I a man whose actions tend toward flagitious obliquity, should appear perpendicular at last.' told him that I had lately been in company with some gentlemen, every one of whom could recollect some friend or other who had been hanged. Pozz. 'Yes, Sir, that is the easiest way. We know those who have been hanged; we can recollect that but we cannot number those who deserve it; it would not be decorous, Sir, in a mixed company. No, Sir, that is one of the few things which we are compelled to think.' Nothing could be more to the life than the following satire upon BoswELL'S 'lumping' summary of Dr. JOHNSON's conversations, to which he sometimes had recourse, after a prolonged report of the old bear's 'sayings and doings:' 'We talked this day on a variety of topics, but I find very few memorandums in my journal. On small beer, he said it was flatulent liquor. He disapproved of those who deny the utility of absolute power, and seemed to be offended with a friend of ours who would always have his eggs poached. Sign-posts, he observed, had degenerated within his memory; and he particularly found fault with the moral of the Beggar's Opera. I endeavored to defend a work which had afforded me so much pleasure, but could not master that strength of mind with which he argued; and it was with great satisfaction that he communicated to me afterward a method of curing corns by applying a piece of oiled silk. In the early history of the world, he preferred Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology; but as they gave employment to useful artisans, he did not dislike the large buckles then coming into use.' But something too much of this; our object being principally to commend these two handsome and well-prepared volumes, the first of which bears an excellent engraved portrait of the great author, to the acceptance of our readers. DR. BETHUNE'S ADDRESS. - Rev. GEORGE W. BETHUNE deserves the thanks of the universal public, for his excellent 'Address,' delivered recently before the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania. It is replete with good inculcations for the young, and is not without its valuable lessons for their elders. We are reluctantly compelled to omit, although in type, one or two extracts, embracing the writer's remarks upon the necessity and uses of labor, to make room for an admirable passage in support of the position that it is the duty of parents to educate their children at those collegiate institutions which are in their midst, and where they will be under their supervision, instead of sending them to distant colleges, among strangers. The subjoined picture is as faithful as if taken with a daguerreotype: "Venerable our student's distant teachers may be, and kindly faithful in disposition and deportment, yet do they rarely succeed in making him regard other than as masters whom he has not learned to love, and obeys chiefly because he fears them. They watch him or profess to watch him by night and by day, and public opinion among his fellows pronounces them natural enemies, whom it is clever to deceive, while the conscience chides him not for ingratitude. All the week he is urged by them through difficult studies, and religion is associated in his mind with prayer at morning twilight in a cold chapel, black marks for absences, and Sunday sermons pronounced by the same voice which the day before had cross-examined him in Fluxions, or rated him for errors in Prosody. No chastened pleasures await his leisure hours. They are spent in rough horse-play, in prurient conversation, in concealed dissipation, or idle lounging; in just such a manner as youth, who think themselves men while yet they are boys, might be expected to spend them. How different is the commons-table, often illserved, except immediately before the presiding officer, from the pleasing family board, with its natural courtesies and confiding interchange of thought! No lady's eye overlooks them as they scramble like boors for the hasty meal. No woman's tidy hand has arranged their wardrobes, and no approving smile rewards and encourages decency of dress and carriage. A college student's wardrobe ! What a collection it is of toeless stockings, buttonless wristbands, and uncared-for rents, some mothers can tell who have examined the trunk they saw packed so neatly a few months before. A college student's room, shared perchance with one to whom neatness is an unknown quality; its littered, unscrubbed, uncarpeted floor; its confused and broken furniture; its close atmosphere heated by a greasy stove, and redolent of the fumes of tobacco; its bed a lounging place by day, whose pillows have never been shaken or its sheets smoothed by other than the college porter, who intermitted for such ministry the carrying of wood or the blacking of boots; its dim panes festooned with ancient cobwebs, through which the noonday sun looks yellow as in a London fog-it is indescribable as chaos! Wo to him whom sickness seizes in such an abode! Kind nurses he may have, but how rough and with what heavy tread and strange notions of the materia medica! Vainly does the fevered eye look around for mother, or sister, or time-honored servant! Vainly does the fevered thirst crave the grateful drink their hands once pressed to his lips, when sick at home! There is none to sprinkle the fragrant spirit on his brow, or bathing his feet in the attempered water, to wipe them dry and wrap them warm. Alas! poor youth; he has a mother, he has sisters, he has a home, where kindness might have made a luxury of sickness; but they have sent him away to suffer among strangers.' Dr. BETHUNE has the important faculty of infusing into his discourses the deep feeling which impels him in writing, and which is also a marked characteristic of his oral performances. 8 KEIGHTLEY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. - The BROTHERS HARPER have just published, in five beautiful volumes of their indispensable 'Family Library,' the 'History of England from the Earliest Period, down to 1639,' by THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, author of the popular histories of Greece and Rome, 'Outlines of History,' etc. The volumes are from the second London edition, with notes by an American editor. As a work expressly designed to be attractive and useful to the greatest number of readers, popular in style and its character generally, and at the same time satisfactory and full on the subject to which it relates, it may justly claim, notwithstanding the great number of English histories, to supply an important desideratum. The same publishers have issued, in two neat volumes, a 'History of the United States, from their Settlement as Colonies, to the close of the Administration of Mr. MADISON, in 1817. By SALMA HALE.' This work was written expressly for the 'Family Library,' by its competent author, who has had the good sense to narrate only facts, leaving inferences to the reader. THE MAMMOTH Sheets.- A late double number of the 'NEW WORLD' Weekly journal was one of the largest and most beautiful sheets we ever beheld. A bed-blanket for DANIEL LAMBERT and 'wife to match,' would 'tuck up' under its more than ample folds. It contained more matter than four of SCOTT's novels, and was illustrated with several excellent engravings. The 'BROTHER JONATHAN' appeared the same week, in its mighty double dimensions, embellished with scores of wood engravings. The publishers of this latter sheet, we observe, make up its weekly matter into a cheap monthly periodical, called 'The Dollar Magazine.' Mr. WILLIS furnishes nearly every week a communication; but we see not with what propriety he is announced, and often alluded to, as one of the editors. We might, with better grounds, announce Mr. IRVING as editor of the KNICKERBOCKER; since he is far from confining his assistance to the papers which bear his name. THE 'ALBION' literary journal is well known to the readers of the KNICKERBOCKER, not less for its high literary character, than for the superior quality of its embellishments. A new volume is soon to appear, in the course of which will be given three splendid engravings, of the large imperial quarto size, of Windsor Castle, the Duke of WELLINGTON, and WASHINGTON. In addition to this, the experienced and enterprising proprietor has fixed a branch of his establishment at Liverpool, at which place a paper will be printed, on each day of sailing of the steam packets from that port, and at the latest possible moment, for forwarding by the steam packets from other ports; containing the very latest intelligence on all subjects that can be of interest either to the American or British reader on this side of the Atlantic. 'THE DRAMATIC MERCURY' is the title of a new weekly periodical, under the capable supervision of A. D. PATTERSON, Esq., (who is known to every reader of the 'Albion' as one of the best and most candid theatrical critics in this country,) the first number of which will appear on Saturday, the second of January. Beside dramatic intelligence of every description, foreign and domestic, the 'Mercury' will contain notices of all current works of art, with a great variety of cognate matter. We shall refer more particularly to this new and laudable enterprise hereafter. 'CONSTANCE, OR THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER. In the spare line or two which remains to us, we take pleasure in commending to our readers this excellent moral domestic story, just issued from the press of Messrs. GOULD, NEWMAN, AND SAXTON. The influences of 'that good part which cannot be taken away,' are here so well and clearly set forth, that the young reader must be hardened indeed in vice, who could lay down this little book without a renewed determination to 'seek peace and pursue it' in the ways of virtue. OUR NEW VOLUME. Our readers, in the first number of the SEVENTEENTH VOLUME of the KNICKERBOCKER, which we now lay before them, in a new and we hope acceptable dress, may find an earnest of what may be expected at our hands, in the volume upon which we have entered. We content ourselves in the belief, that the efforts to present our readers with the original productions of the first minds in America, with not a few from distinguished sources abroad, will be appreciated and rewarded by the public. In this assurance we rest; saying only in relation to the future, as we have said in the past, that we desire to be judged only by what we perform. We cannot, however, forbear indulging in the gratifying reflection, that with such a numerous and noble corps of contributors as we have been for seven years gathering around us, and which derives new lustre from nearly every successive issue of our work, the readers of the KNICKERBOCKER have the strongest guaranty, that both our exertions and our literary means 'know no retiring ebb, but keep due on.' Let every DELINQUENT READER but do us simple justice, and we can safely promise for the future, a monthly Magazine which, for various excellence and interest, shall not find its peer in Christendom. To Readers and Correspondents. The article on 'Imprisonment for Delt' will appear, so soon as we can find space for it. The author has our hearty thanks for bis admirable comments upon the barbarous law, which converts a poor debtor into a felon, and inflicts upon him a felon's punishment. Shame on old Massachusetts that she, of all States, should continue to sanction imprisonment for debt! Let us hear no more, while this stain remains upon her escutcheon, of the ⚫ cradle of liberty,' of 'Bunker's Hill,' and the Monument !' It is not long since a revolutionary veteran was confined for a long period in Charlestown Jail, for the petty sum, if we remember rightly, of twenty dollars; and on the Fourth of July, was seen looking from the grated window of his prison at the celebration without! Nobly has our correspondent Whittier, with satirical knout, scourged those rulers who permitted such a spectacle, on hallowed ground: What has that gray-haired prisoner done? For this the boon for which he poured His young blood on the invader's sword, And so, for such a place of rest, Old prisoner, poured thy blood as rain Look forth, thou man of many scars, But when the patriot cannon Jars That prison's cold and gloomy wall, Rise on the wind and fall- Is kindled at your pageantry? Down with the law that binds him thus! No refuge from the withering curse The 'Plan for Conducting a Popular Magazine,' laid out by 'Philo-Dennie,' would make a very heary as well as 'solid' periodical; and he must pardon us for saying so. And here let us add, that we are already in the receipt of several tens of myriads' of similar suggestions, from disinterested advisers; but finding that what one affects, is another's aversion, and vice verse, we are content to occupy a happy middle-ground; satisfied that we might as easily plug up a maelstrom, or seize the Great Bear in the heavens by the hind leg, and drag him down to dip his feet in the sea, as to please all our readers with all our various papers. But let us have no more of these anonymous counsels. Depend upon this, that we shall always do our best. Uniting these circumstances, we issue this lucid warning. A special proclamation, to be stuck up. Oppose not. 'The Gray Forest Eagle,' a noble poem by Alfred B. Street, Esq., written for the present number, and worthy the best poetical company, came just too late for insertion. It will grace our February issue. The lines 'To New-York,' by George D. Strong, Esq., and the stanzas by the author of 'Greenwood Cemetery,' are in the same category. These, with the following articles, are filed for insertion: 'A Page of Life,' by Ione;' 'The Merrimack,' by J. G. Whittier; Night Study,' by Rev. Dr. Bethune; The Cradle and the Cofin,' by 1. M'Lellan, Jr., Esq.; Harry Cott, a Long-Island Sketch,' by the author of 'Peter Cram at Tinnecum;' The Sons of France,' from Beranger; 'Mother Carey's Chickens,' and Death at Sea,' by Grace Grafton; Les aux Bonnes,' 1839; written in Paris; 'The Lone Widow, a Lament,' by the author of the 'Kushow Froperty;' Notes of a Non-combatant,' by a new Contributor. The subjoined, among others recently received, await immediate examination: The Fccentric;' On the Decay of Drinking in New-England; Essay on 'Physiognomy;"A Horse-back Journey to Niagara Falls, by a Lady, in 1799;' 'Scene in the Chamber of an Invalid Poet;' 'Wallenstein, the Conqueror of Gustavus Vasa;' 'The Great Self-Regulating Steam-Balloon Bubble,' by the author of Eastern Lands,' Running the Gauntlet,' etc.; Pat Hannegan and the Leprecaung,' The Guardian Angel,' etc. 'A Correspondent' inquires if the author of The Brothers' Duel,' from which we quoted a few sublime atanzas in our last, is not an 'imaginary correspondent.' Certainly not. The entire poem' may be seen at the desk of the publication office. A word on this hint. We have no imaginary' correspondents:"indeed we find it difficult to refer to more than a moiety of the real writers whose kind favors fall monthly upon us. To these airy VOL. XVII. 12 contributors, with whom some of our contemporaries seem often, by the uninitiated, to be sadly pestered, we inherit the aversion of 'Ollapod,' who has thus satirized their class, at large: 'Moustache' is in error on two points. First, we have no authentic accounts (though we acknowledge that verbal ones have obtained) that whiskers sprouted monthly on the ancient sphynxes. The question at once arises, who shaved them? Had they continued to grow, they would have overrun the whole mighty features they adorned. Secondly, no specimens of the old Egyptian darkness, which could be felt,' are to be had any where, for love or money. A small quantity indeed was obtainable in a vial, some years ago, at Peale's Museum, but the proprietor secreted it before his death, and like the grave of Moses, no one knoweth its whereabout until this day. We are happily enabled to put 'Easel' at once at his ease. He will win his bet. Claude Lorraine was a glazier of Lombardy. Unfortunately, he took little pains in his profession, but dabbled with brushes and paint-pot instead. He was good at small sketches in portraiture, but was too lazy to complete any thing he ever began. His penchant was for sign-painting; and at the time of his death be had engagements for three hundred beer-houses and tavern insignia; but he never completed one of them. Hence arose the striking sentence, (now passed into a saying,) which was spoken of him by Homer, in his Bucolicks; He died, and made no sign!' The Cataracts of the Nile, so called, we would inform X. Q. X.,' are named from the opthalmia, which prevails in certain places along the borders of that classic stream. It unites with the Ilissus above these infected quarters; hence the error of Milton, when he called the latter a whispering stream.' Thousands of persons get together daily, near the junction, and howl with sore eyes; thus both streams are peculiarly noisy. The worms of Nile,' respecting which information is required of us, have been almost entirely removed. Several years ago, through the intervention of our consul at Tampico, a bottle of Swaim's Vermifuge was taken to the very source of the Nile, by an adventurous tourist, and emptied in. The consequence was, that the wriggling inhabitants of that famous river eloped at once for the ocean, and the stream is now healthy and pure. An Upholsterer,' is right. The legitimate yellow of the native gosling begins to change at about the sixth month after egression from the maternal shell. The original tint may hang about the pen-feathers underneath, but the goose aspect and costume predominate thereafter. The transition of voice from the adolescent, tender squeak of the offspring, to the big adult quack, is surprising indeed. This point will be fully discussed in future numbers, under our head of original autobiography, for which we shall he indebted to the pen of a friend. A subscriber in the West Indies, is informed that the 'Pandoodles' are a nomadic tribe, residing on the central peak of the Rocky Mountains. They are a fierce and warlike race, of very ferocious appearance, inasmuch as they shave off the ears of their children, and train their noses to grow upward. They subsist chiefly on oysters, which are abundant in that region, and are famous for their skill in dancing. In the Jersey break-down' or straight four,' their principal chief, Shakeleggie, is said to be unrivalled. In our desire to instruct, we do not wish to be played with. The elephant in the Circus does assuredly condescend to shake the boys off his back, but he does not ask them again to ascend his person. We can easily and satisfactorily dismiss inquirers; but when they return with insolent questions, we distrust them. Therefore in replication to the query of 'Sphynx, Whether King Solomon took snu? we answer emphatically no! Tobacco was not then discovered. We assure Investigator,' that the opinion current among the Brahmins that Voltaire wrote Clarke's Commentaries, is wholly unfounded. That learned and pious work is the Joint production of the celebrated Pickwick and Victor Hugo. 'Morus Multicanlis' must remember, that the 'Diet of Worms, so called, was not a trial of eating between two parties of silk worms in Europe. He is deplorably ignorant in the whole matter. We shall point out his discrepancies hereafter. It was a convention of bipeds, not a convocation of politic worms, to which he would have allusion.' DEFERRED NOTICES. — Notices of the following publications are unavoidably deferred until our next issue: 'The Laws of Trade,' a very useful and well-arranged abstract of the statutes of the several states and territories concerning debtors and creditors, by JACOB B. MOORE, Esq.; Mr. SCHOOLCRAFT's Report upon Indian Affairs in Michigan; COLERIDGE'S 'Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit;' Rev. Dr. JOHN's Address before the American Whig and Cliosophic Societies of Princeton College; Poems by C. J. CANNON; and the Fifth Annual Report of the Directors of the Providence (R. I.) Athenæum. BUST OF REV. ORVILLE DEWEY.-The admirers of this eloquent divine and accomplished writer, who may desire to possess a bust which preserves the dignity, intellectual stamp, and benignity of his features, will find at the studio of that promising young artist, BRACKETT, corner of Chambers-street and Broadway, an ornament for their parlors, and an appropriate remembrancer, as they enter upon the new year. We shall have occasion hereafter, in a sort of 'Editor's Drawer' of art, to refer again to this and other performances of our young sculptor. 'FAIR WYOMING!' Messrs. WILEY AND PUTNAM have a very pleasant volume in press, consisting, first, of an original biography of THOMAS CAMPBELL, by Mr. WASHINGTON IRVING; secondly, of his 'Gertrude of Wyoming;' and thirdly, of a series of letters, descriptive of the history, past and present, of the Wyoming Valley, from the pen of WILLIAM L. STONE, Esq. Such a volume will lack neither purchasers nor readers. It will soon be published, embellished with engravings. A CAPITAL gossiping article from Prince GILEERT DAVIS, describing the Rheingau, or Hock district of the Rhine; the location of the vineyards; the growth of the vine, and the manufacture of the best species of Hock wine, etc., we are reluctantly compelled, at a late moment, to omit. It will appear in our next. ORIGINAL PAPERS. ART. I. NOTES OF A NON-COMBATANT, IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, VII. THE GOOD MAN'S PORTRAIT, VIII. PEDRILLO, THE PRIVATE TUTOR, IX. ANACREONTIC: FROM FRITHIOF'S SAGA, X. NEW-YORK. BY GEORGE D. STRONG, ESQ., XI. CALEFFI, THE FERRARESE CARBONARO, XII. MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS. BY GRACE GRAFTON, ORATORY. BY CHARLES H. LYON, Esq., XIV. NIGHT STUDY. BY REV. GEO. W. BETHUNE, PHILADELPHIA, 91 98 99 101 104 106 118 119 122 123 125 138 139 141 142 151 152 153 158 XX. LEGEND OF THE SUSQUEHANNAH. BY MRS. JULIA H. SCOTT, 159 LITERARY NOTICES : 1. THE HOUR AND THE MAN. By MISS MARTINEAU, 160 163 EDITORS' TABLE: 4. MURDER'S MIRACULOUS ORGAN,' 5. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE, 2. 1. THE MUCKLE HOUSE: A REVOLUTIONARY REMINISCENCE, 3. A CHAPTER FROM DAVIS'S TRAVELS, 168 169 170 171 174 8. THE NEW-YORK REVIEW, 174 175 176 6. THE DIAL' FOR JANUARY, 7. CRAWFORD, THE SCULPTOR, 9. HARPER'S SCHOOL DISTRICT LIBRARY, 10. GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS, 1. NEW PAPERS FOR THE KNICKERBOCKER. 2. THE COUNTRY DOCTOR' UTILI- 1. BOOKS IN STATE-PRISONS. 2. WILEY AND PUTNAM'S AGENCY FOR BRITISH RE- |