have been through the play, and found that the farce in real life is the only tragedy. Keep your heart fresh, my young boy, and away from shilling seductions. Pass on, children; we can't 'make believe' sufficiently to-day, and will just overlook you a little. Fix your eye, Sir, upon that baboon coming out of a flue, till your nerves steady a little, and think what a sweep of mind he must have after the confinement of a chimney. You observe, the world is neither before us nor behind, for we are atop of it. How the eye blunders about amid the sea of house-tops, and what variety of chimney architecture not meant for the eye! Now and then a spire points up, like the stray pines of a southern barren, and outside are the tops of the shipping, hedging in the city like bayonets. Farther on, the white sails dash about in all directions, sweeping past each other with the untouched precision of a street-walker, bowing gallantly with a touch of the beaver. The steam-ferries cross with the straight-forward bearing of a militaire, as though they took no pleasure whatever in the goings-on; and here and there, with sails all out, top-gallantly, a tall ship moves among the crowd, with the emphasis of royalty.

Rather airy, up here! The cream of those small seas in the harbor has cooled the breeze for us, and the light over all, unless the sun-spots have grown since, is the unmixed original of the first day. The groaning of the streets comes up softened occasionally with a shout, or merry laugh, like a mocking-bird's in a menagerie; and overhead, a few clouds float about, idle to all appearances, yet each one is doing its errand of the morning, with a perfection far beyond your particular range. Some are rolling over and over in the sunshine; some just touching and parting, like women with dresses too large to salute; and in the upper heavens, a few long fellows, like ships upon the sea, are scudding in an entirely different direction. Just as you are up or down in the world, Sir, will the wind carry you.

Having looked about us, you may laugh or be sad, as you please. I advise neither; but there below us is the material, from the smile to the tear, and thousands of hearts now leaping to one or the other. Some perhaps at this moment making their first exclamation in the world, to large points of admiration from the just-made mother; and some dropping a last broken word upon the bounds of another world. Between these points are the variety of interjections, the oh! ah! pish! pah! hurra! and Hallelujah! that make up human life.

There has been a lull for a while; and now New-York has dined, and the soft pattering of feet tells us that beauty is thronging down the pavé, to settle the dinner, and the pleasures of the evening.

Has your brain cooled? Take that glass, and tell me if the archangel Gabriel has unsexed and fallen--into Broadway. How elate that motion, as though she were walking on a mountain-top, and as the whole world were beneath her, but not too far for her to be a part, and the glory of it! Beauty and grace go with her, like sunshine playing on a fountain. One who has just passed is sunning his heart in the delusion that she looked at _him_. Poor fool! Her thoughts are not promenading. Some things in this world are rather riddlesome--rather. You would not say that sorrow had touched her heart, and that passions are coiled there like serpents sucking her very life-blood; some half-dead with gorging, and some casting their coats for new life and vigor. Lost? As the star that is falling, which nothing but the hand of God can stay! Follow her home, and as the street-look is laid aside with her scarf, how sad that face! Calm and still, with now and then a faint smile flashing over it; but sheet-lightning, my dear Sir, for with her the storm had passed. The flash shows the cloud, to be sure; and to-morrow's sun may nurse it into more thunder; but these are unpleasant reflections. We should not have looked down.

There comes another, whose heaven is in another part of the universe, separate entirely. She needs study, like an old painting; but even with that, you never would know her, unless you were of the same Heaven. Her sweet voice would be like any other, with a difference that you would wonder at, but never understand.

And now the up-towns have gone up again, and night comes on, with the stars out in the upper heavens, and the lights as stars below. Between two heavens will not do, when either can be reached.

'Ride _up_--Broad-w-a-y!' The boy has music in him. Good night to the Top of New-York!

JULIAN.

THE BIRTH-DAY.

ANOTHER year is added to thy life, And it hath left its impress; we can see The change that one short year hath worked in thee; In thy full eye, with deeper meanings rife, And in thy form--a scarce expanded flower, Just blushing into perfectness. Thy words, The mingled melody of warbling birds, Express maturer thoughts and deeper power, And they too mark the change. O! may the day That prompts these simple lines, ne'er bring the truth That hearts like thine, in changing from their youth, Can change in their affections; that I may Keep it as now, from other days apart, Shrined like a second Sabbath in my heart!

R. S. CHILTON.

_New-York, July, 1843._

THE EXILE'S SONG.

I HAVE sat in chambers rich and high, When the haughtiest brow was smoothed in smiles, When kindness warmed proud Beauty's eye, And Art displayed its softest wiles; But the forest wild was my delight, At dawning gray and gathering night; More joy had I in my leafy hall, Than in fretted roof and storied wall.

I have knelt at the incense-shrine of Praise, When a thousand voices chanted deep, When the organ pealed, and the torches' blaze Saw some in triumph, some to weep; But higher rites have I partaken, When Heaven with the tempest's wing was shaken, When the forest blazed, and the lightning's dart Quailed all but the wandering exile's heart.

In climes of softer air I've been, And sat in bowers when the rose was blown, When the leaf was yet in its freshest green, And with one to love till then unknown; But deeper raptures I have felt, When by her rocky couch I knelt, Who crossed for me the stormy main, Content in one fond heart to reign.

A. M.

THE ELEMENTS OF A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.

'BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM.'

WHAT are the elements and traits of a religious character? What combinations of virtue and excellence, of principle and attainment, enter into and form a character which answers to our conception of religion? We think we can recognize and judge of such a character when it appears before us as the result of a process, and therefore our first thought is, that it would be easy to describe such a character. We know and can respect such a character when we see it, and therefore we might say it could not be difficult to tell how it is to be formed, and of what elements and traits it must be composed.

But indeed it is not easy to describe a religious character, nor to tell, on the moment, the combination and proportion of its virtues, nor to analyze its parts. It is not easy, because character is of itself a wonderful and a mysterious creation; its springs are hidden, its processes are secret, its foundation and development do not admit of close observation, and the power with which it impresses us is rather realized than understood. And then the religious elements of a character only increase the difficulty of exhibiting its construction and its power. And then again there has grown up such a difference of estimate, such a variance in opinion among men, as to what religion is, what it enjoins, what it allows, what it approves, that we may indeed number it among the acknowledged impossibilities, to portray the ideal of a religious character to the satisfaction of any large number of persons. What different models are held up for our imitation! As we trace back the burthened history of two thousand years, we perceive that very different traits have been insisted on, and various excellences required. Stress has been laid upon one or another virtue; illustrious homage has been offered in different generations to characters quite in contrast with each other. Indeed, the civilized world now reveres alike some departed worthies as joined in the communion of saints, who if on earth together would have mutually denied each other's claims to any measure of regard.