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Though the volume has not been sent to this Magazine - probably from a shrewd suspicion that nothing but justice would be awarded we are disposed to be charitable, and bestow a little gratuitous criticism and advice, — seeing that we have the loan of a copy (we beg to be spared the imputation of having bought it) from a generous bookseller. Few people, including those who foolishly spend their money for them, read the annuals. It was thought good taste, many years ago, to have them displayed upon centre-tables. It is now thought very bad taste. But as the happy custom still prevails of making presents at Christmas and new-year, these books are yet purchased and presented, though seldom read, even by the presentee. Their chief if not only value, then, consists in their appearance and the beauty of their embellishments; and by these, they must be judged.

The stories and poetry are, in general, poor stuff. The editor makes his selection, guided rather by the celebrity of the writer than the merit of the papers. In the present instance, this rule has been somewhat disregarded; for in printing his own pieces, Mr. Goodrich must have been aware that they could lay claim to neither advantage. He (or somebody in his name!) is a tasteful prose-writer; but he is a most wretched versifier, as we shall presently show. But, without regard to the desert of its editor, (whom we look upon as occupying the same rank in literature, as a quack vender of universal nostrums in medicine) let us proceed, gentle reader, to glance rapidly over the leaves of The Token, for 1836.'

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We have here a very pretty cover; let us look at the engravings!

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The Presentation Plate: a lovely design-tolerably engraved. Young Brown has a pleasant fancy, and it is a pity that he should not always give it full play ; for The Panther Scene,' taken from Mr. Cooper's 'Pioneers,' is not well done. The conception is indifferent, and the engraving bad enough- for Natty Bumpo's long rifle seems pointed in any direction except towards the panther. The face on the title-page is exquisite, worth everything else, without doubt. The Fair Pilgrim: misty and dark- an unpleasing picture. Beatrice: engraved from Allston's fine painting. The Wreck at Sea: has the appearance of a wood-cut-stiff, but distinct. The Spirit of Poesy: a miserable engraving, from a miserable design. The moon is a white theatre-moon; and Mrs. Poesy, who sits on the rocks, looks like a dowdy house-maid, with goggle eyes, vast neck and shoulders, and 'awful paws.' The Emigrant's Adventure: the landscape beautifully done; the figures bad, as most of Fisher's pictures; not very well engraved. I'll think of that: rather a bad engraving, from a homely painting. We are happy to see that the lady is about to think of that,' for she certainly does not look as if she had ever thought of anything else. The Pilot's Boy: exceedingly fine, and most exquisitely engraved. We have seldom seen it surpassed. How touching! See the poor child, lying dead-observe the expressive attitudes of the mourners! How perfectly is utter wo depicted on the father's countenance! The heavy clouds droop and roll along the air! Far away fades the dim landscape on the left. On the right, view the sky-kissing foam of the sea, and the dimly-defined ship, and the wheeling stormbirds! Mr. S. W. Cheney, you have redeemed the Token and immortalized yourself! After this, we will not bestow either praise or censure on the other two engravings The Hunters of the Prairie, and The Spy-for they seem to deserve neither; but lay the volume aside after two or three words concerning its literary pretensions-which, for honesty's sake, we have been compelled to ex

amine.

Heigho! what a laborious life is an editor's! How much stupidity he is compelled to encounter! What nonsense! Here are verses addressed to the face in the title-page! Who wrote them? The editor? Infatuated man, forbear!

It is not for thine ample curls,

Where glowing sunset ever lingers —

It is not for the simple pearls

Thou'st placed there with thy rosy fingers ! '

(What a line!-read it again.)

It is not for thy banded hair

Or snowy brow I ask thine aid

These, these are gifts that thou may'st share
With many a fair and favored maid.'

No! Impossible! What lots of ample curls' and ' simple pearls' and 'rosy fingers' and banded hair' and 'snowy brow' the young woman must have had, to be able to share them with all her acquaintance.

'No, Necromancer, not for these

I seek to claim thy sense of duty.'

Now why is the dear creature called such a wicked name as 'necromancer?' (The sound, Master Quince, the sound!') And what has the female necromancer's sense of duty' to do with the matter? Of this we are not informed in the remainder of the verses, for here the poet's Pegasus bolts—and capers on the 'bordering features of a level lake.'

And all aside from beauty, powers

Like these to such as thou are given.'

These lines are introduced here with as much connection as in the piece itself. We confess them beyond our comprehension, as well as the following:

For there is truth upon thy brow,
That mirrors forth a world of love
Within a form of earth-so thou

Hast caught enchantment from above.'

Here is truth mirroring a world of love within a form of earth upon a brow! The necromancer' is next requested to attend with a 'wand,'

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Ah! here we have it; but it would take a subtler alchemy than even beauty can boast, to convert such lead into gold; the rhymes jingle, however, like ready money.' We should have thought Mr. S. G. Goodrich would have been the last

person in the world to make such a request, considering his reputation for driving a bargain. He is said not only to be gifted with a touch like Midas, but to resemble that worthy in richly meriting a similar punishment.

The invocation ends

'I trust to thee, and those who choose
May go to Helicon for aid.'

We trust no ill-natured individual will read the last line with only one syllable in the proper name.

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The rest of the poetry in the volume is very little superior to the elegant specimen we have exhibited. It is mostly made up of gold' and 'silver' and 'sunbeams' and 'cerulean' and 'brown' and 'love' and 'hearts' and 'rose-leaves' and melody' and moonbeams' and bliss' and kiss'-with the few other necessary ingredients which give flavor to the cream and syllabub of a favorite annual. The only lines that have more than ordinary merit, are entitled, 'Youth Recalled, by J. G. Percival,' and a sonnet-which last is disgraced, however, by a paltry attempt at wit. These are the concluding stanzas of Percival's piece, and they smack of the rich spirit of his earlier poems.

'Ye greet me fair, ye years of hope and joy,
Ye days of trembling fears and ardent loves,
The reeling madness of the impassioned boy;
Through wizard wilds again my spirit roves,
And beauty, veiled in fancy's heavenly hue,
Smiles and recedes before my longing view.

The light has fled; the tones that won my heart
Back to its earliest heaven, again are still:
A deeper darkness broods; with sudden start
Repelled, my life relapses from its thrill:
Heavier the shades descend, and on my ear
Only the bubbling fountain murmurs near."

The worst attempt - and it must be very bad where all are so indifferent - the very worst - if anything can be worse than the words, words, words,' and the hop skip and jump movement of the editor's own ricketty rhymes- by far the worst in this book, or any other that we ever saw, is, 'I WILL FORGET THEE,' by B. B. Thacher; and we declare this truth more in sorrow than in anger. Yet we are vexed that a man of such excellent sense should have committed such an unmeaning absurdity. It is, first, incomprehensible; second, silly; third, vulgar; fourth, farfetched; and finally, to conclude,' altogether pitiable. As we esteem the author very highly, nothing but the strictest sense of justice would have induced this sentence. There are other instances of vulgarity in this gift for ladies,' which would forbid its presentation to a female by any gentleman of refinement. To prove this, we cite two verses from a wretched piece of doggerel-The Muse and the Album, by J. L. Gray.' Speaking of his muse on Parnassus, (in a stye rather) whom he 'softly waked' to write in L. H.'s album, he says

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The vixen, vexed because I woke her,
Was stiff as if she'd eat a poker '!!

So much for the articles in which the lines commence with capital letters. The stories are by Miss Sedgwick, by W. L. Stone, by the authors of The Affianced One,'

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"Sights from a Steeple,' and 'The Gentle Boy,'- by Miss Leslie, Grenville Mellen, and John Neal; besides those who have the grace to be anonymous. The author of The Gentle Boy,' whom we regard as the most pleasing writer of fanciful prose, except Irving, in the country, and John Neal,' have displayed their usual freshness and originality. The Young Phrenologist,' by the latter, is very pretty, but slightly inuendoish (to adopt the author's own fashion of coining words) and Anacreon Mooreish. ‘Dante's Beatrice' commences with a significant truism, which the author-a lady, we doubt not-would do well to remember. A title to immortal fame is usually acquired by women at a dangerous expense.'

The Token' has one advantage- and we presume the only one-over the rest of the annuals. It has appeared first, and earlier this year than usual. Why a Christmas and New-year's present should be published in the middle of September, we cannot guess. When the proper season shall arrive, will appear The Magnolia,' (a splendid title) edited by H. W. Herbert, Esq., author of The Brothers,' one of the editors of the American Monthly Magazine. The illustrations are, we are told, very beautiful; and if a name can be an assurance of merit, its literary character, under the surveillance of Mr. Herbert, will be very high.

We advise those readers who do not particularly wish to make Christmas and New-year's presents three months before the occasion, to wait for the appearance of Mr. Herbert's volume; and, after comparing it with Mr. S. G. Goodrich's, choose the best.

The Miseries of Human Life; or, The Groans of Samuel Sensitive and Timothy Testy, with a few Supplementary Sighs from Mrs. Testy.

An old book out of print; a book, which we have vague recollections of having heard praised in our boyhood, (and we have fallen somewhat into the sere and yellow leaf) but a book so much better than the ephemeral things of the day, that we have determined to bring it again before the public. Who knows but we may induce Dearborn, of New-York, to issue a new edition of it? - as for expecting anything of a lively character from the press of a Boston publisher, that would be useless. The Miseries of Human Life!"- -some one exclaims; this then, is some doleful misanthropic effusion, full of sentiment and sadness!' By no means it is a record of certain minor annoyances, which all of us experience, treated in so witty and original a manner, that we are compelled to laugh at the most troublesome mishaps; the smaller ills, to which flesh is heir, being ingeniously rendered the cause of merriment. And what alchemy is so useful as that which turns misfortunes into jests, and enables us to make merry with our own disappointments? Mr. Beresford, the author, deserves a conspicuous niche in the fair temple of fame. Women and music, they say, should never be dated; and we are quite sure that good books never should be, because, like sweet airs and ladies, they never grow old, and their society is always welcome. Now we have laughed over this book a thousand times; in earlier years have screamed with laughter — in later ones chuckled gravely over its immortal pages; and very dear to us is our veteran copy of it, worn and tattered, but yet possessing something of a genteel shabbiness, like the decayed finery of a broken-down beau. We are not sure

that the jokes would read as well in fair type and on handsome paper, as they do now from the brown page and blurred bourgeois of the ancien regime. But the fickle world has forgotten Beresford. We read the miseries of mortality in the great book of human life, but not in his less ample and more pleasant pages. We were amused by the reply of the female keeper of a circulating library, in a distant town, to whom we applied for our favorite work, (having forgotten to put it in our carpet-bag, on setting forth upon a journey:) — ‘The Miseries of Human Life! Dear me, sir! I haven't seen that book for many a day; it is gone quite out of fashion!' And so it is! Fashion has crept into the walks of literature, and the dictum of dandies is supreme. The Miseries of Human Life' is laid on the shelf with the contemporary fashions-powdered hair, buckskin breeches, and Suwarrow boots. A part of the introductory dialogue gives some insight into the nature of the book.

"Sensitive. * Cast, then, but a glance on man, and man's addictions; or look at his stations and aberrations, as delineated in one general map of the world; and what will you discover?-Horresco referens!' - an universal wilderness of blanks or blots! What, my poor sir, are the senses, but five yawning inlets to hourly and momentary molestations? What is your house, while you are in it, but a prison filled with nests of little reptiles; of insect annoyances; which torment you the more, because they cannot kill you? And what is the same house, when you are out of it, but a shelter, out of reach, from the hostilities of the skies? What is the country, but a sandy desert at one season, or a swallowing quagmire at another? What the town, but an upper Tartarus of smoke and din? What are carriages but cages upon wheels? What are riding horses, but purchased enemies, whom you pamper into strength, as well as inclination, to kick your brains out? What are theatres, but licensed repositories for ill-told lies, or stifling-shambles for the voluntary sacrifice of time, health, money, and morals? A senatorial debate, (when you have fought your way to it) what is it but a national main of cocks? What are games, sports and exercises, but devices of danger and fatigue to the performers, and schools of surgery to the practitioner who may happen to look on? What are society and solitude, but each an alternate hiding-place from the persecutions of the other? Libraries! What are they but the sepulchres of gaiety, conservatories for the seedlings of disease? Nay-to descend stili lower what are the indispensable processes of eating and drinking, but practical lectures on the art of spoiling food? Or what, even the familiar operations of dressing and undressing, but stinging remembrances of the privileged nakedness of the savage?

Testy. *

*

* So much, then, for generals: as to particulars, we shall find no great difficulty in gathering and sorting single specimens: O yes! a store-house of miseries,' or a chest of groans,' might be soon filled, and —

Sen.

Admirably imagined! Mr. Testy. Your idea had certainly escaped me, and I embrace it with both my arms. We shall not have far to ramble, as you seem to say, in botanizing for weeds, nettles and thistles; let us, from time to time, pursue the search; and, at our next meeting, compare and house the first produce of our heavy harvest.'

We add some of the 'Groans,' selected at random, without regarding their connexion in the book.

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Testy. Suddenly rousing yourself from ennui of a solitary walk, by striking your toe (with a corn at the end of it) full and hard against the sharp corner of a fixed flint: pumps.

Ned Testy. Nay, father, such a kick as that would pay you for the pain, by driving out the corn:

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