'DILLY JONES' is one of those unfortunate wights 'just whose luck' it is never to succeed in any thing they undertake. In a state of 'mellow' mental abstraction, while lamenting that the trade of one's early days might not likewise be the trade of one's latter years, he unconsciously utters his thoughts aloud:

''SAWING wood's going all to smash,' said he, 'and that's where every thing goes what I speculates in. This here coal is doing us up. Ever since these black stones was brought to town, the wood-sawyers and pilers, and them soap-fat and hickory-ashes men, has been going down; and, for my part, I can't say as I see what's to be the end of all their new-fangled contraptions. But it's always so; I'm always crawling out of the little end of the horn. I began life in a comfortable sort of a way; selling oysters out of a wheel-barrow, all clear grit, and didn't owe nobody nothing. Oysters went down slick enough for a while, but at last cellars was invented, and darn the oyster, no matter how nice it was pickled, could poor Dill sell; so I had to eat up capital and profits myself. Then the 'pepree-pot smoking' was sot up, and went ahead pretty considerable for a time; but a parcel of fellers come into it, said my cats wasn't as good as their'n, when I know'd they was as fresh as any cats in the market; and pepree-pot was no go. Bean-soup was just as bad; people said kittens wasn't good done that way, and the more I hollered, the more the customers wouldn't come, and them what did, wanted tick. Along with the boys and their pewter fips, them what got trust and didn't pay, and the abusing of my goods, I was soon fotch'd up in the victualling line—and I busted for the benefit of my creditors. But genius riz. I made a raise of a horse and saw, after being a wood-piler's prentice for a while, and working till I was free, and now here comes the coal to knock this business in the head.' . . . 'I WONDER if they wouldn't list me for a Charley? Hollering oysters and bean-soup has guv' me a splendid woice; and instead of skeering 'em away, if the thieves were to hear me singing out, my style of doing it would almost coax 'em to come and be took up. They'd feel like a bird when a snake is after it, and would walk up, and poke their coat collars right into my fist. Then, after a while, I'd perhaps be promoted to the fancy business of pig ketching, which, though it is werry light and werry elegant, requires genus. 'Tisn't every man that can come the scientifics in that line, and has studied the nature of a pig, so as to beat him at canoeuvering, and make him surrender 'cause he sees it ain't no use of doing nothing. It wants larning to conwince them critters, and it's only to be done by heading 'em up handsome, hopping which ever way they hop, and tripping 'em up genteel by shaking hands with their off hind leg. I'd scorn to pull their tails out by the roots, or to hurt their feelin's by dragging 'em about by the ears. But what's the use? If I was listed, they'd soon find out to holler the hour and to ketch the thieves by steam; yes, and they'd take 'em to court on a railroad, and try 'em with biling water. They'll soon have black locomotives for watchmen and constables, and big bilers for judges and mayors. Pigs will be ketched by steam, and will be biled fit to eat before they are done squealing. By and by, folks won't be of no use at all. There won't be no people in the world but tea-kittles; no mouths, but safety-valves; and no talking, but blowing off steam. If I had a little biler inside of me, I'd turn omnibus, and week-days I'd run from Kensington to the Navy Yard, and Sundays I'd run to Fairmount.''

There is a world of wisdom in the syllabus, or 'argument,' prefixed to each sketch; but for these we must refer the reader to the volume itself. The DOGBERRYS too are as wise as their 'illustrious predecessor,' and are quite as profuse of advice to 'the plaintiffs' who fall into their hands. Take a single specimen: 'Take keer—don't persume; I'm a 'fishal functionary out a-ketching of dogs. You mustn't cut up because it's night. The mayor and the 'squires has gone to bed; but the law is a thing that never gets asleep. After ten o'clock the law is a watchman and a dog-ketcher; we're the whole law till breakfast's a'most ready.' 'You're a clever enough kind of little feller, sonny; but you ain't been eddicated to the law as I have; so I'll give you a lecture. Justice vinks at vot it can't see, and lets them off vot it can't ketch. When you want to break it, you must dodge. You may do what you like in your own house, and the law don't know nothing about the matter. But never go thumping and bumping about the streets, when you are primed and snapped. That's intemperance, and the other is temperance. But now you come under the muzzle of the ordinance; you're a loafer.' One of these ''fishal functionaries' justifies extreme physical means in 'captivating obstropolous vagroms' both by reason and distinguished precedent: 'Wolloping is the only way; it's a panacea for differences of opinion. You'll find it in history books, that one nation teaches another what it didn't know before by wolloping it; that's the method of civilizing savages; the Romans put the whole world to rights that way; and what's right on the big figger must be right on the small scale. In short, there's nothing like wolloping for taking the conceit out of fellows who think they know more than their betters.' 'And so forth, et cetera,' as may be ascertained on a perusal of the volume.

LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LATE WILLIAM ABBOTT: THIRD NOTICE.—This most entertaining manuscript-volume, from which we have already drawn so largely for the entertainment of our readers, has not been published in America, as it was designed to have been, owing partly as we learn to the fact that, through 'something like unfair dealing' toward the widow of the writer, a copy of half the volume had been transmitted to England, parts of which have already reached this country in the pages of a London magazine. We had the pleasure to anticipate by a month or two the best portions even of these printed chapters; and we proceed to select passages from other divisions of this interesting auto-biography, which were written out after a duplicate copy of the earlier chapters had been transmitted to the London publisher. Mr. ABBOTT (aside from the society to which he had the entree on account of his professional merits,) was a personal favorite with many of the most eminent personages among the English nobility, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy; but we never find him illustrating his own importance by the narration of the social anecdotes or careless table-talk of his distinguished friends, as too many of his contemporaries have done. He was honored with the cordial friendship of the EARLS GLENGALL and FITZHARDING; and 'at their tables,' he writes, 'I was a frequent guest, where I constantly met with society embracing the highest rank and most distinguished talent in England. I refrain, from obvious reasons, from mentioning names; but I may say that if there was ever a class of persons who confer honor upon the society in which they mingle, it is the Aristocracy of Great-Britain. There is a delicacy and forbearance in their manner, and that air of perfect equality which is so indicative of the accomplished gentleman and scholar. COLMAN was a very frequent guest at these dinners, and was, with the exception perhaps of LORD ALVANLEY, one of the most brilliant diners-out in London.' This testimony, let us remark in passing, in favor of the ease and simplicity of the really high-born gentlemen of England, is confirmed by all Americans who have been well received in English society. The reader will especially remember the tribute paid on this point by Mr. SANDERSON, the accomplished 'American in Paris,' in his 'Familiar Letters from London,' in these pages. But we are standing before Mr. ABBOTT. In Edinburgh 'there lies the scene:'

'I AGAIN visited Edinburgh at the close of the Covent-Garden season, and received the same undiminished hospitality as on a former occasion. I established an intimacy with the BALLANTINES of celebrated SCOTT memory. MATTHEWS was indebted to JOHN BALLANTINE for his famous old Scotch woman, and he certainly rivalled his preceptor in the quaint and dry humor with which he narrated that most amusing story. The management of the Edinburgh Theatre rested in the hands of Mr. MURRAY. He was the only son of the MURRAY formerly of Covent-Garden Theatre, who was one of the most chaste and impressive actors I ever saw. His Adam, in 'As you Like it,' was really the perfection of the art. Mrs. HENRY SIDDONS, in whom the property was vested at the death of her husband, was, fortunately for me, residing with her charming family in Edinburgh, and I was a constant guest at her table. Her manners were fascinating in the extreme, and a greater compliment could not well be paid than in having the entree to a family so intellectual in their resources, and so perfectly amiable in disposition. A very amusing and agreeable club was got up by a party of young advocates. Delightful it was, from its very absurdity; in fact the nonsense of men of sense is an admirable couch to repose upon. Our numbers were limited, and embraced some of that powerful intellect which the modern Athens possesses in so eminent degree. Mr. MILES ANGUS FLETCHER, Mr. ANDERSON, Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON, and a son of the late and brother of the present Lord MEADOWBANK, were among those I knew intimately, and whose varied talents gave life and soul to the society. We scorned the artificial light that illumined our midnight orgies, and seldom separated before the beams of the sun were dancing in our festive cups.'

The following account of the first Theatrical Fund Dinner, an entertainment of which we hear so much latterly in England, with the defence of actors against the charges of extravagance and improvidence so often brought against them, will possess interest for American readers:

'THE Covent-Garden Theatrical Fund about this period was languishing for want of support; and the great importance to be derived from an increase of its means seriously occupied the attention of the committee. We naturally looked upon it as affording an opportunity of increasing the respectability of the profession, and the means of preventing those individual appeals to the public from our impoverished brethren. There is a popular delusion that actors form a class in which the most reckless profusion is displayed; that the habits of their lives are necessarily dissipated, and that in the enjoyments of the luxuries of to-day, the wants and cares of to-morrow are entirely lost sight of. I do not believe in these sweeping assertions. I will not pretend to say that actors are exempt from the frailties of humanity; nay, I will admit that their course of life perhaps exposes them to greater temptations; but this fact ought rather to operate in their favor, than to tell so powerfully against them. I would ask those persons who are so inimical to the profession of an actor, whether longevity is the result of dissipation; and if they will take the trouble of examining, they will find that actors in general are extremely long-lived. There is a want of thriftiness in their composition, I grant; and fortunately for them the same charge is brought against the poet; the man whose high intellectual powers prevent his descending to the level of this work-day world. But will any one take the trouble of explaining from whence the actor is to derive his wealth? We will imagine that his salary is respectable, that it is regularly paid, and that there is no excuse for his being in debt. And now take into consideration that he has an appearance to maintain; that he has a family to support; and then what becomes of the opportunity of laying by a modicum even, to guard against the decline of life when the 'winter daisies' shall crown his head, and a new race of performers have started up and driven the others from their posts? We have some rare instances of very large fortunes being made and retained by members of the profession it is true, but they were instances of dazzling genius, or had the world's belief that they possessed it. I will take names within the memory of us all: Mrs. SIDDONS, Mr. KEMBLE, Miss O'NEIL, the 'Young Roscius,' and the late Mr. LEWIS; and I will add to that list men of accomplished talents and great honor to the profession; YOUNG, BANNISTER, MUNDEN, BRAHAM, WROUGHTON, LISTON, HARLEY, JOHNSTONE, POWER, JONES; and I am sure the reader will believe me when I state, that I heartily wish I could place my own name in the list. Take the members of any other profession, however honorable, limit their numbers and means to the same proportion, and I ask if you would be enabled to produce a greater list of independent persons. The great advantages to be derived from a Theatrical Fund are here I trust made apparent; and after many suggestions, I believe it fell to the lot of CHARLES TAYLOR to propose an annual public dinner; and it proved a most fortunate idea. The first great point to be obtained was a patron, and then a president for the dinner. Our application met with immediate success, and His Royal Highness the PRINCE REGENT condescendingly gave his name at the head of our undertaking, accompanied by a solid mark of his favor in the donation of one hundred pounds. We then had the gracious consent of the DUKE OF YORK to be our President, aided by his Royal brothers KENT and SUSSEX. The list of vice-presidents embraced many of the most distinguished noblemen and gentlemen in the country. In what an amiable point of view do the Royal Princes place themselves before the public in so thoroughly identifying themselves with the many interesting charities to which London gives birth! The grateful spirit of joyousness which they invariably displayed on these occasions, gave an interest to the festive scenes, and confirmed many a heart in its loyalty to their illustrious house. The late DUKE OF GORDON sat on the right hand of the Royal President, and favored the company with a song, which greatly surprised them, and elicited a general encore, and with which, with great good humor, he immediately complied. MATTHEWS always held a conspicuous position at these dinners, and made a point of giving an original song, selected from his forth-coming entertainment. The amount collected at our first dinner was extraordinary; no less a sum than one thousand eight hundred and seventy pounds. The Drury-Lane Fund in the following year adapted our plan of the dinner, and both these institutions now annually derive a very large sum from the volunteer subscriptions of the Friends of the Drama. The same Royal patronage is most graciously continued by her present Majesty, and Royalty continues to preside at the festival. With this accumulation of patronage the actor may fearlessly look forward to the close of his mortal career without the dread of eleemosynary contributions, and also feel the proud gratification that he has personally contributed to support so interesting a Fund.'

As a specimen of Mr. ABBOTT'S stock-breaking and gambling experiences, we quote the subjoined passages:

'A friend of mine connected with the Stock Exchange on one occasion pointed out to me the great advantage of occasionally purchasing five thousand consuls on time, knowing that I had capital unemployed; the certain profits were placed before me in such an agreeable point of view, that I could not resist the bait. In the course of two days I received a check for fifty pounds, a sum by no means unpleasant, considering that I had not advanced one farthing. The natural consequence was that I repeated the dose with various success until I was ultimately well plucked. I sustained a loss of one thousand pounds. I then began to be very uneasy, until I fortunately discovered that by one coup I had made two hundred pounds. My broker had waddled of course, without being able to make up his differences. The parties of whom I had purchased, through my agent, refused to pay me, as they had no knowledge of a third person, and were themselves considerable sufferers by the aforesaid broker. I could not understand the justice of this measure, for I had always paid my losses to the moment; so I walked to Temple-Bar, pulled off my hat most gracefully to that venerable arch, and vowed never again to pass it in the pursuit of ill-gotten wealth. I had always a perfect horror of gambling, and little imagined I was pursuing it in a wholesale manner. To satisfy my inordinate curiosity, for sight-seeing, I have twice or thrice in my life passed the threshhold of a gambling-house in London, but never felt the least personal desire to embark the smallest sum, although keenly alive to the dangerous excitement in others. On one of these occasions it fell to my lot to witness a most affecting and trying scene. The names of the parties came to my knowledge afterward, which from delicacy I of course suppress. A gentleman had for some years been separated from his wife, in consequence of infidelity on her part with a man of high fashion, an officer of the Guards. An action and divorce ensued; but two children whom he had previous to this unfortunate event, he refused to acknowledge, thus endeavoring to put the stain of illegitimacy upon them. Years rolled on, and the father and son never met. Rouge-et-Noir was the fashionable game of the day, and Pall-Mall and St. James-street swarmed with gambling-houses. Two gentlemen were quarrelling upon a point, each accusing the other of taking the stake. The younger man was the officer on guard that day, and consequently in uniform. High words ensued; cards were exchanged; and in one moment, from the most ungovernable rage, they became motionless as statues. The silence was at length interrupted by an explanation of 'By Heaven! my son!' This remark was made from the impulse of the moment, and probably struck a chord in the parent's heart that let loose all his affections. They retired to another apartment; explanations ensued; and a reconciliation was the result.'

Elsewhere Mr. ABBOTT describes the gambling-houses of Paris, 'those dens of iniquity,' as he terms them. 'The varied scenes of frantic joy and human debasement,' he writes, 'which I witnessed at FRASCATI'S, were truly appalling. The extremes of excitement were as powerfully exhibited in the loser of twenty francs as in the man who had lost his twenty thousand.' The annexed sketch of the lamented career of poor CONWAY, who will be 'freshly remembered' by many of our readers in the Atlantic cities, is authentic in every particular. It is not without its lesson, in more regards than one:

'I find I have neglected to mention an actor, who stood sufficiently forward, both by his position and his misfortunes, to be entitled to a respectful notice; I mean Mr. CONWAY. He was said to be the illegitimate offspring of a distinguished nobleman; but whether his own pride prevented his making advances, and he was resolved to lay the foundation of his own fame and fortune, or whether he met with a check upon his natural feelings from one who was bound to support him, I know not; but, gifted as he was with a commanding person, a most gentlemanlike deportment, and advantages peculiarly adapted for the stage, it is no wonder that the histrionic art held forth inducements and hopes of obtaining a brighter position than any other career open to him, without the aid of pecuniary means, and the patronage which was withheld from him. He made his appearance in 1813, the season previous to KEAN, in the character of 'Alexander the Great.' He met with a very flattering reception, and produced a great effect upon the fair sex. Indeed, the actors, who are upon these occasions lynx-eyed, could not avoid their remarks upon a certain Duchess, who never missed one of his performances, and appeared to take the deepest interest in his success. CONWAY was upward of six feet in height. He was deficient in strong intellectual expression, yet he had the reputation of being very handsome. His head was too small for his frame, and his complexion too light and sanguine for the profound and varied emotions of deep tragedy. There was a tinge of affectation in his deportment, which had the effect of creating among many a strong feeling of prejudice against him. His bearing was always gentlemanly, and with the exception of a slight superciliousness of manner, amiable to every body; and his talent, though not of the highest order, was still sufficiently prominent to enable him to maintain a distinguished position. And yet this man, with so little to justify spleen, was literally, from an unaccountable prejudice, driven from the stage by one of the leading weekly journals, edited by a gentleman whose biting satire was death to those who had the misfortune to come under his lash. In complete disgust, he retired from the boards, and filled the humble situation of prompter at the Haymarket-Theatre, but afterward left for the United States, where he became a great favorite. But the canker was at his heart. He again quitted the stage, and prepared himself for the Church; but there again he was foiled. The ministers of our holy religion refused to receive him, not from any moral stain upon his character, but because he had been an actor! What is to become of the priesthood, who in the early periods were the only actors, and selected scriptural subjects for representation? He left in a packet for Savannah, overwhelmed with misery and disappointment. 'Ushered into the world by a parent who would not acknowledge him; driven out of it in the belief that he was the proscribed of Heaven!' At the moment they were passing the bar at Charleston, he threw himself overboard. Efforts were made to save him; a settee was thrown over for him to cling to until they could adopt more decisive measures for his rescue. He saw the object; but his resolution was taken. He waved his hand, and sunk to rise no more. I have reason to believe, that the gentleman to whom I have alluded as having made such fearful use of his editorial powers, felt deep remorse when the news of his ill-timed death arrived. He also is now no more! Poor CONWAY! Had he possessed more nerve, he might still have triumphed over the unkindness of his fate:

'Who has not known ill fortune, never knew Himself or his own virtue.'

In the same chapter we find a bit of artistical grouping in a historical picture, which the reader will agree with us is well worthy of preservation:

'The world never witnessed such powerful scenes of exciting interest as took possession of Great Britain about this period. The people were drunk with enthusiasm. One victory followed so rapidly on the heels of another, that they had not time to sober down. The peninsular campaign had closed, and the hitherto sacred soil of France was invaded. The restoration of legitimacy, and the momentary enthusiasm of the French in favor of their exiled monarch, disturbed the intellects of half mankind. The magnificent entree of LOUIS the Eighteenth into London from Heartwell Park, where he had resided for some years, almost conveyed the idea that it was his own capital he was entering, after his long and weary exile. The silken banner with the fleur de lis flaunting from the walls of Devonshire-House and all the neighboring mansions in Piccadilly; immense cavalcades of gentlemen superbly mounted, all wearing the white cockade; the affectionate sympathy and profound respect shown by all classes toward the illustrious representative of the Bourbons, was touching in the extreme. On his route from Heartwell, and through Stanmore, troops of yeomanry turned out to give him an honorable escort; and what could be more honorable than the voluntary attendance of the farmers who represented the very bone and sinew of the country? The large portly figure of the KING perfectly disabused JOHN BULL of the long-cherished idea that Frenchmen lived entirely upon frogs. Even that particular fact interested them, and repeated huzzas greeted him throughout the whole of his route to London. On his arrival at Guillon's Hotel in Albermarle-street, which had been most splendidly prepared for his reception, His Royal Highness the PRINCE REGENT received him with that delicate attention so worthy of his high and gallant bearing; and there LOUIS must have met with one of the most touching scenes that ever thrilled the human heart. One hundred and fifty of the ancient noblesse were waiting, after years of hopeless expectation, to greet the head of that illustrious house, the recollection of whose sufferings awakened the most painful feelings. Not one of them but had shared in the horrors of that bloody revolution; and not one of them but truly felt that the happiness of that moment repaid them for all their sufferings.'

A rich specimen of the pompous ignorance sometimes exhibited by theatrical managers is afforded in the following anecdote, which has appeared in England, but which we are sure will be relished by our readers. It may seem extraordinary that a manager should be such an ignoramus; but 'half the actors on the English stage,' says a recent writer, 'dare not address a gentleman a note, lest they should 'show their hands:''

'WHEN I first became a member of Covent-Garden, Mr. FAWCETT held the reins of management, in consequence of the retirement of Mr. KEMBLE from that position. He had experience to guide him, but he unfortunately possessed a dictatorial manner, and a want of that refinement and education which had so distinguished his great predecessor. In speaking of his public position, however, let me pay homage to his private virtues. He was a tender husband, an affectionate father, and a warm friend. During my first season a play was produced called the 'Students of Salamanca.' The author was Mr. JAMIESON, a member of the bar, who had been particularly successful in several light pieces produced at the Haymarket. Mr. JONES and myself were 'The Students,' and it occurred to me in my character to say, 'My danger was imminent.' These words had scarcely passed my lips, when a dark and lowering look dimmed the countenance of the manager. I saw that something was wrong, but was quite at a loss to guess the cause. At the end of the scene, unwilling to mortify me in the presence of the company, he beckoned me aside, and said: 'Young man, do you know what you said?' I changed color, feeling that something fearful had occurred. I replied, very much agitated, that I was not aware of any error. 'I thought so! Do you know where you are? You are in London, not in Bath!' The fact was so self-evident that I did not attempt to disprove it. 'You will be delivered up to scorn and contempt; the critics will immolate you; the eyes of this great metropolis are fixed upon you. I thought you were a well-educated young man, but I have been deceived—grossly deceived!' The effect of this tirade may be more easily conceived than described. My face flushed, my heart beat, and I at length mustered courage to say, 'For heaven's sake, Sir, pray tell me; I am extremely sorry—deeply regret—but pray tell me!' The kindness of his disposition got the better of his pedantry, and seeing the agitation under which I was really suffering, he replied: 'Do you remember that you said your danger was imminent'? Now, Sir, there is no such word in the English language: it is eminent!!' Need I mention the unbounded relief this explanation gave me? I quietly suggested the difference of their significations, and was never after troubled with any corrections. He was a man of sterling qualities, somewhat like a melon, as his friend COLMAN said; 'rough without, smooth within.''

In the way of a hoax, we remember nothing more cleverly performed, than the rather cruel one whose execution is pleasantly recorded below:

'THERE was a lady attached to the Worthing Theatre, (mark me, reader, I did not say attached to me,) who was very eccentric, and who was, 'small blame to her,' as the Irishman says, also very susceptible. I was on very intimate terms with Mr. HARLEY, who was then at Worthing; and one day, while quietly dining together, we mutually agreed that there was a fickleness about this lady which deserved some reproof. We were really liberal in our feelings, and would not have objected to her shooting an extra dart occasionally; but it was not to be borne that she should let fly a whole quiver at once. We had observed that by way of having two or more strings to her bow, she had got up a flirtation with the leader of the band, a most respectable man by the way, and of considerable talent. After giving the affair all due consideration, we decided upon a mock-duel, in which I was to personate one of the heroes, my rival being the aforesaid leader. We carefully and ostentatiously avoided all appearance of communication, and in such a way that it always reached her knowledge. Thus by gentle innuendoes she discovered that something serious was in contemplation, and of course she was not a little flattered, as she was the object of dispute. Our duelling-pistols were one day ostentatiously paraded, and evident anxiety took possession of the company, who were carefully excluded from the secret. The following morning at five o'clock we each left our lodgings, accompanied by our seconds, the rain pouring in torrents. HARLEY then went to the lodgings of the frail or rather fair one, knocked at the door most violently, and at length she appeared at the window, in evident alarm. He urged her if she had the feelings of a woman immediately to accompany him, and prevent murder; briefly stating, that her 'beauties were the cause and most accursed effect.' In a state of real excitement, mixed up with woman's vanity, she rushed out of the house, and accompanied that wag of wags. A white beaver hat, sweet emblem of her purity, was on her head, and partially concealed her disordered ringlets, hastily gathered together. We arranged with HARLEY always to keep ourselves a certain distance in advance on the pathway bordering the sands. The first thing that occurred was a sudden gust of wind which swept the white beaver a considerable distance and covered it with mud; her flowing locks then fell upon her alabaster neck, and her romantic appearance was perfect. We most cruelly led her on a distance of at least two miles, and took our station near some lime-kilns, close to the sea. When she was sufficiently near, one of the seconds stepped forward and gave the signal by dropping a blood-stained handkerchief, prepared for the occasion. Bang! bang! went the pistols; when she gracefully sank into the arms of HARLEY, who held her in a fine melo-dramatic attitude. The report was soon over all the town, and of course in the newspapers. My adversary put his arm in a sling, and whenever I happened to be near her, in a perfect state of despair I vowed that I could never forgive myself for having shot my friend. We mutually repulsed her by severe looks whenever she approached us; and she soon left the Worthing Theatre to seek for victims of less sensibility in other places.'

We once more take our leave of Mr. ABBOTT'S agreeable manuscript volume; by no means certain, however, that its entertaining pages may not again tempt us to share with our readers the enjoyment they have afforded us.

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.—Will the author of 'Public Concert-Singing' favor us with his address? We are desirous of communicating with him, although he does not 'find his hastily-jotted thoughts in the pages of the KNICKERBOCKER,' for reasons which perhaps he can partly divine from the present number, and which we could impart more directly in a private note. We agree with him entirely in his views; and if he will permit us, we will here quote a passage from an article which we penned upon a subject collateral to his general theme, many years ago, before we were hampered with the professional 'we,' and could write out of our 'company dress.' It is a little sketch of the first public singing, save that of the church, to which we had ever listened: 'How well do I remember it! It was at the theatre of a country village; a rough, barn-like edifice, at which several Stentor-lunged Thespians 'from the New-York and Philadelphia Theatres' split the ears of the groundlings, and murdered SHAKSPEARE'S heroes and the King's English. I had been watching with boyish curiosity the play which had just concluded: the mottled, patched, yellowish-green curtain had descended upon the personages whose sorrows were my own; and I was gazing vacantly at the long row of tallow candles placed in holes bored for the purpose in the stage, and at the two fiddlers who composed 'the orchestra,' and who were reconnoitering the house. Presently a small bell was rung, with a jerk. There was a flourish or two from 'the orchestra;' another tinkle of the bell; and up rose the faded drapery. An interval of a moment succeeded, during which half of a large mountain was removed from the scenery, and a piece of forest shoved up to the ambitious wood that had been aspiring to overtop the Alps. At length a young lady, whom I had just seen butchered in a most horrid manner by a villain, came from the side of the stage with a smile, which, while it displayed her white teeth, wrought the rouge upon her face into very perceptible corrugations, and made a lowly courtesy. She walked with measured step three or four times across the stage, in the full blaze of the flaring candles, smiling again, and hemming, to clear her voice. Presently a perfect stillness prevailed; 'awed Consumption checked his chided cough;' every urchin suspended his cat-call; and 'the boldest held his breath for a time.' Our vocalist looked at the leader of the orchestra and his fellow-fiddlers, and commenced, in harmony with their instruments. How touching was that song! I shall never have my soul so enrapt again. That freshness of young admiration possessed my spirit which can come but once. The air was 'The Braes of Balquither,' a charming melody, meetly wedded to the noble lines of TANNEHILL; and enthusiasm was at its height when the singer had concluded the following stanza, almost sublime in its picturesque beauty:

'When the rude wintry wind wildly raves round our dwelling, And the roar of the lion on the night-breeze is swelling, Then so merrily we'll sing, while the storm rattles o'er us, Till the dear shealing ring with the light-lilting chorus!'

The air was old as the hills, but like all Scottish melodies, as lasting too. To every body the songs of Scotland are grateful; and the universal attachment to them arises from their beautiful simplicity, deep pathos, and unaffected, untrammelled melody. The romantic sway of the songs of Scotland over her sons when 'far awa' is to me no marvel. If they possess the power to thrill or to subdue the hearts of those who have never stepped upon the soil of that glorious country, is it at all surprising that they should exert a powerful influence over the native-born, who associate those airs with the purple heath, the blue loch, the hazy mountain-top, and the valley sleeping below?

'What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed, What wild vows falter on the tongue, When 'Scots wha ha' wi' WALLACE bled,' Or 'Auld Lang Syne' is sung!'

The association however is touching, not alone because it awakens old recollections, but because the music is natural; it is the language of the heart. Affectation has not interpopolated tortuous windings and trills and shakes, to mar its beauty, and to clip the full melodious notes of their fair proportions. It is pleasant to think that fashion, though never so potent, can neither divert nor lessen the popular attachment to the simpler melodies. We have the authority of the WOODS, WILSON, SINCLAIR, POWER, and other eminent artists for stating that 'Black-eyed Susan,' 'John Anderson my Jo,' 'The Last Rose of Summer,' and kindred airs, could always 'bring down the house,' no matter what the antagonistical musical attraction might be. We could wish that the VENERABLE TAURUS, or 'OLD BULL,' as many persons call him, would take a hint from this. Let him try it once; and we venture to say that no one, however uninitiated, will again retire from his splendid performances as a country friend of ours did lately, assigning as a reason: 'I waited till about ha'-past nine; and then he hadn't got done tunin' his fiddle!' A touch of 'music for the general heart' would have enchained him till morning. CHRISTOPHER NORTH, we perceive, in the last BLACKWOOD, fully enters into the spirit of our predilection. He has just returned from a concert of fashionable music, where he 'tried to faint, that he might be carried out, but didn't know how to do it,' and was compelled to sit with compressed lips, and listen to 'sounds from flat shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,' for two long hours. When he gets home, however, he 'feeds fat his grudge' against modern musical affectations. Let us condense a few of his objurgations:

'It is a perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of music has become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served up under that name be received as the legitimate descendant of harmony. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly proportions in the unseemly escapade. We hate your crashing, clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy chromatic passages, from one end of the instrument to the other, and back again; flats, sharps, and most appropriate 'naturals,' spattered all over the page. The essential spirit of discord seems to be let loose on our modern music. Music to soothe! the idea is obsolete. There is music to excite, much to irritate one, and much more to drive a really musical soul stark mad; but none to soothe, save that which is drawn from the hiding-places of the past. There is no repose, no refreshment to the mind, in our popular compositions. There is to us more of touching pathos, heart-thrilling expression, in some of the old psalm-tunes, feelingly played, than in a whole batch of modernisms. The strains go home, and the 'fountains of the great deep are broken up;' the great deep of unfathomable feeling, that lies far, far below the surface of the world-hardened heart; and as the unwonted yet unchecked tear starts to the eye, the softened spirit yields to their influence, and shakes off the moil of earthly care; rising, purified and spiritualized, into a clearer atmosphere.'

* * * * *

We often hear of odd things happening in consequence of mistakes in orthography, but seldom of any benefit accruing therefrom to the orthooepist. But a friend mentioned to us a little circumstance the other day, which would seem to prove that it does a man good sometimes to spell somewhat at variance with old JOHNSON. In a village not far hence lived a man known by the name of BROKEN JONES. He had dissipated a large fortune in various law-suits; had become poor and crazy; and at last, like another PEEBLES, his sole occupation consisted in haunting the courts, lawyers' offices, and other scenes of his misfortunes. To judge and attorneys he was a most incorrigible bore; to the latter especially, from whom he was continually soliciting opinions on cases which had long been 'settled,' and carried to the law-ledgers, where they were only occasionally hunted up as precedents in the suit of perhaps some other destined victims. As JONES hadn't a cent of money left, it was of course impossible for him to obtain any more 'opinions;' but this didn't cure him of his law-mania. One morning he entered the office of lawyer D——, in a more excited state than he had exhibited for a long time, and seating himself vis-a-vis with his victim, requested his 'opinion' on one of the 'foregone conclusions' already mentioned. D—— happening at the moment to be very busy, endeavored to get rid of his visiter, and contrived various expedients for that purpose. But JONES was not in a mood to be trifled with. 'I came, 'Squire,' said he, 'to get your opinion in writing on this case, and I will have it before I leave the room, if I sit here till the day of judgment!' The lawyer looked upon his visiter, while a thought of forcible ejectment passed through his brain; but the glaring eye and stout athletic frame which met his gaze, told him that such a course would be extremely hazardous. At length the dinner-bell rang. A bright thought struck him; and putting on his coat and hat, he took JONES gently by the arm: 'Come,' said he, 'go and dine with me.' 'No!' said the latter, fiercely; 'I'll never dine again until I get what I came for.' The lawyer was in a quandary, and at length, in very despair, he consented to forego his dinner and give his annoyer the desired opinion. 'Well, well, JONES,' said he, soothingly, 'you shall have it;' and gathering pens, ink and paper, he was soon seated at the table, while JONES, creeping on tiptoe across the room, stood peeping over his shoulder. The lawyer commenced: 'My oppinion in the case——' 'Humph!' said the lunatic, suddenly seizing his hat, and turning on his heel, 'I wouldn't give a d—n for your opinion with two p's!' . . . MANY of our public as well as private correspondents seem to have been not a little interested in the articles on Mind and Instinct, in late numbers of this Magazine. A valued friend writing from Maryland, observes: 'The collection of facts by your contributor is very industrious, their array quite skilful, and the argument very strong. I think, however, that if I had time I could pick several flaws in the reasoning, or rather erect a very good counter-argument, founded principally upon the fact that the intelligence of animals is generally as great in early youth as it is in the prime of their beasthood. The author might have added to his list of facts, an account which I read when a boy, of the practice of the baboons in Caffraria, near the orange-orchards. They arrange themselves in a row from their dens to the orange-trees. One then ascends the tree, plucks the oranges, and throws them to the next baboon, and he to the next, and so on throughout the whole file; they standing some fifty yards apart. In this manner they quickly strip a tree, and at the same time are safe from being all surprised at once. The early French missionaries in Canada, also asserted that the squirrels of that region, having denuded the country on one side of the big lake, of nuts, used to take pieces of birch bark, and hoisting their tails for canvass, float to the other side for their supply.' We have been struck with a passage in a powerful article upon 'The Hope that is within Us,' in a late foreign periodical, wherein the fruitful theme of our correspondent is touched upon. 'If matter,' says the writer, 'be incapable of consciousness, as JOHNSON so powerfully argues in Rasselas, then the animus of brutes must be an anima, and immaterial; for the dog and the elephant not merely exhibit 'consciousness,' but a 'half-reasoning' power. And if it be true, as JOHNSON maintains, that immateriality of necessity produces immortality, then the poor Indian's conclusion is the most logical,

'Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.'

The truth is, that we must depend upon revelation for an assurance of immortality; which promises, however, the resurrection of the body, as philosophy is unequal to its demonstration, and modern researches into animal life have rendered the proof more difficult than heretofore.' By the by, 'speaking of animals:' there is a letter from LEMUEL GULLIVER in the last number of BLACKWOOD, describing a meeting of 'delegates from the different classes of consumers of oats, held at the Nag's-Head inn at Horsham.' The business of the meeting was opened by a young RACER, who expressed his desire to promote the interests of the horse-community, and to promote any measure which might contribute to the increase of the consumption of oats, and improve the condition of his fellow quadrupeds. He considered the horse-interest greatly promoted by the practice of sowing wild oats, which he warmly commended. A HACKNEY-COACH HORSE declared himself in favor of the sliding-scale, which he understood to mean the wooden pavement. Things went much more smoothly wherever it was established. He contended for the abolition of nose-bags, which he designated as an intolerable nuisance; urged the prohibition of chaff with oats, as unfit for the use of able-bodied horses; and indeed evinced the truth of his professions, that he 'yielded to no horse in an anxious desire to promote the true interests of the horse-community.' An OLD ENGLISH HUNTER impressed upon the young delegates the good old adage of 'Look before you leap,' and urged them to go for 'measures, not men.' A STAGE HORSE 'congratulated the community upon the abolition of bearing-reins, those grievous burdens upon the necks of all free-going horses; and he trusted the time would soon arrive when the blinkers would also be taken off, every corn-bin thrown open, and every horse his own leader.' Several other steeds, in the various ranks of horse-society, addressed the meeting. 'Resolutions, drawn by two DRAY-HORSES, embodying the supposed grievances of the community, were finally agreed upon, and a petition, under the hoof of the president, founded upon them, having been prepared and ordered to be presented to the House of Commons by the members for Horsham, the meeting separated, and the delegates returned to their respective stables.' . . . WHAT habitual theatre or opera-goer has not been tempted a thousand times to laugh outright, and quite in the wrong place, at the incongruities, the inconsistencies, the mental and physical catachreses of the stage, which defy illusion and destroy all vraisemblance? A London sufferer in this kind has hit off some of the salient points of these absurdities in a few 'Recollections of the Opera:'

'I'VE known a god on clouds of gauze With patience hear a people's prayer, And bending to the pit's applause, Wait while the priest repeats the air.

I've seen a black-wig'd Jove hurl down A thunder-bolt along a wire, To burn some distant canvass town, Which—how vexatious!—won't catch fire.

I've known a tyrant doom a maid (With trills and roulades many a score) To instant death! She, sore afraid, Sings: and the audience cries 'Encore!'

I've seen two warriors in a rage Draw glist'ning swords and, awful sight! Meet face to face upon the stage To sing a song, but not to fight!

I've heard a king exclaim 'To arms!' Some twenty times, yet still remain; I've known his army 'midst alarms, Help by a bass their monarch's strain.

I've known a hero wounded sore, With well-tuned voice his foes defy; And warbling stoutly on the floor, With the last flourish fall and die.

I've seen a mermaid dress'd in blue; I've seen a cupid burn a wing; I've known a Neptune lose a shoe; I've heard a guilty spectre sing.

I've seen, spectators of a dance, Two Brahmins, Mahomet, the Cid, Four Pagan kings, four knights of France, Jove and the Muses—scene Madrid!'

* * * * *

The leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the Ascent of Mount AEtna by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. If our metropolitan readers would desire a due impression of the magnificent scene which our correspondent has described, let them drop in at the rooms of the National Academy of Design, where they will find the Burning Mountain, as seen from Taormina, depicted in all its vastness and grandeur; and not only this, but the noble series of allegorical pictures, heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called 'The Voyage of Life,' representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; 'Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness,' a picture that has an horizon, and an aerial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a visit; 'The Past and the Present,' two most effective scenes, especially the second, which is overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and art; a glorious composition, 'An Italian Scene,' of which we shall speak hereafter; as well as of the view of 'Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,' fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of 'The Notch in the White Mountains' of New-Hampshire. Apropos: we perceive by a letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that THORWALDSEN, the great sculptor, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. COLE'S pictures, particularly of his 'Voyage of Life,' which he pronounced 'original, and new in art.' 'He could talk of nothing else,' says the writer, 'for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: 'Ma che artista, che grand' artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia! quanto studio della natura!' 'But what an artist, what a great artist, is this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!' . . . WE are aware of a pair of 'bonny blue een' swimming in light, that will 'come the married woman's eye' over a kind but most antiquarian husband, when the following is read, some two weeks from now, in their 'little parlor' in a town of the far west. It reaches us in the MS. of a Boston friend: 'Old Colonel W——, formerly a well-known character in one of our eastern cities, was remarkable for but one passion out of the ordinary range of humanity, and that was for buying at auction any little lot of trumpery which came under the head of 'miscellaneous,' for the reason that it couldn't be classified. Though close-fisted in general, he was continually throwing away his money by fives and tens upon such trash. In this way he had filled all the odd corners in his dwelling and out-houses with a collection of nondescript articles, that would have puzzled a philosopher to tell what they were made for, or to what use they could ever be put. This however, was but a secondary consideration with the Colonel; for he seldom troubled his head about such articles after they were once fairly housed. Not so with his wife however, who was continually remonstrating against these purchases, which served only to clutter up the house, and as food for the mirth of the domestics. But the Colonel, though he often submitted to these remonstrances of his better-half, couldn't resist his passion; and so he went on adding from week to week to his heap of miscellanies. One day while sauntering down the street, he heard the full, rich tones of his friend C——, the well-known auctioneer, and as a matter of course stepped in to see what was being sold. On the floor he observed a collection that looked as if it might have been purloined from the garret of some museum, and around which a motley group was assembled; while on the counter stood the portly auctioneer, in the very height of a mock-indignant remonstrance with his audience. 'Nine dollars and ninety cents!' cried the auctioneer. 'Gentlemen, it is a shame, it is barbarous, to stand by and permit such a sacrifice of property! Nine dol-lars and ninety—— Good morning, Colonel! A magnificent lot of—of—antiques—and all going for nine dollars and ninety cents. Gentlemen, you'll never see another such lot; and all going—going—for nine dollars and ninety cents. Colonel W——, can you permit such a sacrifice?' The Colonel glanced his eye over the lot, and then with a nod and a wink assured him he could not. The next instant the hammer came down, and the purchase was the Colonel's, at ten dollars. As the articles were to be paid for and removed immediately, the Colonel lost no time in getting a cart, and having seen every thing packed up and on their way to his house, he proceeded to his own store, chuckling within himself that now at least he had made a bargain at which even his wife couldn't grumble. In due time he was seated at the dinner-table, when lifting his eyes, he observed a cloud upon his wife's brow. 'Well, my dear?' said he, inquiringly. 'Well?' repeated his wife; 'it is not well, Mr. W.; I am vexed beyond endurance. You know C——, the auctioneer?' 'Certainly,' replied the Colonel; 'and a very gentlemanly person he is too.' 'You may think so,' rejoined the wife, 'but I don't, and I'll tell you why. A few days ago I gathered together all the trumpery with which you have been cluttering up the house for the last twelve-month, and sent it to Mr. C——, with orders to sell the lot immediately to the highest bidder for cash. He assured me he would do so in all this week, at farthest, and pay over the proceeds to my order. And here I've been congratulating myself on two things: first, on having got rid of a most intolerable nuisance; and secondly, on receiving money enough therefor to purchase that new velvet hat you promised me so long ago. And now what do you think? This morning, about an hour ago, the whole load came back again, without a word of explanation!' The Colonel looked blank for a moment, and then proceeded to clear up the mystery. But the good VROUW was pacified only by the promise of a ten-dollar note beside that in the hands of the auctioneer; on condition, however, that she should never mention it.' Of course she kept her word! . . . HOW seldom it is that one encounters a good sonnet! Most sonnetteers of our day are like feeble-framed men walking in heavy armor; 'the massy weight on't galls their laden limbs.' We remember two or three charming sonnets of LONGFELLOW'S; PARK BENJAMIN has been unwontedly felicitous in some of his examples; and H. T. TUCKERMAN has excelled in the same poetical role. Here is a late specimen of his, from the 'Democratic Review,' which we regard as very beautiful:

DESOLATION.

THINK ye the desolate must live apart, By solemn vows to convent walls confined? Ah! no; with men may dwell the cloistered heart, And in a crowd the isolated mind: Tearless behind the prison-bars of fate The world sees not how sorrowful they stand, Gazing so fondly through the iron grate Upon the promised, yet forbidden land; Patience, the shrine to which their bleeding feet, Day after day, in voiceless penance turn; Silence the holy cell and calm retreat In which unseen their meek devotions burn; Life is to them a vigil that none share, Their hopes a sacrifice, their love a prayer.

* * * * *

'OUR Ancient,' the editor of the handsome 'Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine' hight 'The Columbian,' (which is to run a brisk competition, as we learn, with the other 'pictorials,' GODEY'S, GRAHAM'S, and SNOWDEN'S,) should have enabled us to speak of it from an examination of our own copy, instead of being obliged to filch an idea of its merits from the counter of those most obliging gentlemen, Messrs. BURGESS AND STRINGER. The work is a gay one externally, and spirited internally; having several good articles from good writers, male and female. One of the best things in it, however, is the paper on 'Magazine Literature,' by the Editor. How many writers, now well known both at home and abroad, who began and continue their literary career in the KNICKERBOCKER, can bear testimony to the truth of the following remarks:

'WE have said that this is the age of magazines; adverting not merely to their number, but even more especially to their excellence. They are the field, chiefly, in which literary reputation is won. Who ever thinks of JOHN WILSON as the learned professor, or as the author of bound volumes? Who does not, when WILSON'S name is mentioned, instantly call to mind the splendid article-writer, the CHRISTOPHER NORTH of Blackwood? CHARLES LAMB was long known only as the ELIA of the New Monthly. Most of the modern French celebrities; SUE, JANIN, and half a hundred others, have made their fame in the feuilletons of the Parisian journals; a more decided graft, by the way, than is elsewhere seen, of the magazine upon the newspaper. In our own country, how many there are whose names are known from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, that are as yet innocent of books, but have nevertheless contributed largely and well to the growing stock of American literature. How many more who are bringing themselves into notice by their monthly efforts in the pages of some popular magazine. In fact, the magazine is the true channel into which talent should direct itself for the acquisition of literary fame. The newspaper is too ephemeral; the book is not of sufficiently rapid and frequent production. The monthly magazine just hits the happy medium, enabling the writer to present himself twelve times a year before a host of readers, in whose memories he is thus kept fresh, yet allowing him space enough to develope his thought, and time enough to do his talent justice in each article. Then, too, on the score of emolument, justly recognised now as a very essential matter, and legitimately entitled to grave consideration, the magazine offers advantages not within the reach of either book or newspaper. . . . BUT after all, the great point is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the business man, and the taste of the idler; to the spare half hours of the notable housewife and the languid inertia of the fashionable lady. They can be dropped into a valise or a carpet-bag as a welcome provision for the wants of a journey by steam-boat or rail-road, when the country through which the traveller passes offers nothing attractive to be seen, or the eyes are weary of seeing; they while away delightfully the tedious hours of a rainy day in summer, and afford the most pleasant occupation through the long evenings of winter.'

Touching the matter of payment for magazine articles: Mr. WILLIS informs us that many of the American magazines pay to their more eminent contributors nearly three times the amount for a printed page that is paid by English magazines to the best writers in Great-Britain; and he instances GODEY and GRAHAM as paying often twelve dollars a page to their principal contributors. This refers to a few 'principal' writers only, as we have good reason to know, having been instrumental in sending several acceptable correspondents to those publications, who have received scarcely one-fourth of the sum mentioned. Mr. WILLIS adds, however, that many good writers write for nothing, and that 'the number of clever writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no article accepted.' All this is quite true. There is no magazine in America that has paid so large sums to distinguished native writers as the KNICKERBOCKER. Indeed, our most distinguished American writer was never a contributor to any other of our Monthlys than this. The books of this Magazine show, that independent of the Editor's division of its profits as joint proprietor, or his salary as editor, (a matter which its publishers have always kept distinct from, and in all respects unconnected with, the payments to contributors,) annual sums have heretofore been paid for literary materiel greater than the most liberal estimate we have seen of any annual literary payment by our widely-circulated contemporaries. To the first poet in America, (not to say in the world, at this moment,) we have repeatedly paid fifty dollars for a single poem, not exceeding, in any instance, two pages in length; and the cost of prose papers from sources of kindred eminence has in many numbers exceeded fifteen dollars a page. Again: we have in several instances paid twice as much for the MS. of a continuous novel in these pages as the writer could obtain of any metropolitan book-publisher; and after appearing in volumes, it has been found that the wide publicity given to the work by the KNICKERBOCKER has been of greatest service to its popularity, in more than one subsequent edition. We should add, however, that we have had no lack, at any period, of excellent articles for our work at moderate prices; while many of our more popular papers have been entirely gratuitous, unless indeed the writers consider the honorable reputation which they have established in these pages as some reward for intellectual exertion. But 'something too much of this.' We close with a word touching the pictorial features of the 'Columbian.' It has four 'plates' proper, with an engraving of the fashions; is neatly executed by Messrs. HOPKINS AND JENNINGS, and published by ISRAEL POST, Number Three, Astor-House. . . . SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY is just at hand; and a pleasant correspondent, in enclosing us the following lines, begs us to mention the fact, and to refer to the festivities of the day. We know of one 'festivity' that will be a very recherche and brilliant affair, on the evening of that day; namely, 'The Bachelors' Ball,' to be given with unwonted splendor at the Astor-House, under the supervision of accomplished managers, whose taste and liberality have already been abundantly tested. 'Take it as a matter granted,' says our friend, 'that very many of your lady-readers will commit matrimony before the year is done; and tell them so plainly; for it will gratify their palpitating hearts; and even should it not be true in every individual case, the disappointed ones will never complain of you for the pleasing delusion; for it was their own fault, of course, not yours. It behooves you, moreover, as a conservator of the general weal, to give the young wives that are to be some goodly counsel; and to aid you in the laudable office of advice-giver, I send you some appropriate verses, which some fifteen years ago went the rounds of the press, and met with 'acceptance bounteous.' The moral of the stanzas, I take it, is unexceptionable, whatever may be said of their execution:'

EPISTLE

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY JUST MARRIED.

On matrimony's fickle sea I hear thou'rt ventured fairly; Though young in years, it may not be Thy bark is launched too early. Each wish of mine to heaven is sent, That on the stormy water Thou'lt prove a wife obedient, As thou hast been a daughter.

If every wish of mine were bliss, If every hope were pleasure, Thou wouldst with him find happiness, And he in thee a treasure: For every wish and hope of mine, And every thought and feeling, Is for the weal of thee and thine, As true as my revealing.

To please thy husband in all things, Forever be thou zealous; And bear in mind that Love has wings, Then never make him jealous: For if Love from his perch once flies, How weak are Beauty's jesses! In vain might plead thy streaming eyes, And thy dishevelled tresses.

Be prudent in thy thoughts of dress, Be sparing of thy parties; Where fashion riots in excess, O! nothing there of heart is! And can its palling sweets compare With love of faithful bosom? Then of the fatal tree beware, There's poison in its blossom!

Each thought and wish in him confide, No secret from him cherish; Whenever thou hast aught to hide, The better feelings perish. In whatsoe'er ye do or say, O never with him palter; Remember too, thou saidst 'obey' Before the holy altar.

Bear and forbear, for much thou'lt find In married life to tease ye, And should thy husband seem unkind, Averse to smile, or please ye, Think that amid the cares of life His troubles fret and fear him; Then smile as it becomes a wife, And labor well to cheer him.

Aye answer him with loving word, Be each tone kindly spoken, For sometimes is the holy cord By angry jarring broken. Then curb thy temper in its rage, And fretful be thou never; For broken once, a fearful change Frowns over both forever.

Upon thy neck light hang the chain, For Hymen now hath bound ye, O'er thee and thine may pleasure reign, And smiling friends surround ye. Then fare ye well, and may each time The sun smiles, find ye wiser: Pray kindly take the well-meant rhyme Of thy sincere adviser.

* * * * *

Through the kindness of Messrs. MASON AND TUTTLE, Nassau-street, (who import the originals for immediate circulation to American subscribers,) we have our copies of the foreign Monthlys, as well as of the 'Edinburgh,' 'Foreign,' and 'Quarterly' Reviews for the current quarter. The 'Quarterly, so savage and tartarly,' has a notice of the 'Change for American Notes,' which is not conceived in the kindest spirit toward this country. It reviews PRESCOTT'S late work, however, at great length, and welcomes it with cordial commendation. Among other 'good words,' the reviewer observes: 'He is full and copious, without being prolix and wearisome; his narrative is flowing and spirited, sometimes very picturesque; his style is pure, sound English.' In conclusion, the reviewer says: 'We close with expressing our satisfaction that Mr. PRESCOTT has given us an opportunity at this time of showing our deep sympathy, the sympathy of kindred and of blood, with Americans who like himself do honor to our common literature. Mr. PRESCOTT may take his place among the real good English writers of history in modern times.' The 'Foreign Quarterly' opens with a paper upon 'The Poets and Poetry of America,' ostensibly based upon Mr. GRISWOLD'S book. It is not altogether a review, however, but a very coarse and evidently malignant tirade against America, her people, institutions, manners, customs, literature; every thing, in short, that she is and that she contains. We annex a hasty synopsis of the critical portion of the article in question. HALLECK is 'praised, and that highly too.' His 'Marco Bozzaris' is pronounced 'a master-piece,' and the 'most perfect specimen of versification in American literature;' and himself as possessing 'a complete knowledge of the musical mysteries of his art.' A quotation is made, with much laud, from his 'RED-JACKET,' but the lines are spoiled by two gross errors; one in the last line of the third, and the other in the first line of the fifth stanza. The highest encomiums are justly bestowed upon BRYANT, as a 'purely American poet,' who 'treats the works of Nature with a religious solemnity, and brings to the contemplation of her grandest relations a pure and serious spirit. His poetry is reflective but not sad; grave in its depths but brightened in its flow by the sunshine of the imagination. He never paints on gauze; he is always earnest, always poetical; his manner is every where graceful and unaffected.' The illustrative quotation is from 'An Evening Reverie,' written by Mr. BRYANT for the KNICKERBOCKER. LONGFELLOW is pronounced to be 'unquestionably the first of American poets; the most thoughtful and chaste; the most elaborate and finished. His poems are distinguished by severe intellectual beauty, by dulcet sweetness of expression, a wise and hopeful spirit, and a complete command over every variety of rhythm. They are neither numerous nor long, but of that compact texture which will last for posterity.' SPRAGUE is represented as having in certain of his poems imitated SHAKSPEARE and COLLINS rather too closely for all three to be original. 'PIERPONT is crowded with coincidences which look very like plagiarisms;' 'but,' adds the reviewer, 'it is reserved for CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN to distance all plagiarists of ancient and modern times in the enormity and openness of his thefts. He is MOORE hocused for the American market. His songs are rifaciamentos. The turns of the melody, the flowing of the images, the scintillating conceits, are all MOORE. Sometimes he steals his very words.' Mrs. SIGOURNEY'S poetry is said to be characterized by 'feeble verbosity' and 'lady-like inanity,' and Mrs. OSGOOD is represented as being in the same category. After quoting certain characteristic lines of Mr. JOHN NEAL, describing the eye of a poet as 'brimful of water and light,' and his forehead as being 'alarmingly bright,' the reviewer adds: 'We find a pleasant relief from these distressing hallucinations, in the poems of ALFRED B. STREET. He is a descriptive poet, and at the head of his class. His pictures of American scenery are full of gusto and freshness; sometimes too wild and diffuse, but always true and beautiful.' So some are praised and some are blamed—'thus runs the world away!' . . . WE are made aware, and we would not have our correspondents ignorant of the fact, that there is a critical eye monthly upon our pages, that is keen to discover errors (as well as beauties) in language and construction of sentences. See: 'By the by, what a miserable language is our English in some respects; so awkward, so incompact! Look at the phrase 'unheard of,' and compare it with the Latin 'inauditus.' What a pity we were not born Romans or Greeks, with Yankee notions! Tell your Gotham friends that if they are speaking of a ruinous brick wall, they must say dilaterated, from 'later,' a brick, and not 'dilapidated,' from 'lapis,' a stone. One might as well say a man is 'stoned' to death with brick-bats.' . . . WHAT sad and startling contrasts are presented to the eye and mind of one who attentively looks over the illustrated newspapers of the British metropolis! On one hand, pictures of triumphal processions, arches, bonfires, illuminations, rich presents, gorgeous equipages, state-beds, 'royal poultry-houses, owleries, and pigeonries,' accompanied by elaborate descriptions, arrest the attention; on the other, there is a picture of a city 'Asylum for the Destitute,' where poor naked wretches find a temporary refuge from the pitiless winter storm without: huddling round a dim fire, or sunk exhausted upon the straw in the human 'stalls,' or clutching at their bowls of pauper-soup; a scene whose true character is enforced by accounts of poor women making shirts for a farthing apiece, a hard day's work; sleeping four in a bed; purchasing with the scanty pittance tea-leaves to boil over again! Hardly-entreated brothers and sisters of humanity! not always shall the glaring inequality that surrounds you, crush your spirits to the earth! . . . THERE is a pleasant pen in our metropolitan 'Aurora,' which occasionally dashes off sententious paragraphs that flash and sparkle like snow-crust in a moon-lit night in winter. There is evidently a FOSTER-ing hand over its columns; and through them (let us add, as it is that of which we especially wish to speak,) over the reputation of Mr. WILLIS. The remarks in a late number of that journal, under the head of 'Mr. Willis's Defence' against a scurrilous attack on his private character in a down-eastern print, were equally just and felicitous. Had it been generally known in his native town who was the instigator of that attack, we have good authority for saying that, gross as it was, Mr. WILLIS would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. As it was, however, he deemed it not amiss at one and the same time to punish skulking envy and impotent malignity; to vindicate his reputation with his townsmen against unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks from the same source altogether 'of none effect' and unworthy of heed. This he accomplished by his 'Defence' and the 'terrors of the law,' which speedily produced a satisfactory sample of wholesale word-eating. . . . OF all the Polichinellos we have ever encountered, we consider 'Punch, or the London Charivari,' the best. His fun is exhaustless. He ought to be knighted and appointed court-jester to King ENNUI. 'Laughter,' he tells us, 'is a divine faculty. It is one of the few, nay, the only one redeeming grace in that thunder-cased, profligate old scoundrel JUPITER, that he sometimes laughs: he is saved from the disgust of all respectable people by the amenity of a broad grin.' We ourselves hold with the pleasant LINCOLN RAMBLE: 'I love a hearty laugh; I love to hear a hearty laugh above all other sounds. It is the music of the heart; the thrills of those chords which vibrate from no bad touch; the language Heaven has given us to carry on the exchange of sincere and disinterested sympathies.' And to the end that 'laughter free and silvery from the heart may escape the reader, doing rightful honor to PUNCH, and bestowing cheerfulness and health upon the laughter,' we proceed to present a few excerpta which arrested our attention in looking over late files. We suspect that the annexed report of the 'doings of Royalty' in the country have more than once had a precedent. PRINCE ALBERT is here at Dayton-Manor, the seat of Sir ROBERT PEEL: 'Her Majesty slept extremely well; but whether it was the air of Dayton, or the conversation of the host, did not transpire. At eleven o'clock in the morning, Prince Albert went out to shoot. The guns were ordered at ten and the game was desired to be in attendance at half-past. The Prince first went in a boat on the water, where several ducks were appointed to be in waiting. Having granted an audience to the whole of them, and unintentionally honored two by shooting them, though it was another duck who had the distinguished gratification of being aimed at and missed, his Royal Highness landed. A numerous meeting of hares and pheasants having been called to pay their respects to the Prince, the game-keepers forming an outer circle, with their guns pointed to keep the game well up to the mark, His Royal Highness shot sixty pheasants, twenty-five head of hares, eight rabbits and one wood-cock, who would cock his bill opposite the muzzle of Royalty.' The poetical advertisement of one MOSES, a slop-shop clothes-man, is pleasantly 'reviewed.' Of his 'Prince ALBERT coats,' PUNCH says: 'Whatever may be the resemblance between the Prince and the coat, the similarity certainly ends with the price; one costing thirty shillings and the other thirty thousand pounds per annum.' Here is a touch at Moses' sea-coats:

'These coats for nautical pursuits Have qualities no one disputes; The very texture of their cloth Seems to defy the ocean's wrath: And then their form and make as well Are suited to the billows' swell.'

What can be happier than the allusion to the fact mentioned in the last two lines; namely, that the coat is quite a match for the billows, being as great a swell as any of them? The poet dashes off a few lines on trowsers, finishing with the following couplet, which is not likely to encourage purchasers. It is stated, and we dare say truly, that if any one puts on a pair of MOSES' trowsers he becomes at once an object of general observation:

'While oft such cries as these escape; Look! there's a figure! there's a shape!'

It is a very natural consequence, no doubt, of disporting one's-self in doe-skins made for seven-pence a pair; but the cries of 'There's a figure! there's a shape!' must make the trowsers rather dear to any one who wishes to walk about peaceably, unmolested by this species of street-criticism.' Under the head of 'Bolsters for Behindhand Botanists,' we find these original questions and answers: 'What are the most difficult roots to extract from the ground?' The cube-root. 'What is the pistil of a flower?' It is that instrument with which the flower shoots. 'What is meant by the word stamina?' It means the pluck or courage which enables the flower to shoot.' 'The reversionary interest of a life-crossing, with retail lucifer business attached,' is offered by a street-sweeper near the Bank of England, he having 'prigged vat vasn't his'n, and gone to pris'n.' 'He effected an irregular transfer at the bank one day, which, whatever his doubts upon the subject might previously have been, led to his ultimate conviction.' The 'Comic BLACKSTONE' enlightens us upon one of the 'King's prerogatives': 'The King is the fountain of justice, from which are supplied all the leaden reservoirs in Westminster-Hall, and the pumps at the inferior tribunals.' Among the public inquiries is the following: 'At a crowded meeting at Islington, on the question of granting a theatrical license, the papers state that the judges declined at first, but upon the urgent appeal of an advocate, 'the bench gave way.' Are we to understand from this that the opposition fell to the ground?' In 'PUNCH'S Almanac' for 1844, we find among other side-remarks, the annexed: under May seventh: 'WASHINGTON IRVING on his way to Madrid as American Ambassador, is entertained in London, 1842. America takes the hand of Spain, and puts her best pen into it.' 'June sixth: The first cargo of ice comes from America, 1843, for the relief of those who had burnt their fingers with Pennsylvania bonds.' 'Time is money; but it doesn't follow that man is a capitalist who has a great quantity of it on his hands.' PUNCH'S 'Literary Intelligence' is very full. From it we gather that the author of the 'Mothers,' 'Wives,' 'Maids,' and 'Daughters' of England has another work in press, entitled 'The Grandmothers of England.' 'No grandmother's education will be complete till she has read and re-read 'The Grandmothers of England.' The book is the very best guide to oval suction extant.' So says an 'Evening Paper.' . . . WE should be glad to be informed of the name of any real or pretended lover of the turf and its manifold interests, or of an admirer of one of the most entertaining weekly journals on this continent, who could ask more than is offered by the 'Spirit of the Times' to all new subscribers to that widely-popular sheet; being no less than any five of those fine large quarto engravings on steel, from original paintings, of Col. JOHNSON and M'lle AUGUSTA, among 'us humans,' and among our four-footed friends 'of the lower house,' Ripton, Confidence, Boston, Wagner, Monarch, Leviathan, Argyle, Black-Maria, Grey-Eagle, Shark, Hedgeford, John Bascombe, and Monmouth-Eclipse. On the second day of March a new volume commences; when we hope that this accredited organ of the sporting world, which has raised the prices of blood-stock in this country beyond all precedent, and which in its literary and dramatic departments is without a rival in this or any other country, will take a long lease of a healthful existence, and go on 'prospering and to prosper.' . . . THE reader will be amused we think with the 'Veritable Sea-Story,' told by our friend HARRY FRANCO, in a species of poetry run mad, in preceding pages. He writes us: 'I send you an epic poem for the KNICKERBOCKER, founded on facts within my own personal experience. I mention this lest you should deem it destitute of merit; for it possesses the greatest merit that any human composition can possess; namely, truth. And in this respect, if in no other, my poem is beyond dispute superior to the Iliad and Paradise Lost. However, tastes differ, I am aware; and you may possibly prefer those two epics to mine! They are longer, it is true; but then I think it will be conceded, even by the critics of the POH school, that my metre is sufficiently long, even though my story is short. While others measure their verse by the 'feet,' I measure mine by the yard.' . . . D.'S paper, (of Georgia,) so thickly interlarded with French, and Italian synonymes for far more expressive English words, reminds us of an old 'ignorant ramus' in the country, who was always eking out his meaning by three or four familiar Latin terms, which he almost invariably misapplied. He observed one day to a neighbor, who was speaking disrespectfully of a deceased townsman, 'Well, he's gone to be judged. E pluribus unum—'speak no evil of the dead'—as the Latin proverb says!' . . . 'The New World' enters upon a new year in a very beautiful dress, and with renewed attractions in all its internal departments. Its large clear types, impressed upon good paper, are exceedingly pleasant to the eye, and what they convey to the reader is equally agreeable to the mind 'studious of novelty' and variety. The success which it deserves, we are glad to learn it abundantly receives. The 'Brother Jonathan' has changed proprietors, cast its old skin, and comes out as bright and fresh as a June morning. The versatile Mrs. ANN STEPHENS (a lady of fine intellect, who has produced better prose tales and home-sketches than any one of her gifted contemporaries) and Messrs. M'LACHLIN AND SNOW, the resident editors of the 'Jonathan,' discharged their functions to due public acceptance; but a name so invariably connected with unsuccessful publications that it has come to be justly regarded as the sure precursor and inevitable cause of failure, was at the head of the journal as 'principal editor;' and 'down east' editorial-ings, transmitted by the yard, and endless unreadable tales, claiming a kindred paternity, gradually 'choked its wholesome growth,' and finally brought it to a temporary end. The new proprietor however has wisely declined this 'principal' incumbrance; and having secured the services of an able editor in the person of HENRY C. DEMING, Esq., a gentleman of high literary distinction, and of popular correspondents, the journal is already, as we learn, rejoicing in a rapidly-enhancing list of subscribers. Success to thee, 'BROTHER JONATHAN!' . . . THE 'Yankee Trick' described by our Medford (Mass.) correspondent is on file for insertion. It is in one of its features not unlike the anecdote of an old official Dutchman in the valley of the Mohawk, who one day stopped a Yankee pedler journeying slowly through the valley on the Sabbath, and informed him that he must 'put up' for the day; or 'if it vash neshessary dat he should travel, he must pay de fine for de pass.' It was necessary, it seems; for he told the Yankee to write the pass, and he would sign it; 'that he could do, though he didn't much write, nor read writin'.' The pass was written and signed with the Dutchman's hieroglyphics, and the pedler went forth 'into the bowels of the land, without impediment.' Some six months afterward, a brother Dutchman, who kept a 'store' farther down the Mohawk, in 'settling' with the pious official, brought in, among other accounts, an order for twenty-five dollars' worth of goods. 'How ish dat?' said the Sunday-officer; 'I never give no order; let me see him.' The order was produced; he put on his spectacles and examined it. 'Yaaes, dat ish mine name, sartain—yaaes; but—it ish dat d——d Yankee pass!' . . . OUR town-readers, many of them, will remember the bird MINO, who was so fond of chatting in a rich mellow voice with the customers at the old Quaker's seed-store in Nassau-street. His counterpart may at this moment be seen at 'an hostel' near by; but the associations and language of the modern bird are very dissimilar. 'How are you?' is his first salutation; 'do you smoke?' his next: 'What'll you drink? Brandy-and water?—glass o' wine?' It has a most whimsical effect, to hear such anti-temperance invitations from the bill of a bird, whose bright eye is fixed unwinkingly upon you. The Washingtonians should 'look out for him.' . . . THE editor of the Albion has issued to his subscribers a very fine large quarto engraving, in mezzo-tint by SADD, of HEATH'S celebrated line-engraving of WASHINGTON. Its size is twenty by twenty-seven inches, and represents the PATER PATRIAE in his most elevated character; that of a Chief Magistrate elevated by the free suffrages of his countrymen, after having voluntarily laid down his military authority. This print cannot fail to be acceptable to every reader of the Albion, unless he shall be too narrow-minded to honor true nobleness and dignity of character in one who by force of circumstances once stood in a warlike relation to his country. Apropos of the 'Albion:' is our friend the Editor aware that 'The Evening before the Wedding,' published as original in a late issue, was translated for the KNICKERBOCKER? . . . 'OH dem! dem!' There is on the tapis a new daily journal, to be called 'THE EXCLUSIVE,' which is to be the very antithesis of every thing in the 'cheap and vulgar' line; no slanders, no crim. con.'s, no horrible accidents; 'no nothing' of that sort. The affair is already creating some excitement among the beau-monde. The reputed editors are literary men of the world, who 'know their way.' Circulars in gold-edged and perfumed paper are already flying about. On dit: that the carriers are to be dressed in uniform, and deliver the paper in white kid gloves; that pastiles are to be kept burning in the publication-office, to disinfect the air of the room of ink and damp sheets; and that only those of the first respectability and acknowledged standing in gay society, are permitted to subscribe to or receive the journal at all! . . . HERE is a rich specimen of clerical catachresis, which we derive from an eastern correspondent: 'Our good dominie gave us on Sunday a sermon on the ocean; its wonders, its glories, its beauties; its infinity, its profundity, its mightiness, etc., 'But,' said he, 'what is all this? It is but a drop in the bucket of God's infinity!' I wonder what is outside of it!' . . . IT is not the wont of the Editor of this Magazine, as those of its readers who have followed us through twenty-two volumes of the KNICKERBOCKER can bear witness, to trumpet in its pages the many kind things that are said of us by the public press; but as a fragment is wanted to fill out this page; as we are just at the commencement of a new volume; and as we are more than pleased at the cordiality with which the first number of it has been received; we shall venture to select from a great number of testimonials one or two for insertion here, which are the more gratifying, that they evince the regard in which the 'OLD KNICK.' is held at home, and by those who have known us the longest and most intimately. The New-York Courier and Enquirer says of our last number:

'THIS sterling Monthly is always punctual to a day in its issues, promptly appearing with the dawn of the month, though our notices of it frequently lag sadly behind it. It is yet, however, by no means too late to say that it enters upon the year '44 and its twenty-third volume with ability and zeal unabated, and that it is yet, as it has been heretofore, by far the handsomest, ablest, and most interesting literary Monthly issued in this country. Each number contains over a hundred pages, and in the Editor's Table alone is often found more matter than the entire body of some of its rivals contains. It has a long list of zealous correspondents, bound to it not more by interest than affection, and numbering among them the most gifted and distinguished writers in the country. The 'Quod Correspondence,' a novel which is running through the successive numbers, is one of the best works of the kind ever written; its scenes possess a deep dramatic interest, and throughout the whole, moral principles are clearly and powerfully evolved. 'The Idleberg Papers' is the general title of another capital series, and the work is otherwise filled with excellent prose and generally good poetry. The 'Editor's Table' is by far the most racy and entertaining collection of anecdotes, humorous and pathetic passages, slight criticisms, etc., to be met in any magazine. We cordially commend the old and excellent KNICKERBOCKER to the continued love and patronage of the public.'

The Evening Post bestows upon the number praise equally warm and cordial. It adverts to its typographical appearance, with the remark that 'it is beautifully printed; that even those parts which are put in the smallest characters are so distinctly impressed that the dimmest eyes may read them.' It lauds especially the article on 'Descriptive Poetry,' the 'Idleberg Papers,' the 'Sketches of East Florida,' and some of the poetry; and the editor, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Esq., is kind enough to add, that 'no part is better than the Editor's Table, which presents as excellent a Salmagundi as was ever served up.' We scarcely dare claim to have earned these high encomiums; but we are anxious to evince to our subscribers, and especially to those new friends (and their friends) who have begun the year with us, that we shall spare no pains to deserve them. It will be our constant aim not only to maintain the reputation which the KNICKERBOCKER now sustains, but in return for the affection with which it seems to be every where regarded, and the liberal patronage which it has always retained, and which is now generously increased by our friends, to enhance it by every means in our power. But, to make use of two French words which have never before been quoted in America, to our knowledge—'Nous Verrons!'

* * * * *

.*. OWING to an unlucky accident, at a late hour, a 'LITERARY RECORD' of several excellent publications, from the following houses in Philadelphia, New-York, and Boston, is unavoidably omitted from the present number. The 'copy,' however, of the notices is preserved, and they will appear in our next: LEA AND BLANCHARD, R. P. BIXBY AND COMPANY, M. W. DODD, HARPER AND BROTHERS, WILEY AND PUTNAM, J. AND H. G. LANGLEY, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, GEORGE G. CHANNING, J. WINCHESTER, JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY, B. G. TREVETT AND COMPANY, MARK H. NEWMAN, STANFORD, SWORDS AND COMPANY, LINDSAY AND BLACKISTON, MORRIS, WILLIS AND COMPANY. In a similar category are some half dozen subsections of 'Gossip,' (including two or three pleasant favors from favorite contributors, notice of articles received and filed, etc.,) which were in type, and which now 'bide their time.'

THE END