I speedily brought the poor thing some bread and cold meat, which she received with warm expressions of gratitude; and she then told me that she was a fugitive slave, and having come here at night with her husband, at the approach of day they had hidden themselves within the wood.

'And oh!' she said, 'you would be sorry if you could see my husband. He is not an old man at all, but you would think he was very old, if you could see him; his hair is so white, his face is so wrinkled, and his back all bowed down. He is so cowed and frightened that he doesn't dare come out of the wood, though he is almost starving. We ran away a little while ago, and they caught us and took us down the river to Louisville; and there they just knocked us down on the ground like beeves that they were going to kill, and beat us until we could neither stand nor move. The moment we got a chance, we ran away again. But my poor husband shakes like a leaf, and can not travel far at once, he is so frightened.'

Then she spoke of her bruised face, and said that the sun hurt her eyes so dreadfully, begging me to give her some old thing to cover them with and keep off the light. 'It would be such a mercy,' she said, and 'Heaven will bless you for helping us when we are so distressed.'

I betook myself again to the garret; there were plenty of old bonnets, to be sure; but, alas! all of them were of such a style that they might serve, indeed, to adorn the back of the head, but were none of them of any manner of use to shelter a pair of distressed eyes. While rummaging about, I came at length upon something which struck me as just the thing required; it was an ancient relic, more venerable even than 'my son's boots,' but in excellent preservation. It was a head-dress that had been manufactured for my mother, some twenty years ago, before the invention of sun-bonnets, or broad hats. It was called a calash, and was constructed of green silk outside and white silk within, reeved upon cane, similar in fashion to the 'uglies,' which, at the present day, English ladies are wont to prefix to the front of their bonnets when traveling or rusticating by the seaside; but instead of being something to attach to the bonnet, it was a complete bonnet in itself, gigantic and bow-shaped, which would fold together flat as a pancake, or opening like an accordeon, it could be drawn forward over the face to any required extent, by means of a ribbon attached to the front. It was effective, light, and cool, and the green tint afforded a very pleasant shade to the eyes. I seized upon it and carried it to the poor woman, who received it with transport, clapped it immediately upon her head and drew it well down over her face. She took up the bread and meat, telling me with many thanks, that as soon as she and her husband had eaten, they should continue on their way, not waiting for the night, as they were very anxious to find themselves further from the Kentucky border. I wished her God speed, and watched her as she crossed the open turf, her bundle in her hand, and the great green calash nodding forward upon her head, until she disappeared within the wood.

She had scarce been ten minutes out of my sight when a very unpleasant misgiving came over me. That great green calash that she had been so glad to receive—what an odd and unusual head-dress it was! Surely, it would attract attention; it would render her a marked object. If her pursuers should once get upon her traces, it would enable them to track her from point to point. I wished, with all my heart, it had been less conspicuous, and I began to think that my researches in the garret were not destined to be particularly fortunate. I wished exceedingly that my friend the minister's daughter, had been at home, that I might have taken counsel with her and have had the benefit of her experience in such matters.

As I was still standing in the doorway, ruminating upon the subject with a troubled soul, I saw in the distance the figure of a student of theology, whom I knew to be a friend of our old minister and his daughter, and thoroughly anti-slavery in principle. I hastened after him, told him the circumstances of the case, and imparted to him my misgivings. He promised me to put the matter into safe hands, and to have a look-out kept for the wanderers. After a few hours he returned to me with the welcome intelligence that the fugitives had been overtaken on the turnpike road a mile or two beyond, by one of the emissaries of the underground railway in a covered cart, in which they had been comfortably stowed, and safely forwarded on their way, and that from that time forth they would be speedily and quietly passed from point to point and from friend to friend, until they reached their destination.

A weight was lifted from my heart, I could have danced for joy; and I learned with astonishment, that the agent, who had come like an angel to the relief of the poor fugitives, was no other than a little ugly negro man, who had often worked in our garden, and who was usually employed to do the roughest and dirtiest work in the neighborhood. His crooked figure, his bandy legs, and little ape-like head, had always led me to regard him as the most unpromising specimen of his race that I had ever beheld; but from that time forth I regarded him with respect. The poor crooked form, distorted by hard toil, contained a heart, and the little ape-like head a brain, to help his outcast brethren in the hour of need.

As time passed on, the borders of the wood of which I have already spoken, began to be invaded by the woodman. Rough, ragged bits were cleared, and cheap, slight, frame houses sprang up, some of them erected and owned by the workmen in the neighborhood, some of them put up by speculators, and rented to a poor class of tenants. Playing about outside one of these shanties, a pretty child might soon be seen, a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of five years old or thereabouts. So regular were his features, so white his skin, it would hardly have been suspected that he had any but European blood in his veins, had it not been known that the house was occupied by colored people, to whom he seemed to belong. An old man was said to be lying ill in the house, which was rented by two colored women, who were anxious to get work in the neighborhood, or washing and sewing to do at home. At that time I was preparing for rather a long journey; and on inquiring for some one to sew for me, Sallie Smith was sent to me. When she came, I learned that she was an inmate of one of the new cottages, and the grandmother of the pretty child of whom we have spoken.

Sallie Smith came and went, carrying home pieces of work, which she dispatched quickly and well. She was a fine-looking mulatto-woman, in the prime of life, with wavy black hair and sparkling eyes, though her features preserved the negro cast. Her manners had a warmth and geniality belonging to good specimens of her race, with a freedom that was odd and amusing, but never offensive. When she brought home her work, with some comical expression of fatigue, she would sink upon the ground, as if utterly exhausted by the walk and the heat, and sitting at my feet, would play with the hem of my dress, as she talked over what she had done, and what still remained to be done; or related to me, in answer to my inquiries, scraps of her past history, her thoughts about her race in general, her religious experiences, and the affairs of her church in Cincinnati, of which she was an enthusiastic member.

On inquiring about the health of her old, bed-ridden husband, I learned, to my surprise, that he was a white man.

'You see,' she said, 'he wasn't a gentleman at all; he was one of those mean whites down South.' As she said this, the scornful emphasis on mean whites was something quite indescribable. Truly, the condition of poor whites at the South must be pitiable indeed, to be regarded with such utter contempt by the very slaves themselves.

'We lived,' she continued, 'in a miserable little hut, in a pine wood, and I was his only slave. I kept house, and worked for him. He was one of the shiftless kind, and there was nothing he could do. Oh! he was a poor, miserable creature, I tell you, always in debt! Well, we had two children, a girl and a boy.'

'Did he ever have any other wife?' I inquired.

She fired up, indignantly. 'No, indeed; I guess I'd never have stood that! Well, he was always promising to come to a Free State; but he was always in debt, and couldn't get the money to come, and Jane, she was growing up a very pretty girl, and when she was about seventeen, the creditors came and seized her, and sold her for a slave, to pay his debts.'

'What! sold his own daughter!' I exclaimed.

'Why, yes. She was my daughter, too, you know; so she was his property, and so he couldn't hinder them from taking her.'

'How he must have felt!' I exclaimed.

She caught me up quickly. 'Felt! why, you know how a father must feel in such a case. It broke him down worse than ever. Yes, we felt bad enough when they carried Jane away. Well, she was bought by the principal creditor; he was a rich man, with a large plantation, and a wife and children, and lots of slaves, and he kept Jane at the house, to sew for him, and by-and-by she had a child that was almost as white as his other children. You see,' she added apologetically, 'Jane didn't know it was wrong; she was only a poor sinner, who didn't know nothing. She had never been to church or learned any thing, and I didn't know much either then. It was only when I came North and joined the church, that I began to know about such things. But I grieved day and night for Jane, that I couldn't get her back. Well, for a time we were out of debt, you see, and I persuaded my husband to come right up North, for fear he should get into debt again, and they should seize the boy too; so we came to Cincinnati, and we got the boy a place there, and he's doing very well.

'There I joined the Church; but I couldn't help thinking of Jane, and grieving after her all the time, and I prayed to the Lord for her, and I prayed and prayed, and by-and-by, I don't know how it happened, but her master let her bring the child and come and pay me a visit. It seemed as if the Lord had blinded him, so that he did not know that if she came North, she might be free. He was that stupid, he had not the least suspicion that she'd stay; he thought she'd come right back to him. And when she did not come, he wrote to her, and wrote again; and when still she didn't come, he came himself to fetch her. But I took care to have Jane out of the way, and saw him myself. And he coaxed and persuaded, and he stormed and he threatened; oh! he was awful mad. But I jist shook my fist in his face, and said, 'You ole slaveholder, you, you jist go back to ole Virginny; you niver git my daughter agin!''

As she uttered these words, Sallie compressed her mouth with a look of dogged resolution; her black eyes glowed with smothered anger, and she shook her fist energetically in the air, as if the phantom of the Virginian slaveholder were still before her. After a pause, she recovered herself and continued:

'How he did go on! He cursed and he swore; but it was of no manner of use; I'd nothin' else to say to him, and by-and-by he had to go away; you see, he couldn't do nothin', because Jane had come North with his consent. So Jane and I, we came up here, and we get what work we can, and take care of the child, and nurse the old man. He's miserable! he don't often leave his bed, and he's not likely to get much better, for he's old and completely broke.'

So Sallie had told me her history; but she had not done. Her active mind had found an outlet in the little negro church at Cincinnati, of which she was a member. Her intense religious enthusiasm mingled with her deep perception of the wrongs and cruelties inflicted upon her race. Her soul lay like a glowing volcano beneath that easy, careless Southern manner, which might have led one at first to regard her as merely a jolly, ignorant, negro-woman.

At a word which one day touched upon this chord, her work fell from her hands, her eyes flashed, and she poured forth, in old Scripture phraseology, her indignation, her aspirations, and her glowing faith. She wholly identified her race with the Jews in their wanderings and their captivity, and the old descriptive and prophetic words fell from her lips, as if wrung from her heart, startling one by the wondrous fitness of the application. There was such magnetic power in her intense earnestness, her strong emotions, and her certain and exultant trust in God and his providence, that it held me spell-bound. I listened, as if one of the old prophets had risen before me. I never heard eloquence like it; for I never witnessed such an intense sense of the reality and force of the cause which had called it forth. I can not recall her words; but I remember, after describing the cruelty and apparent hopelessness of her people's captivity, their groans, their prayers to the Lord, day after day and year after year, their darkness and despair, their still-continued crying unto God for help, she concluded by describing how the Lord at length would appear for their relief. 'He will come,' she said; 'he will shake and shake the nations, and will say: 'Let my people go free.' And though there should seem to be no way, he shall open the way before them, and they shall go forth free. They shall sing and give thanks, for in the Lord have they trusted, and they shall never be confounded.' She paused. Her words made a deep impression upon me. At that time, how dark and hopeless seemed the way! nothing then pointed to a coming deliverance. Blind faith in God alone was left us; but how cold seemed the faith and trust of the warmest advocate of Emancipation among us, to the glowing certainty of God's help, which possessed the soul of this poor, ignorant negro-woman. Sallie took up her shawl and bonnet, and was about to go. I roused myself, and looking at her with a half-smile, 'You speak in church?' I said.

An instant change passed over her face. Her eyes twinkled a moment, with a shrewd appreciation of my guess. She drew herself up, with a gleam of pride and pleasure; she nodded an assent, and wrapping her shawl around her, she turned away.

I have never seen her since; but her truly prophetic words often recur to me now, when the Lord is shaking the nations; when, if we fail to listen to his words, and to let his poor, oppressed people go, he must surely shake and shake again. Every day, our concern in the negro race becomes a clearer and more self-evident fact. Every bulletin impresses it anew upon our thoughts. Every soldier laid to rest upon the battle-field engraves it still deeper upon the nation's heart.

* * * * *

THE EDUCATION TO BE.

1. Principles and Practice of Early and Infant School Education. By James Currie, A.M. Third edition. Edinburgh: 1861.

2. Papers for the Teacher. No. 1: American Contributions to Pedagogy. Edited by Henry Barnard, LL.D. New York: 1860.

3. Education; Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. By Herbert Spencer. New York: 1861.

4. A Series of School and Family Readers. Compiled by Marcius Willson. New York: 1860-1.

5. Primary Object Lessons, for a Graduated Course of Development. By N.A. Calkins. New York: 1861.

6. Annual Reports of Superintendents of Schools: City of New York, 1861; Oswego, 1860; Chicago, 1861.

7. The New York Teacher. Monthly. Albany, Vols. 7-10: 1858-61.

'The most certain means,' Beccaria wrote in the preceding century, 'of rendering a people free and happy, is, to establish a perfect method of education.' If, in this conclusion, Beccaria only reiterates an opinion at least tacitly held long before his time by some of the Grecian sages, still, the later assertion of the principle should, it seems, derive some additional weight from the circumstance of the time allowed in the interim for repeated reconsiderations of the question. The theologian may interpose, that, toward rendering a people free and happy, the influences of religion must constitute the most efficacious, the dominant agency. But when we admit that man is one,—that heart and hand are not only alike, but together subjects for culture,—then it will be seen that religion falls into its place in the one comprehensive scheme of human education; and we discover that Beccaria's position, instead of being assailed from this point of view, becomes, according as our conception of the case is truthful and clear, correspondingly strengthened.

The ease, however, with which we utter those little qualifiers, 'free' and 'happy,' observed to stand here in the positive or absolute degree, and not in any degree of comparison, is noticeable. For 'degrees of comparison' are always concessions of steps down, even when they most stoutly present themselves as steps up. Were all men simply wise and just, all predicating of certain men that they were more, or most, wise or just, would be at once absurd and without utility. It is our intensified adjective that confesses fatally the prior fact of a coming short, and by an amount indefinitely great, of the simple, absolute standard. So, to come once for all to ridding ourselves of comparative forms of speech, and to be warranted to look for the rendering of a people, in the simple, positive sense, free and happy, would be, in the expressive language of one 'aunt Chloe' respecting the 'glory' to which she aspired, 'a mighty thing!' On the other hand, so far have our race, up to this moment, and without a single decided instance in exception, fallen short of aught that could be styled a perfect method of education, and so closely must educational training affect every nascent man or woman in those vitalest particulars,—character and capability,—that, could the perfect method sought once be brought into effective operation on the plastic child-manhood of a nation, or of all nations, we are not prepared to deny the possibility of any results therefrom to humanity, even the grandest utterable or conceivable. Admitting such method found, and in process, Beccaria could have dispensed with his tell-tale 'most,' and written, The certain means of rendering a people free and happy, is, to establish a perfect method of education.

To secure, therefore, so great an end: First, find—the perfect educational method! The recipe is brief; the labor it imposes is more than Herculean. To measure it, we should have to find the ratio in which mind transcends matter, or that in which the broad generalizations of genius in the materials of science surpass the poor conceptions that the wild Australian must almost utter audibly in his own ear to realize that he at all possesses them.

In the 5,865 years which the most unquestioned belief accords to the history of man on our planet, could we suppose the average duration of life throughout equal to that of a generation now, there would have been time for 177 generations of working, planning, inventive men—of men desiring at each period the best they could conceive of, and framing the best schemes they were capable of to attain it. Here has been space for the slow rise and fall of nation after nation,—vast solitary tides heaving at long intervals the face of a wide, living, sullen sea: and history reports that the nations have actually risen, flourished, and fallen. Here has been space for exquisite triumphs of art; for the late birth, and nevertheless large progress, of the sciences concerned about phenomena of physical nature; the art triumphs have been achieved, and the germs of sciences are in our possession. Here has been space for the multiplication, upon all imaginable themes, of books, to a number and volume utterly beyond the powers of the most prolonged and assiduous life even to peruse; and the books crowd our alcoves, and meet us wherever men are wont to make their abode or transit. Here has been space for the organization, though so long impracticable and late conceived, of a system of daily diffusion of intelligence, and to such a pitch as almost to bring the world freshly photographed to our eyes with each returning sun; and, lo! the photographs are here; they await us at the breakfast or the counting table. Here has been space for the springing up among the people, at distances of years or centuries, of profound educating intellects, marked by clear insight, large human love, and patient self-sacrifice, and contributing to the growth of humanity by worthy examples, and by propounding successively more and more rational modes for the informing and developing of youthful minds; and, see! Confucius, Socrates and Plato, Petrarch, Bacon, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Pere Girard, Arnold of Rugby, and Horace Mann—to make no mention of many co-laborers among the dead, and earnest successors among the living—stepping from their niches in the vanishing corridors of history, lay at our feet the treasures accumulated through their patient and clear thought and their faithful experience.

Will it then readily be believed—and yet it is unquestionably true—that, to this hour, neither the schools nor the teachers can be found that are in possession and practice of a well-defined, positively guiding, and always trustworthy method of intellectual, and other means and steps by which to conduct and consummate the education of our children? Note, we do not here declare the want of the true and universal method of educating, if there can be such a thing; but we distinctly assert that no school and no living teacher employs or conforms to any well-defined, positive, and, in and for its purposes, completed method of educating the young; nor, since this latter is a supposition better pleasing certain critically-minded gentlemen, have we in anything like clear delineation and positive practice the several methods that may be imagined requisite for minds of varying bent and capacity. If we sum up in one word the most pervading, constant, and obvious characteristic of our schools, and of the teaching and the learning in them to this day, that word must be, immethodical. Although admitting that the education of the young should distinctly embrace the four departments of a training, physical, intellectual, moral, and social, yet, for the sake of clearness in our discussion and its results, not less than through the necessities of a restricted space, we shall here confine our remarks wholly to education in its intellectual aspect.

To move, for each subject, and for each part of it essayed, always along the right way, and by the true character and order of steps,—that is the thing to be desired, and which is, as yet, unattained. As a consequence, the prosecution of studies is by attempts and in ways that are generally imperfect, at best make-shift or provisional, often radically erroneous or worthless. Doubtless, the defects in method are now less glaring and influential at the two extremes of the sensibly-conducted infant school, and the well-appointed and leisurely collegiate course. There is no true study that is not what the origin of the word implies—STUDIUM, a work of zeal, fondness, eager desire, voluntary endeavor, interest. Such study has two essential characteristics; where these are wanting, study does not exist; the appearance of it is a sham; and though results disconnected and partial are attained, real acquisition is meager, and apparent progress deceptive.

Of these characteristics, the first is what the word directly expresses—zealous exertion on the part of the student's own intellectual powers, a zeal literally pre-venting all other incentives, or, at the least, subordinating them, through pure love of finding out that which is new and curious, or true. In two words, this first essential of study, and fraught with all the desirable results of study, is genuine INTELLECTUAL WORK. It is the nisus of the intelligent principle to bring itself into ascertained and well-ordered relations with the facts, agencies, and uses of nature, alike in her physical and spiritual domains. The bright-minded boy or girl who may not comprehend the feeling or thought when so uttered, nevertheless knows it, and, for his or her range of effort, as keenly as does the adult explorer.

But, when a mind thus works, the truth that it can never advance beyond missing or unfound links in the chain of thought does not need to be taught to it. The impossibility of so doing has become a matter of experience and of certain conviction. The mathematician knows, that, beyond that form of his equation containing an actual mis-step, or a positively irresoluble expression, all subsequent forms or values involving that step or expression are vitiated, and the results they seem to show substantially worthless. Now, every actually working mind, and at every stage, from schoolboy perplexities over algebraic signs, up to philosophic ventures in quest of one remove further of solid ground, in respect to the interrelations of physical forces, or the law of development of organized forms, finds itself in precisely the predicament of the mathematician: it feels no footing and accomplishes no advance beyond that link in the chain of fact and thought, which, to its comprehension, stands as uncertain, erroneous, wanting, or inexplicable. This is so from the very nature of our knowing faculties and of knowledge. The true intellectual worker, encountering interruption through any of these conditions, goes back to view his difficulty from a better vantage ground, or attempts to approach it from either side, or, failing these resources, bows to the necessity, and suffers no harm, other than stoppage and loss of time. Thus, the second characteristic of true study is in the rigidly natural and unfailing CONSECUTION of the steps and processes by which the intellectual advance is made. A mind so advancing never flatters itself of being able to grasp that which, in the nature of knowledge, must be a consequent truth, until the antecedent or antecedents german to the question in hand have first been possessed by it. But in our schools, how vastly much is supposed to be taught, in which consequents come before antecedents, or are promiscuously jumbled up with them, or assert themselves, without so much as the grace to say to antecedents of any sort, 'By your leave.' Obviously, however, such could not be the character of so much of our teaching, did not the character of most of our books for schools exactly correspond with it. And the books do correspond: they not only give to a faulty teaching its cue, but, now that the theory of education is being so much discussed, and in good degree improved, they constitute one of the most influential causes of the almost hopeless lagging of its practice.

Now, how is it that pupils get on at all with such lessons and such books? The explanation is a simple one; but the consequences it is fraught with are not trifling. The simple fact is, pupils are not yet allowed to study (in the best sense and manner of that process) the subjects they are prosecuting. When, now, they undertake in earnest to study, they are but too constantly confused and delayed by the no-method of the treatises they are being carried through. In a course of earnest intellectual work, the pupil must too often, with his present aids, become aware of absence of comprehension; he is ever and anon brought to stand still and cast about for the unsupplied preliminary facts and truths, for the unhinted hypotheses and inferences, which his situation and previous study do not enable him to supply, but which are necessary to a comprehension of the results set down for him to deal with. Barren results, per se, our learners are now too much required to ingest; and such they are expected to assimilate into intellectual life and power! As well feed a boy on bare elements of tissue—carbon, sulphur, oxygen, and the rest; or, yet more charitably, dissect out from his allowance of tenderloin, lamb, or fowl, a due supply of ready-made nerve and muscular fiber, introduce and engraft these upon the nerve and muscle he has already acquired, and then assure our protege, that, as the upshot of our masterly provision for his needs, we expect him to become highly athletic and intellectual—that so he is to evolve larger streams of muscular energy and more vivid flashes of spiritual force!

As it is, we too nearly put the pupil's intellect asleep by our false method; and he endures it because of his unnatural condition. He thinks he 'gets on' with it; and in an imperfect way and degree does so. Rarely, we find, does such a one get so far as into the 'conics;' and he is not certain to be in the habit of reading reviews: if we were sure, however, that he could comprehend and would meet with our simile, we would say to him, that the tardy inclination up which he now plods painfully, must, if graphically represented, be shown by an oblique line descending, in fact, below the curve of his possibilities, more rapidly even than it ascends above the horizontal cutting through the point of his setting out. True, with pupils who are spontaneously active-minded from the first, or who at some point in their course become positively awakened to brain-work, very much of the repressive influence of imperfect methods is prevented or overcome. The number of those so fortunate is doubtless small in the comparison. The few who would know, by a necessity as imperative as that by which they must feed, and sleep, and probably toil with hands or head for subsistence, are able to supplement many of the deficiencies, and supersede some erroneous processes of our methods, by the play of their own powers of investigation upon and about their subject. To these, a false method can bring perplexity and delay, but not repression nor veritable intellectual torpor.

We assert, then, that from a course or manner of instruction from which those characteristics of true study—real work of the learner's faculties, and a just consecution of steps—are largely omitted or excluded, the best sort of intellectual education can not, in the majority of instances, accrue. On the other hand, the method embodying these characteristics must present that unity, certainty, and guiding force hinted at in the outset. Concisely summed up, it is a method proceeding throughout by discovery, or, as we may say, by re-discovery of the truths and results to be acquired in each department of knowledge undertaken by the learner. In the absence of the one true method of intellectual advance, what should we expect but a confusion of clashing, imperfect, or tentative processes of instruction? He who could, to-day, ciceroned by some pedagogic Asmodeus, visit one hundred of our schools, or listen successively to a recitation on a given topic, conducted by one hundred qualified and faithful instructors, would find the methods and no-methods of introducing to the century of classes the truths of this self-same subject to be—and we do not mean in the personal element, which ought to vary, but in the radical substance and order of the theme—quite as numerous as the workmen observed; in fact, a conflicting and confusing display. Now, do causes, in any realm of being, forbear to produce fruit in effects? Are the laws of psychologic sequence less rigid and certain than those laws of physical sequence which determine in material nature every phenomenon, from planet-paths in space to the gathering of dew-drops on a leaf? If it were so, falsity or confusion in intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of trifling import, or wholly indifferent. But such suppositions are the seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all. If, on the contrary, we admit this inflexible relation of cause and result in the mental, as well as in the material world, and if we admit also that our school-methods are yet fragmentary, varying and tentative, then we are compelled to the conclusion, that at least the greater number of our schools are falling short, in the time and with the outlay invested, of doing their best and largest work, while in very many of our schools there must be steadily going forward a positive and potent mis-education!

If it be urged that these are in a degree deductive conclusions, let them be submitted to the test of fact. At least two important circumstances, it is admitted, will come in to complicate the inquiry: first, one purpose of school training is to divert the forming mind in a degree from sense toward thought, the latter being a less observable sort of product than that curiosity and store of facts attendant on activity of the merely perceptive powers; secondly, there is the growing absorption of the mental powers with increase of age in the practical, in meeting the necessities of life, which more and more displaces intellectual activity as a set pursuit, and leaves it to be manifested rather in the means than the ends, rather in the quality than in the products of one's thinking, and, at the best, rather as an embellishment than as the business of a career. And yet, in the mind which has passed through a proper school-training, there should be apparent certain decided qualities and results, which are manifested as, and as often as, opportunity for their exercise presents itself. The schooled mind should surely not possess a less active curiosity to observe and to know than did the same mind before entering school, but even a stronger, more self-directed, purposive and efficient zeal in such direction. Intellectual vivacity and point, clearness of conception, and truthfulness of generalization and of inference,—all these should appear in more marked degree, along with the increased sobriety and judgment, and the improved facility of practical adaptation, which properly characterize maturity of mind and habit. Now, we suggest the careful observation of any number of children, not yet sent to school, and that are favored with ordinarily sensible parents, and ordinarily happy homes; and then, the equally careful study of a like number who have just emerged from their school course, or have fairly entered on the business of life; and we warn the really acute and discriminating observer to look forward (in the majority of instances) to a disheartening result from his investigation! We are convinced that the net product of our immensely expansive, patient, and ardently sought schooling will, in a large proportion of all the cases, be found to consist in the imperfect acquirement and uncertain tenure of knowledge, upon a few rudimentary branches, often without definite understanding or habit of applying even so much to its uses, and usually without the conception or desire to make it the point of departure for life-long acquisition; and all this accompanied, too often, with actual loss of that spontaneous intellectual activity which began to manifest itself in the child, and which should have been fruiting now in, at the least, some degree of sound and true intellectuality. So, we are still left to expect mainly of Nature not only the germs of capacity, but the maturing of them; the latter, a work which Education surely ought to be competent to. Meanwhile, like a wearied and fretted pedagogue, Education complains of the bad materials Nature gives her, when she ought to be questioning whether she has yet learned to bring out the excellence of the material she has.

Is it not an expensive process, that thus amasses a certain quantity of knowledge at cost of the disposition, sometimes of the ability, to add to it through the whole of life? Really, schooling is short, and, contrasted with it, life is long; but what mischiefs may not the latter experience from the former! Let us clearly conceive, once, the aversion many of our boys and girls persistently feel toward the school, and of their leaving it, at the last, with rejoicing! Are we astonished that when they have fairly escaped, frivolity is, with the young woman, too apt to replace mental culture, and with the young man, vulgarity or exclusive living for 'the main chance?' That the men and women so educated are too receptive, credulous, pliant and unstable; that in too large a degree they lack discrimination, judgment, and the good sense and executive talent which plan understandingly, and work without sacrifice of honor, manhood, or spiritual culture, to a true success? But, if our instructors could find out, or if some other could find out for them, just how and by what steps it is that the young mind engages with nature and harvests knowledge, and if they should see, therefore, how to strike in better with the current of the young, knowing and thinking, to move with it, enlarge, direct and form it aright, properly insuring that the mind under their charge shall do its own work, and hence advance by consecutive and comprehended steps, we ask with confidence whether much of the notorious short-comings now manifest in the results of our patient efforts might not be replaced by an approach toward an intellectual activity, furnishing, completeness, and bent, more worthy of the name and the idea of education? We are not alone in questioning the tendencies of existing methods. Other pens have raised the note of alarm. Speaking on the character of the product of the English schools, Faraday says, 'The whole evidence appears to show that the reasoning faculties [mark, it is here the failure occurs, and here that it shows itself], in all classes of the community, are very imperfectly and insufficiently developed—imperfectly, as compared with the natural abilities, insufficiently, when considered with reference to the extent and variety of information with which they are called upon to deal.' Does not this strong language find equally strong warrant in current facts of individual conduct and of our social life?

That there is yet no recognized complete method in, and no ascertained science of education, the latest writings on the subject abundantly reiterate and confirm. The best of our annual School Reports, and the most recent treatises,—among which, notwithstanding the abatement we must make for their having been, through adventitious circumstances, pushed in our country to a sudden and not wholly merited prominence, Sir. Spencer's republished essays may be named,—while they acknowledge some progress in details, disclose an undertone of growing conviction of the incompetency and unsatisfactoriness of our present modes of teaching and training. The Oswego School Report, speaking of primary education, tells us 'There has been too much teaching by formulas;' and that 'We are quite too apt, in the education of children, to "sail over their heads," to present subjects that are beyond their comprehension,' etc. Its way of escape 'out of the rut' is by importation into our country of the object-lesson system, as improved from the Pestalozzian original through the labors of Mr. Kay, now Sir J.K. Shuttleworth, and his co-laborers, of the Home and Colonial Infant and Juvenile School Society, London. In the report of Mr. Henry Kiddle, one of the four making up the collective School Report of the City of New York for 1861, the radical error of our present teachers is very forcibly characterized, where the danger of the teachers is pointed out as that of becoming 'absorbed in the mechanical routine of their office, losing sight of the end in their exclusive devotion to what is only the means—teaching the THING, but failing to instruct the PERSON—eager to pour in knowledge, but neglecting to bring out mind.' Is there not indicated in these words a real and a very grave defect of the manner in which subjects are now presented, studied, recited, and finished up in our schools? We think there is. And then, what is the effect of this study and teaching, with so much less thought toward the end than about the material?—what the result of this overlooking of the mind, the individuality, the person?—what the fruitage, at last, of having given so much time to the 'finishing up' of arithmetic, geography, and the rest, as to have failed to bring out the mind that was dealing with these topics, and is hereafter to have so many others to deal with? The physiologists have to tell us of a certain ugly result, occurring only in rare instances in the bodily organization, such that in a given young animal or human form the developing effort ceases before completion of the full structure; the individual remaining without certain fingers or limbs, sometimes without cranium or proper brain. They name this result one of 'arrest of development.' Is it not barely possible that our studies and recitations are yet in general so mal-adapted to the habitudes of the tender brain and opening faculties of childhood, as not merely often to allow, but even to inflict on the intellectual and moral being of the child a positive arrest of development? And if it be possible, what question can take precedence of one concerning the means of averting such a mischief? Pestalozzi intuitively saw and deeply felt the existence of this evil in his day, when, we may admit, it was somewhat more glaring than now. But Mr. Spencer truly characterizes Pestalozzi as, nevertheless, 'a man of partial intuitions, a man who had occasional flashes of insight, rather than a man of systematic thought;' as one who 'lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths he from time to time laid hold of;' and, at the same time, he accredits the great modern leader with a true idea of education, 'the due realization of [which] remains to be achieved.' How doubly important every rational attempt to achieve such realization—every well-considered effort to improve the method of the studies and the lessons—becomes but too apparent when we note the early age at which, as a rule, pupils must leave the schools, and the consequent brief space within which to evoke the faculties and to establish right intellectual habitudes. As an illustration drawn from the cities, where of course the school period is soonest ended, take the incidental fact disclosed by Mr. Randall in the New York School Report, that in that city the course of studies must be so framed as to allow of its completion, with many, at the preposterously early age of fourteen years—really the age at which study and mental discipline in the best sense just begin to be practicable!

In all directions, in the educational world, we are struck with the feeling and expression of a great need, though the questions as to just what it is, and just how to be met, have not been so distinctly answered. Let us agree with Mr. Currie, that 'Practical teaching can not be learned from books, even from the most exact "photographing" of lessons: it must be learned, like any other art or profession, by imitation of good models, and by practice under the eye of a master.' Yet it is true, however paradoxical the statement may appear, that practical teaching will gain quite as much when the school-books shall have been cast into the right form and method, as when all the teachers shall have been obliged to imitate good models, in a system of sound normal and model schools. What has given to the teaching of geometry its comparatively high educating value through centuries, and in the hands of teachers of every bent, caliber, and culture? What but the well-nigh inevitable, because highly perfected and crystalline method of one book—Euclid's Elements? Doubtless we want 'live' men and women, and those trained to their work, to teach: quite as imperatively we then want the right kind of text-books, in the pupils' hands, with which to carry forward their common work. If mind is the animating spirit, and knowledge the shapeless matter, still method—and to the pupil largely the method of the books—is the organizing force or form under which the knowledge is to be organized, made available and valuable. We shall suffer quite as much from any lack of the best form, as through lack of the best matter, or of the most earnest spirit. In education, the teacher is the fluent element, full of present resources; the book should be the fixed element, always bringing back the discursive faculties to the rigid line of thought and purpose of the subject. We have now the fluent element in better forwardness and command than the fixed. We have much of the spirit; an almost overwhelming supply of the matter; but the ultimate and best form is yet largely wanting, and being so, it is now our most forcible and serious want.

But, rightly understood, all that we have said in reference to the short-comings of our modes of educating the young, constitutes by no necessity any sort of disparagement of teachers, or of the conductors of our school system. If a re-survey of the ground seems to show very much yet to be done, it is in part but the necessary result of an enlarging comprehension as to what, all the while, should have been done. It is by looking from an eminence that we gain a broader prospect, and coincidently receive the conviction of a larger duty. Much that we deplore in present methods is the best to which investigation has yet conducted us, or that the slow growth of a right view among the patrons of schools will allow. Then, how hard it is to foresee, in any direction of effort, the effects our present appliances and plans shall be producing a score of years hence, or in the next generation—hardest of all to those whose work is directly upon that extremely variable quantity, mind! And in what other human business, besides that of education, are there not in like manner remissnesses and errors to point out? Justice, in truth, requires the acknowledgment that probably no other body of men and women can take precedence of the teaching class, in devotion to their work, in self-sacrifice, or, indeed, in willingness to adopt the new when it shall also commend itself to them as serviceable; while, in a world of rough, material interests and successes, like ours, the teacher's avocation still remains by far underpaid, and by parents, and even by the very pupils on whom its benefits are conferred, too rarely appreciated at anything like its just deserts.

If further extenuation of present short-comings should be deemed needful, the history of science—and let us not forget that this history is almost wholly a very recent one—presents it in abundant force. Though practical arts have led to sciences, yet they have never advanced far until after they have felt the reactive benefits of the sciences springing from them. Finally, in its highest phases, the art becomes subordinated to the science; thenceforth, the former can approach perfection only as the latter prepares its way. Education has advanced beyond this turning point: the art is henceforward dependent on the sciences. But a science of education is an outgrowth from the science of mind; and among sciences, the latter is one of the latest and most difficult. Thus, our investigations result, not in casting blame upon educators, but in revealing, we may say, what is still the intellectual 'situation' of the most cultivated and advanced nations. We have our place still, not at any sort of consummation, but at a given stage in a progress. And still, as ever in the past, the things that in reality most closely touch our interests are farthest removed from our starting-points of sense and reason, and by a necessity of the manner and progress of our knowing, are longest in being found. And in this we have at least the assurance that the perfection of our race is to occur by no sudden bound or transformation, but by a toilsome and patient insight and growth.

Granting, however, all that has now been said in palliation of existing defects in education, that the whole business is a thing remote from immediate interests, and not less so from immediate perceptions and reasonings—a thing that, to all eyes capable of seeing in it something more than so many days devoted to spelling, penmanship, and arithmetic, begins at once to recede from the vision, and to lie in the hazy distance, obscure and incomprehensible—granting all this, and yet any one who realizes what education is, a formative and determining process, that for so many years is to operate persistently upon the plastic and intrinsically priceless mind, will assuredly be surprised in view of the actually existing indifference about questions as to the method or methods by which the work can most fully and satisfactorily be accomplished. We have enacted laws, built school-houses, provided libraries, employed teachers, and in a tolerable degree insisted on the attendance of pupils, duly equipped with treatises of knowledge. We have lavished money on a set of instrumentalities, more or less vaguely considered requisite to insure qualification of the young for active life, and the perpetuity of the national virtue and liberty. What we, in America, however, have least essayed and most needed, has been to get beneath the surface of the great educational question; to look less after plans of school buildings, and the schemes of school-districts and funds, and more into the structure of the lessons and studies, and the relationships, applications, and value of the ideas secured or attempted during the daily sessions of the school classes. It will be a great day for us, when our principals and schoolmasters cease to put forward so prominently, at the end of the quarter or term, its smartest compositions and declamations, and when the over-generous public shall begin to attend on 'examinations' with a less allowance of eyes and ears, and a more vigorous and active use of the discriminating and judging powers of their own minds. In the externals of education, England, France, and Germany must take rank after some of the States of our country; but in the matter of seeking the right interior qualities and tendencies of instruction, they have been in advance of us; though just now the anti-progressive spirit of their governments is interposing itself to hinder the largest practicable results by the schools, and to what extent it will emasculate them of their best qualities, time only can show. Among our teaching class, the apathy is not confined to the ill-rewarded incumbents of the lower positions; with rare exceptions, it is even more decided at the other extreme of the scale. Of all the gentlemen holding place in our over-numerous college faculties, and commanding, one would expect, the very passes to the terra incognita of the human soul, how few seem disposed to prove their individual faculties by any thoroughgoing and successful incursions into unknown regions of the psychologic and pedagogic realm! The spirit of this should-be influential and leading class among us is one of serene assent in the iteration of the old steps, with of course some minor improvements, but with no attempts at a grand investigation and synthesis, such as gave to philosophy her new method, and to the world her growing fruitage of physical sciences.

If proof were needed of the comparative apathy under which we labor in respect to activities and progress in the more abstract and higher planes of intellectual effort, we find it in the contrast between the rewards meted out to the successful in this and in more material fields, in the general estimation awarded to the two classes of workers, and in the present expressions of the public bereavement when leading representatives of the two classes are removed from the scenes of their labors. Compare the quiet with which the ordinary wave of business interests and topic closed almost immediately over the announcement of the death of Horace Mann, with the protracted eulogy and untiring reminiscence of person, habits, work, and success, that, after the decease of William H. Prescott, kept the great wave of current topics parted for weeks—as if another Red Sea were divided, and the spirit of the historian, lingering to the chanting of solemn requiems, should pass over it dry-shod! For the great historian this was indeed no excess of honor, because grand human natures are worthy of all our praises; but was there not a painful want of respect and requital to the equally great educator? Prescott wrote admirable volumes, and in our libraries they will be 'a joy forever.' Horace Mann secured admirable means of instruction, made admirable schools, awakened to their best achievements the souls of our children; and his work is one to be measured by enlarging streams of beauty and joy that flow down through the generations. Would that, in the midst of so much justice as we willingly render to self-sacrifice and worth, we could less easily forget those whose labor it is directly to fit mankind for a higher nobleness, and for higher appreciation of it when enacted in their behalf!

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GUERDON.

Every life has been a battle That has won a noble guerdon— Every soul that furls its pinions In proud Fame's serene dominions, Wearily has borne its burden.

Through long years of toil and darkness, Years of trial and of sorrow— Days of longing, nigh to madness, Nights of such deep, rayless sadness, Hope herself scarce dared to-morrow.

Therefore bear up, O brave toiler In the world's benighted places! Though Truth's glory light your forehead, Purer souls than yours have sorrowed, Tears have flowed on angel-faces.

Therefore, bear up, O ye toilers! Teachers of the earth's dull millions. Keep Truth's glory on each forehead, And the way so blank and sorrowed Shall lead on to heaven's pavilions.

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LITERARY NOTICES

LEISURE HOURS IN TOWN. By the Author of 'The Recreations of a Country Parson.' Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1862.

'The Country Parson' is one of those writers whose hap it generally is to be overpraised by friendly reviewers, and unduly castigated by those who appreciate their short-comings. Incurably limited to a certain range of ideas, totally incapable of mastering the great circle of thought, unpleasantly egotistical, jaunty, and priggish, he is any thing but attractive to the large-hearted cosmopolite and scholar of broad views, while even to many more general readers, he appears as a man whom one would rather read than be. On the other hand, the generous critic, remembering that small minds must exist, and that great excellence may be developed within extremely confined bounds, will perhaps take our Parson cordially for just what he is, and do justice to his many excellencies.

And they are indeed many, the principal being a humanity, a sensitiveness to the sufferings of others, and a tenderness which causes keen regret that we can not 'just for once,' by a few amiable pen-strokes, give him nothing but praise, and thereby leave him, by implication, as one of the million ne plus ultra authors so common—in reviews. We can hardly recall a writer who to so much firmness and real energy, allies such warm sympathy for suffering in its every form. The trials and troubles of young people awake in him a pity and a noble generosity which, could they be impressed on the minds of all who control the destinies of youth, would make the world far happier than it is. Had he written only Concerning the Sorrows of Childhood, the Country Parson would have well deserved the vast 'popularity' which his writings have so justly won. 'Covenanting austerity' and Puritanical ultra-propriety are repulsive to him and, he deals them many a brave blow. He sees life as it is with singular shrewdness, catches its lights and shadows with artistic talent, and like all tender and genial writers, keenly appreciates humor, and conveys it to us either delicately or energetically, as the point may require. He writes well, too, always. Clear as a bell, always to the point, refined enough for the most fastidious gentleman and scholar, and yet intelligible and interesting to any save the very illiterate. If any young aspirant for literary honor wishes to touch the hearts of the people, and secure the first elements of popularity, we know of no living writer from whom he may draw more surely for success than from the Country Parson. Pity that when we come to higher criticism, to the appreciation of truly great and broadly genial views, he should fail as he does. Out of his canny Scotch-English corner of thought, he is sadly lost. Thus, in one place we have the following avowal, which is only not naif because evidently put in to please the prejudices of sympathetically narrow readers. After arguing, with most amusing ignorance of the very first principles of a general aesthetic education, that there is really no appeal beyond individual taste, or beyond 'what suits you,' he says:

'For myself, I confess with shame, and I know the reason is in myself, I can not for my life see any thing to admire in the writings of Mr. Carlyle. His style of thought and language is to me insufferably irritating. I tried to read Sartor Resartus, and could not do it.'

Almost in the same paragraph our Parson proclaims for all the world that 'no man is a hero to his valet,' and says that there are two or three living great men whom he would be sorry to see, since 'no human being can bear a too close inspection.' 'Here,' he declares, 'is a sad circumstance in the lot of a very eminent man: I mean such a man as Mr. Tennyson or Professor Longfellow. As an elephant walks through a field, crushing the crop at every step, so do these men advance through life, smashing, every time they dine out, the enthusiastic fancies of several romantic young people.'

Is this just? Is it true? The Parson, be it observed, speaks not solely for 'romantic young people,' but for 'you' and for himself. Had he read Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, he might there have learned that no man is a hero to his valet, not because he is not always great, but because that valet has a poor, flunkey, valet's soul. He who quotes such an aphorism as a truth, calls himself a valet.

But let the reader forget and forgive these drawbacks, which are rarely manifested, and bear in mind that our pleasantly gossiping, earnest, honest writer is, within his scope, one of the most delightful essayists in our English tongue. A man need not be a far-reaching thinker and scholar to be kind, good, and true, manly and agreeable. He may have his self-unsuspected limits and weaknesses, and yet do good service and be a delightful writer, cheering many a weary hour, and benefiting the world in many ways. Such a writer is the Country Parson, and as such we commend him to all who are not as yet familiar with his essays.

CADET LIFE AT WEST-POINT. By an Officer of the United States Army. With a Descriptive Sketch of West-Point, by BENSON J. LOSSING. Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham. 1862.

The American public has long needed a work on West-Point, and we have here a very clever volume, by one who has retained with great accuracy in his memory its predominant characteristics, and repeated them in a very readable form. Occasional stiffness and 'mannerism' are in it compensated for by many vivid pictures of cadet-life, and we can well imagine the interest with which every page will be perused by old graduates of the institution, and others familiar with its details.

We regret to say that, on the whole, the work has not left with us a pleasant impression of the system of instruction followed at West-Point. There appear to be too many studies, too little time to master them, and too much stress laid on trifles. Certainly a strictly military school must be different from others, and there can be no doubt that old officers know better than civilians how young men should be trained for the army. But we cannot resist the impression that if this work be truthful, the author has, often unconsciously, shown that there is much room for reform at West-Point.

A DISCOURSE ON THE LIFE, CHARACTER, AND POLICY OF COUNT CAVOUR. By VINCENZO BOTTA, Phil. D. New-York: G.P. Putnam, No. 532 Broadway. 1862.

This excellent address which, in its present form embraces 108 octavo pages, first delivered in the Hall of the New-York Historical Society, has since been repeated to one of the most cultivated audiences ever assembled in Boston, on both occasions eliciting the most cordial admiration from all who were so fortunate as to be present. Of the ability of the eminent Dr. Botta to write on this subject, it is almost needless to speak. A late member of the Italian Parliament, and formerly Professor of Philosophy in the College of Sardinia, intimately acquainted with the great men of modern Italy, as with those of the past, in their writings, and cast by personal experience amid stirring scenes, he is singularly well qualified to write of Cavour, for whom it was reserved to achieve, in a great measure, the work which the vain longings of an enslaved people, and the heroic efforts of centuries, had been unable to accomplish.' The work before us is, in fact, far more than its very modest title would lead us to infer. It is, in fact, a comprehensive and excellent history of all that great political revival of Italy of which Cavour was the centre—a work as admirable for scholarly clearness as for the evidently vast knowledge on which it is based. It is needless to say that we commend its perusal, with right good-will, to all who take the slightest interest in historical studies or in the politics of modern Europe.

THE KORAN. Translated by GEORGE SALE. With a Life of Mohammed. Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham. 1862.

Good authority in Arabic has declared that, after all the many versions of the Koran extant, there is none better than that by 'George Sale, Gentleman,' first published in 1734. We therefore welcome the present edition, and with it even the very old-fashioned Life of Mohammed given with it—a 'life' so very narrow in its views and antiquated in its expression, that it has acquired a certain relish as a relic or literary curiosity. We learn with pleasure that this is the first of a series of the Holy Books of every nation, to embrace translations of the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, the Edda, and many others. Thoreau suggested many years ago—we think in Walden—that such a collection should be published together for the world's use, and we rejoice to see his wish realized.

JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO. The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson. From entirely new materials, with numerous fac-similes. By Rev. HAMILTON W. PIERSON, D.D., President of Columbia College, Ky. New-York: Charles Scribner, No. 124 Grand street. Boston: A.K. Loring. 1862.

'The Private Life of Jefferson at Monticello' is too ambitious a title for a little work of 138 pages, octavo though they be. It is, however, an extremely valuable and interesting collection of anecdotes, fac-simile documents, and casual reminiscences of Thomas Jefferson, as preserved by Captain Edmund Bacon, now a wealthy and aged citizen of Kentucky, and who was for twenty years the chief overseer and business-manager of Jefferson's estate at Monticello. In it we see the author of the Declaration and the statesman as he was at home, generous, peculiar, and far-sighted. Very striking is the following reminiscence of Captain Bacon:

'Mr. Jefferson did not like slavery. I have heard him talk a great deal about it. I have heard him prophesy that we should have just such trouble with it as we are having now.'

A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. By J. CORDY JEAFFRESON. From the English edition. New-York; Rudd and Carleton. Boston: A. Williams and Company. 1862.

An amusing and interesting collection of anecdotes of English physicians of all ages, copious enough in detail, and well enough written to escape the charge of being a mere piece de manufacture and deserve place among the curiosities of literature. It is a work which will find place in the library of many a medico, and doubtless prove a profitable investment to the publisher. Hogarth's 'Undertaker's Arms' forms its appropriate and humorous vignette.

A POPULAR TREATISE ON DEAFNESS, ITS CAUSES AND PREVENTION. By Drs. LIGHTHILL. Edited by E. BUNFORD LIGHTHILL, M.D. With Illustrations. New-York: Carleton, Publisher, No. 413 Broadway, (late Rudd and Carleton.) Boston: A. Williams and Company. 1862.

Many persons suffer from defective hearing, or lose it entirely, from want of proper attention to the subject, or knowledge of the structure of the auricular organs. Thus the old often become incapable of hearing, yet let it pass without recourse to medical advice, believing the calamity to be inseparable from the due course of nature. The present work will, we imagine, prove useful both to practitioner and patient, and be the means of preserving to many a sense which, in value, ranks only next to that of sight.

* * * * *

EDITOR'S TABLE

If any one doubts that there is a powerful Southern influence in active operation in the Union, let him reflect over the movement in Washington 'for the purpose of reviving the Democratic party.' A more treacherous, traitorous, contemptible political intrigue was never organized in this country; and the historian of a future day will record with amazement the fact, that in the midst of a war of tremendous magnitude, when our national existence and our whole prosperity were threatened, the enemy were still allowed to plot and plan unharmed among us, under so shallow a disguise that its mockery is even more insulting than would be open, brazen opposition.

They have ingeniously taken advantage of the cry against the management of the war by McClellan, these covert disunionists, to form a McClellan party, and 'to support General McClellan's war policy'! A more ingenious and more iniquitous scheme of fomenting disunion could not be devised. By resolving to resist President Lincoln's moderate, judicious, and wise Message, while on the other hand they indorsed in express contrast McClellan, these treacherous disunion Democrats hoped to foment discord among us and thereby extend important aid to the enemy.

If the people would know where their foes are most active, let them look at home. Months ago they were warned that this very trick would be tried among us on behalf of the South. Months ago the Louisville Journal, in speaking of the manner in which Southern spies in the North were working by treachery, declared that 'they wound a net-work of influences around Congress and the powers that be, to retain men in the departments and to get others in—especially in the War Department—who were shining lights in the 'castles' of the K.G.C. for the avowed and express purpose of aiding the enemy by treacherously watching and conveying the secrets of the Government to the rebel army.'

Has not this accusation been abundantly proved? Does not the whole country know that traitors, 'democratic' traitors, have acted so successfully as spies that nothing has been kept secret from the enemy?

'Men were selected in the States and sent hundreds of miles to Washington, with strong influences to back them for this purpose. Better to carry out their project, they adroitly raised the 'No Party' cry, and by professing the most exalted and devoted loyalty, claimed the best places in which to betray the Union cause.' 'They claim a large number of the officers of companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions, and even have the audacity to whisper that General McClellan understands their programme and is not unfavorable to working up to it.'

Fortunately the great mass of the Northern people can not be affected by such traitorous tricks. There is but one party in the country, and that is the Union and the War party. Here and there a coward may waver and be frightened at the prospect of a Democratic opposition raising its head successfully to withstand the great onward movement, but his quavering voice will be unheard in the great cry for battle. We have accepted this war with all its fearful risks, and we will abide by it. We will be true to our principle of a united country, we will be true to our word to crush rebellion, and we will be true to our brave soldiers who are fighting manfully for the right. If we adhere steadfastly to these resolutions, we shall have no cause to dread traitors within or foes without the loyal Union.

When the World's Fair was held in 1851, in London, Punch, moved by the intensest spirit of British conceit, politely suggested that it would be a good plan to have placards containing the words, 'It is good to have the conceit taken out of us,' in all languages, hung all over the Exhibition—the intention being to courteously intimate to foreigners their general inferiority to John Bull. Certainly it is a good thing to have the conceit taken out of us—with the saving clause added by our contributor, H.P.L.—'so that it be not done with the corkscrew of ignorance,' or of conceit itself, as is generally the case when English wit attempts such extraction. Yet it must be admitted that in one thing Brother Jonathan has very fairly had the conceit taken out of him—which need not have been, had he only attended to the lessons taught him by John Bull and Jean Crapaud.

We refer to the matter of iron-clad vessels of war. England already had her 'Warrior,' and France her 'Gloire,' with all their resistant powers fully tested by experiment, and yet this war had progressed one year without finding our Government in possession of a single iron-mail steamer. Our foes, with many disadvantages, had more wit, and gained a victory the more galling, because in naval matters we of the North claim in ability to rank with England herself. Perhaps history contains no parallel instance of such negligence, such weakness. It is a matter calling for investigation and exemplary punishment. The guilt lies somewhere, and must be atoned for.

It is, however, interesting to remark, that in this, as in so many other matters, science is very rapidly changing the character of warfare. In a few years the war-navies of the world will consist almost exclusively of iron-mail steamers, since no other vessel can resist their attacks. Yet these steamers, though far more expensive than the old wooden hulks—so expensive that the 'Warrior' alone caused an outcry in England as a national burden—can readily sink one another in a few minutes by the use of the prow, or by returning to the primitive cock-fighting fashion in vogue among the iron-beaked galleys of earliest antiquity.

Will it pay, under such extraordinary conditions of naval warfare, to fight at all? will probably be the next question, asked. When a few minutes may witness the literal sinking of a few millions of dollars, tax-paying people will begin to stand aghast. The very idea of England and America playing a game of war with such checks, is as terrible as it is startling; it is like the suggestion to fight out a duel with columbiads, or as the two Kentucky engineers are said to have done, with full-steamed locomotives in collision. No patriotism, no wealth, no sacrifice, can endure such drafts as the loss of iron-clad navies would involve. War would eat itself up.

Possibly genius may contrive vulcanized gutta-percha or other resistant steamers which can neither be billed nor gaffed, shot nor slashed into sinking—vessels beyond all capacity for bathos, and no more to be persuaded into going under than was the black Baptist convert of David Crockett's story. What would naval battles amount to between such invulnerables? The Roman mythology had a fable of a hare which had received from the gods the gift that it was never to be caught, while at the same time there was a hound which was destined to catch every thing he pursued. One day the hound began to chase the hare; Jupiter settled the question by changing them both to stone. Paradoxes can only be solved by annihilation. When war becomes, by the aid of science, all-destructive, yet all-resistant, it must perish. History shows a gradual decrease of deaths in proportion to improvements in destruction of life. It is gratifying to reflect, that this war, by developing the full capacities of iron-plated vessels, has made a most important advance toward the impossibility of warfare.

It is amusing to see how decisively, yet with what preposterous ignorance of any thing like the true state of affairs in this country, the English press informs the public as to the 'ex or inexpediency' of President Lincoln's Message.

Not one of its editors has, as yet, had the grace or wit to discover that, simply as a precedent and as a record, it puts an entirely new face on the war, by manifesting a policy on the part of Government. Not one seems to appreciate that the slaveholder who, after its publication, loses his human chattels by the hap of war, has only himself to thank for his loss. If Cuffy runs away, when the army comes, by what earthly show of sense or justice does the master complain, who has refused to accept payment for him? Dans la guerre, comme a la guerre—in war-time, people must accept of war's chances.

To voluntarily offer to literally ease the fall of the enemy, as Mr. Lincoln has done, is a stretch of magnanimity which would be incomprehensible to any Old World rulers. How long would a Napoleon or a Wellington, unembarrassed by aught save the direst military conduct of a war, have hesitated to free the blacks, and win victory by every or any means? Mr. Lincoln has had more difficult and complicated elements to deal with. He has the enemy not only in the field, but by myriads at home, among those who pretend to urge on the war. He has them 'spying and lying' every where—promoting cabals in favor of a General, and exciting opposition, in order to eventually crush him—urging Southern rights and amnesties—deluding and confounding every thing. No wonder, after all, that the London Times, comprehending nothing, should have been so wildly asinine as to see in the Message only a bid to conciliate the South!—a timid, making-up measure. The Times is behind our times, and no wonder, when a Russell flounders about for it among us, becoming more densely befogged and confused with every new idea which entangles itself with his pre-conceived English opinions.

The country is rejoiced to hear that General Wool has ordered Russell away from Fortress Monroe. When the latter quits the country, it will be as though it had heard some very good news for our nation's benefit.

* * * * *

We were not at first disposed to believe in the many revolting stories so generally circulated, stating that the rebels had actually, in many instances, boiled the bodies of the Federal dead, for the purpose of obtaining the bones as relics. So frequently, however, has the story been repeated, and from so many trustworthy quarters, that we are reluctantly compelled to admit that such paragraphs as the following, from the Southern correspondence of the Boston Journal and Transcript, are very possibly founded in fact:

'Washington, 1st.

'The certainty that the graves of the members of the Chelsea and Boston Fusilier companies who fell in the advance on Bull Run, last July, have all been despoiled, with a probability that their bones were sent South, as relics, causes a deep feeling of indignation here.

'A citizen of Cambridge, Mass., who went to Bull Run to recover the remains of his brother, who belonged to a Boston company, gives a sad account of the sacrilege committed upon the graves of our soldiers by the rebels. About twenty of a Boston company and a Chelsea company had been buried near each other, but every skull had been taken away, and nearly all the principal bones of the bodies were gone. Some of the bodies had been dug out, and others pried out of the graves with levers, and in some the sleeves of uniforms were split to obtain the bones of the arms. It was described as a sickening spectacle.'

When we recall the savage, half-Indian nature of many of the lower Southern troops, and the threats of scalping and mutilating, in which they so often indulged; and when we remember that even in Richmond, the body of John Brown's son is still exposed, as the label on it intimates, not as a scientific preparation, but as a warning to Abolitionists; we see nothing extraordinary in such tales. If professors, men of science, and 'gentlemen' can wreak vengeance on the harmless bodies of the dead, and place a placard, expressing the hope that it may be thus with those who simply differ with them in political opinions, it is not to be wondered at that their rude and ignorant confreres should dig up dead bodies, and send the bones home as relics. It is just possible, however, that we do not appreciate the true motives of these Ghouls. When Scanderbeg died, his enemies fought among themselves to obtain the smallest fragment of his bones, believing that their possession would confer on the lucky wearer some of the courage of the great hero himself. And so it may be that these craven savages hope to get a little real Northern pluck and stubborn endurance.

* * * * *

We cheerfully find place for the following, dated from 'Willard's, Washington, D.C., April 2d:'

'DEAR CONTINENTAL: I know that the CONTINENTAL publishes nothing but original articles, and therefore beg you, at the request of your large and highly respectable Washington constituency, to find a shelf for the following, which is original with Bill H. Polk and the Louisville Dem'docrat:'

THE EXPERIENCES OF GEORGE N. SANDERS—HOW HE LEFT NASHVILLE, AND HOW HE HOPES TO GET TO RICHMOND.

'There is no one better known in the country as a scholar, a politician, and a wit, than Wm. H. Polk, of Tennessee. He has a plantation some forty miles from Nashville, lives comfortably, has a joke for every one, and is, withal, a resolute man in his opinions. He was the opponent of the evanescent Harris, who has disappeared mysteriously, and voted for by the cooeperationists in the election for Governor of that State. About a month ago notice came to him that he must leave the State: a notice which, however, he did not obey. His description of the terror of the rebels on the taking of Nashville is said to be supremely rich. Among other incidents, is one of peculiar interest to us Kentuckians, concerning the fate of the late Provisional Government.

'Colonel Polk, a few days before the arrival of our army at Nashville, and, indeed, before he heard of the fall of Fort Donelson, in going down the road from his farm, descried a fat, ragged, bushy-headed, tangled-mustached, dilapidated-looking creature, (something like an Italian organ-grinder in distress,) so disguised in mud as to be scarcely recognizable. What was his surprise, on a nearer approach, to see that it was the redoubtable George N. Sanders.

'George had met the enemy, and he was theirs—not in person, but in feeling. His heart was lost, his breeches were ragged, and his boots showed a set of fat, gouty toes protruding from them. The better part of him was gone, and gone a good distance.

''In the name of God, George, is that you?' said the ex-Congressman.

''Me!' said the immortal George; 'I wish it wasn't; I wish I was any thing but me. But what is the news here? is there any one running? They are all running back there,' (pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.)

''No,' said Mr. Polk; 'not that I know of. You needn't mind pulling up the seat of your pantaloons; I'm not noticing. What in the —— are you doing here, looking like a muddy Lazarus in the painted cloth?'

''Bill,' said George to the Tennesseean confidentially, and his tones would have moved a heart of stone: 'Bill, you always was a friend of mine. I know'd you a long while ago, and honored you—cuss me, if I didn't. I said you was a man bound to rise. I told Jimmy Polk so—me and Jimmy was familiar friends. I intended to get up a biographical notice of you in the Democratic Review, but that —— Corby stopped it I'm glad to see you; I'll swear I am.'

''Of course, old fellow,' said the charitable Tennesseean, more in pity of his tones than even of the flattering eloquence: 'but what is the matter?'

''Matter!' said George; 'the d——d Lincolnites have seized Bowling-Green, Fort Donelson, and have by this time taken Nashville. Why,' continued he, in a burst of confidence, 'when I left, hacks was worth a hundred dollars an hour, and, Polk, (in a whisper,) I didn't have a d——d cent.'

'The touching pathos of this last remark was added to by the sincere vehemence with which it was uttered, and the mute eloquence with which he lifted up a ragged flap in the rear of his person that some envious rail or brier had torn from its position of covering a glorious retreat.

''Not a d——d cent,' repeated he; 'and, Polk, I walked that hard-hearted town up and down, all day, with bomb-shells dropping on the street at every lamp-post—I'll swear I did—trying to borrow some money; and Polk, do you think, there wasn't a scoundrel there would lend any thing, not even Harris, and he got the money out of the banks, too?'

''No?' said Polk, who dropped in a word occasionally, as a sort of encourager.

''Bill,' repeated Sanders: 'Bill, I said you was a friend of mine—and a talented one—always said so, Bill. I didn't have a red, and I've walked forty-five miles in the last day, by the mile-stones, and I haven't had any thing to buy a bit to eat; and,' he added with impassioned eloquence, 'what is a cursed sight worse, not a single drop to drink.'

'This is complete. It is unnecessary to tell how the gallant and clever Tenneseean took the wayfarer home, gave him numerous, if not innumerable, drinks, and filled him with fruits of fields and flesh of flocks. When George was filled, however, he signified by numerous signs, and finally by words, that he wished the servants to leave the room. 'Polk,' said he, 'I knew you were a man with a heart in your bosom; I told 'em so. I said no better man than Bill Polk could be found. I told 'em so.'

''Told who so?' asked Mr. Polk, rather surprised at the sudden and mysterious language, accompanied by the removal of the servants.

''Mr. Polk,' said Sanders, 'I want your horses and carriage for a time.'

''Certainly, Mr. Sanders, if you wish them.'

''Mr. Polk,' said George, 'I do not appear before you in any ordinary character to-day; I am clothed with higher authority; I am an emissary.'

'The tone and manner indicated something fearful—perhaps to arrest his host.

''I am an emissary,' repeated Mr. Sanders, speaking in very large capitals, 'from the State of Kentucky, and hope to be received as such. The fact is,' continued he, coming down to the level of familiar conversation, 'I left the Provisional Government of Kentucky a mile or so back, on foot, finding its way southwardly, and I demand your horses and carriage in the name of that noble State.'

'Of course, the carriages were harnessed up at once, and Mr. Sanders proceeded to bring the Provisional Government to Mr. Polk's house.

'How shall we describe this part? Hon. George W. Johnson, as much a Clay man as the sacred soil of Tennessee could afford, but still preserving his light and active step; McKee, late of the Courier, following; Walter N. Haldeman, with all his industry and perseverance, trying to keep up with his associate; and Willis B. Machen, vigorous, active, slightly sullen, but in earnest, with every boot he drew out of the snowy, muddy soil giving a groan of fatigue. Imagine them safely ensconced at Mr. Polk's, on their road South.

''Mr. Sanders,' said the Governor with dignified suavity, after the walnuts and wine, 'claimed to be an acquaintance of yours, and we were very glad to send him forward.'

'The Honorable Governor maintained throughout that easy, self possessed manner which characterizes the gentleman.

'The emissary—for he ought to be so known—shortly after suggested to the Provisional Government that he was 'broke,' and wished to represent the Seventh Congressional District of Kentucky, that is, the Louisville District: 'For,' said he, in his persuasive, confidential tones, 'that is the only way I know of for a man without money to get to Richmond.'

'A session was at once held of the State Council, and it is our pleasure to record that Mr. Sanders is now authorized by the Provisional Government to proceed to Richmond and represent our interest in the Rebel Congress, vice H.W. Bruce, removed or resigned.

'Mr. Polk at this time addressed the new Congressman, saying that he had a particular favor to ask.

''Bill,' said George to his host, speaking out of a full heart and a full chest: 'Bill, you are a boy after my own heart; whatever request you make I grant.'

''It is only a trifle,' said Mr. Polk, 'which you can easily grant, and which will please you.'

''It is granted,' interrupted the grateful Sanders.

''I may be arrested,' continued Mr. Polk, 'within a few minutes, for disagreeing with some measures which Governor Harris has urged upon the people.'

''Never mind that,' said the impetuous Sanders; 'I'll stand by you.'

''All I want,' continued Mr. Polk, 'is for you to return to Nashville as a hostage for my wife and family.'

''Bill Polk,' said George gravely, but firmly, 'you are a man I love; I love you, and I love your wife and family; but if ever I go back to Nashville, may I be d——d!'

'Of course, there was no reply to this, and the redoubtable George and the Provisional Government soon went on their way rejoicing.

'We do not pretend to give this in the language or manner of Mr. Polk, which is said to be inimitable; neither do we claim him as a 'Union man.' He has remained quietly at home, and taken no part in the contest; but we are indebted to him, or to some one who has reported it as coming from him, for a genial and laughable account of the exit of what once promised to be very injurious to our State, and still more for his characterization of that wise, pushing, incomprehensible character, George N. Sanders, Member of Congress from the Seventh District of Kentucky to Richmond.'

We have long wondered what became of Sanders, the illustrious author of that excellent term, 'the Tobacco States,' which so exactly defines the Southern border. The last time we saw him was while talking with Arctic Dr. Hayes, a few days before his departure for the Unknown Sea. Just then Sanders went by arrayed in all the glory of a perfectly new pareil partout suit of spring clothes. Days passed by, and we heard of him as frantically endeavoring to galvanize the C.S.A. at Montgomery, Alabama, into faith in his exceeding Southern proclivities. It was up-hill work, as we were told—almost as hard as several other small renegade literati and politicians found it, when they, too, went over into Dixie about a year ago. In vain did George N. Sanders utter the largest size secession words—no office rewarded him, no foreign mission fell into the fat fingers of the deserter. The change from the comfortable quarters of the New-York Hotel to hurried war-marches and wild retreats must have been indeed trying; only that so many politicians have of late fared quite as badly, that pity would seem wasted. Meanwhile we would suggest, as a good question for youthful democratic debating-societies: 'When we catch the enemy, what shall be done with George N. Sanders?'

* * * * *

Notwithstanding our war—to say nothing of our want—we have had the OPERA this winter; had it in great variety and perfection, and, as many a reader can testify, with by no means thin houses. Grau has been busy—the most courteous and indefatigable polyglot and active of impresarios, with the good-natured Gosche, heralding a troupe of all the stars, D'Angri, Hinckley, Kellogg, Brignoli, Susini, and all the rest, including divers new singing birds. Maretzek has led, and we have had a range from Mozart to Verdi, which was, on the whole, well-chosen. We have had Brignoli singing, if possible, better, and acting, if possible, worse than usual—a nightingale imprisoned in a pump; Mme. D'Angri, with her embonpoint voice, pouring forth like an inexhaustible fountain of Maraschino; Miss Hinckley, pleasant and pretty as ever, steadily singing her way star-ward; and Susini, who combines German strength with Italian fire—a true Tedesco Italiana-zato. Something, too, we would say of Mancusi, whose clear and rapid execution, in Figaro, and whose real Spanish majo rollicking style of acting were quite spirited enough, even for that very spirited part. Formes was indeed under the impression that he himself was the Figaro Figarorum, the incarnate half-Spanish ideal of that wonderful barbaresque conception; but then, the Formes Figaro was 'developed from the depths of his subjective moral consciousness,' whereas the Figaro of a Southern European is the thing itself—like Charles Mathews playing the part of Charles Mathews, or like the Greek comedian's imitation of a pig's voice, by pinching a veritable pork-let, which he bore concealed within his mantle.

Perhaps no character is so little appreciated by Anglo-Saxon audiences as this of Figaro. To them he is little more than a buffoon. To Southern Europe, he is the bold, prompt, shrewd, popular ideal, suiting himself by craft to every superior, regarding all things with a shoulder-shrugging, quizzical philosophy; a democratic Mephistopheles; a lurking devil, equalizing himself, and the people with him, by wit and insolence, with nobility itself. Among the Latin races, as in the East, such Figaros often rise, like Oliver le Daim, to power, and the people understand it.

Fast-Day, in Boston, was operatically feted with 'the light and melodious Martha,' by that arch-thief of melodies, Flotow. Would not—considering the day in question—I Puritani have been more appropriate for 'a day of fasting and prayer'? It has already been discovered (by the sagacious Ullman, we believe) that the Huguenots was appropriate to sacred concerts. A friend suggests that Masaniello for high mass, and Don Giovanni for St. John's day would be a great advance in these dramatic unities.

* * * * *

We are indebted to a new contributor for the following sketch:

We are all familiar with Hayden's dinner-party, and the Comptroller of Stamps, and Charles Lamb's 'Diddle diddle dumpling,' and 'Allow me to look at the gentleman's phrenological development.' I am always reminded by it of a circumstance which occurred between the Rocky and Alleghany mountains. A certain witty professor of a certain Western college, had been invited to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Society of Athens—not the capital of Greece, nor the Athens of America, but a sort of no-town, without even the advantages of an established groggery, or mutual admiration society. The poet, not having attained that celebrity which is incompatible with keeping one's word with small towns, small lyceums, and small profits, and the roads not being stopped up, in short, 'Providence permitting, and nothing happening to prevent,' the poet made his appearance at the proper hour, like any ordinary mortal, and acquitted himself with such rhythmical eloquence, such keen, silvery humor, as brought the house down, and himself vice versa.

The audience having dispersed in a state like the afflatus of laughing-gas, the poet and a privileged clique proceeded to the house of the Baptist elder, to prolong the night with metaphysical wassail. From the froth of poetry, they rose to a contemplation of the old classics; Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, rising grandly from their dust, ensphered in vibratory eloquence.

The elder, whose, education had been accomplished simply by a New Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awathy?' The professor, giving him one look, to be sure of his sanity, and a second to be sure of his obtusity, answered gravely, above a convulsion of laughter: 'Hi-awathy was a genius!'

Athens has since then grown to be some town, with an aristocracy composed of a few old maids, who attain the distinction from being the oldest inhabitants, and a poet of its own. The latter has immortalized himself by a poem in the Chatterton obsolete style, on 'Ye Cobwebs in my Attick,' supposed to be an 'Allegory on my Brain,' and from having once astonished one of the very elite of the aristocracy by requesting her to lend him her book, 'On the Dogs of Venice.' Her ladyship assured him that she was not in possession of the volume; but, on his insisting, conducted him to her library, (six shelves, one and a half by four,) where he seized upon a moth-eaten volume, illustrated on the front page by a man of obesity, clad in very flowing robes, and an immense crown, in the act of casting a ring into a black little stream ornamented by six rushes and two swans, with this inscription beneath: 'Venice wedding the Adriatic through the person of her Doge.' A wit having suggested to this votary of the muse that he should compose an epic on the royal canine of Venice, he is now zealously devoting himself to the task, as the literary public are respectfully invited to observe.

The Athenians were not long since electrified by the patriotic eloquence of an itinerant Methodist evangelist, who wound up a burst of rhapsodical patriotism with this, climax: 'If this glorious Union is dissolved, what will become of the American Eagle, that splendid bird with 'E Pluribus Unum' in his bill, the shafts of Peace in his talons, and 'Yankee Doodle' tied to his tail?'

One more bon mot, and I leave Athens to the plaudits of an appreciative public.

The Presbyterian divine, running his thin fingers through his thin hair, exclaimed, in a thin voice: 'Brethren! ye are the salts of the earth.' 'The salts,' though as old as the Gospel, have not yet lost their freshness.'

Exit Athens and fresh salt.

* * * * *

YE KNIGHT OF YE GOLDEN CYRCLE.

A veray parfit gentil knight, Thatte of ye Golden Cyrcle hight, One day yridden forth; But ne to finde a fayre mayde, He went on errants of his trade, To fight or filch ye North.

He was a wight of grisly fronte, And muckle berd ther was upon 't, His lockes farre down did laye: Ful wel he setten on his hors, Thatte fony felaws called Mors, For len it was and grai.

Ilk knight he hadde ne vizor on, His busynes were then undone, All time was for attack; More than, he hadde ne mail, either, But armed with a revolver, He like-Wise chawed toback.

He sayde his was a mightie hond, Ne better in ye Southron lond To yearn anly battail: Mony a dewel hadde he fought, And put his foe alway to rout, Withouten ony fail.

Eke fro his sheld ther stroke the ee, These letters golden, 'F.F.V.,' Thatte mony a clerk did pain; Which guessed it, 'Forte Fuor Vi!' The people giggled, 'l' your ey; It's Fume and Fight in Vain!'

Eftsoons hire cloke ye awful Night, Yspreaden roun ilk warrihour wight, Ye glasse of chivalrie; But nothing daunt, he kept his course, As well as mote his sorry hors, Farre to the North countree.

And thus in darkesse all yclad, He hied him, gif he weren mad, O'er feld and eke through thicket; When 'Stop, by God!' some one began, 'You'er mine—'or any other man!'' Jesu! a Yankee picket!

'Gent knight, yclept of Golden Cyrcle! Why in the devil don't one dirk all? Where now's your chivalrie?' 'Goode sir,' quod he, 'twas ne for fight I hied me out ilk murkie night, It was for poulterie!'

'Wal, damn your 'poulterie'—and you! Such deed no generous knight would do! So I mote thee deter! I'll show thee, though, the coop, sir knight, Where chickens such as thee are blight— You are my prisoner!'

Mony maydens weren grieved— Cleopatras, slouchy-sleeved— Darksome maydes of work all; And mony felaws of much might Ydrink the hades of ye Knight Of ye grete Golden Cyrcle.

We much fear that it may be said of the chief cavalier of the Golden Circle, what the old German lanzknecht, in Rabelais, said of the Gascon adventurer: 'The knight pretends that he wants to fight, but is much more inclined to steal; therefore, good people, look out for your property.'

* * * * *

The following story, it is averred, can be vouched for, to any reasonable extent, by a large crowd of witnesses.

DEAR CONTINENTAL: Possibly you would not give 'a Continental dime' for that which I am about to pen. Possibly, too, you may damn it into the waste-basket. I have often heard of a 'Continental damn'—it never occurred to me before what the article really was. Dante has, I know, provided a corner for those who were in-continentally condemned; but it was reserved for you to abridge the word, and so make a vice of a virtue!