touched delicately on his acquisition to the Museum of Mr. Peale, unceasing efforts to please the public by the introduction of novelties; told how the serpent swallowed oxen in his own country, and rabbits at Mr. Peale's Museum; and finally, wound up with an account of the fine state of preservation in which a blanket was kept, (and to be seen at Mr. Peale's Museum,) with which his snakeship had broken his fast one morning, when he was uncommonly hungry. On my hat was an account of the horrible murder in Kentucky, by a husband, of his wife and her three infant twins, and a notification that the fork belonging to the identical knife with which the monster had perpetrated this horrid butchery, was to be seen at No. 714 Bowery! After thus reading me to myself, my uncle told me to go up into Broadway, and walk leisurely up and down the street, giving one of the bills in my hand to every gentlemanly-looking person who would receive them. He himself, after equiping his person in a habit similar to my own, but relating to different subjects of public interest, preceded me, for the purpose of showing me how to deport myself. This was a mode of life that particularly struck my fancy. My labor was light, and my satisfaction in the performance of it excessive. All day long I slowly sauntered up and down Broadway, looking at the throngs which were hurrying past me, admiring the various equipages that dashed up and down the street, throwing stones at dogs, and seeing the omnibusses run over the women and children, and break the private carriages; and in the evening I would call at the Museum, at the Dépôt for the Hygeian Medicine, and at No. 7144 Bowery, for my day's wages. It was at this period of my life that I learned to read. On rainy days, I used to take my stand in the door-way of houses, to avoid being wet, and for some time I was at loss for amusement. At length, for the want of something better to occupy my time, I began to study my show-bills. By-and-by, I became possessed with an ambition to read them, and after long and patient perseverance, with the assistance of some good-natured, laughing boys, I was able to decipher them with a fluency equal to my uncle. I have not now either time or inclination to trace my further progress, nor to inform my readers how I gradually advanced through the various intermediate stages of existence, until I at length reached my present elevated station in loafer life. My apprenticeship to the sign business,' the habit I then formed of observing what was passing in the streets, and the scenes I witnessed there, have been of incalculable advantage to me in my present profession of a penny-a-liner. Many are the accidents,' the sudden deaths,' 'horrid affrays,' casualties,' 'suicides,' 'shocking occurrences,' and 'melancholy catastrophes,' that come under my observation, which my inexperienced brethren of the quill never hear of. If from any cause I cannot take my usual perambulations through the city, I can draw upon the immense stores of my memory with perfect security. Recollection furnishes me with materials, when my imagination fails; and it is from this cause that while my fellow-laborers in literature are often suffering from want, I am never without the wherewithal to pay for a meal, or repair the rents in my pantaloons. M. LAYS. I. THE song is still, that over heath and mountain, Through glimmering wood, by sky-empurpled fountain, In shady vale, by stream through roses playing, Breathed faint and low, as tenderly delaying - The song is still, that clear in morning hovered When billowy mist the winding valley covered, When bleat and bark, from bushy lawn repeated, The joyous song, that light and buoyant fleeted- NIGHT is on the hill-- Now the evening star, Dark and darker spread Night is deep and still III. BELLS are ringing, By the village tree; Wreaths and banners flying, Joy is wild and free. Harvest over, Hasten to the green; Love with crown of myrtle, Fleetly glancing, LIFE: AN ALLEGORY. BY J. G. PERCIVAL, ESQ. It is now morning. Still and glassy lies the lake, within its green and dew-sprent shores. Light mist hangs around, like a skiëy veil, and only reveals the uncertain outlines of woods and hills The warm vernal air is just stirring in the valleys, but has not yet ruffled the water's mirror. Turns the eye upward, the misty vault opens into the calm, clear heavens, over which there seems suffused a genial spirit's breath. Far distant on the horizon flash out the gilded and reddening peaks, and from yonder crown of snow, a sudden radiance announces the risen sun. Now in the east stream the golden rays through the soft blue vapor. The breeze freshens, and comes loaded with fragrance from the woods. A faint, dark curl sweeps over the water; the mist rolls up, lifts itself above meadow and hill, and in gathered folds hangs light around the mountains. Away on the level lake, till it meets the sky, silvery gleams the sheeted wave, sprinkled with changeful stars, as the ever-rising breeze breaks it in ripples. Now the pennon, that hung loose around the mast, rises and fitfully floats. We spread the sail, and casting off from the shore, glide out with cheerful hearts on our voyage. Before us widens the lake; rock after rock receding back on either hand, and opening between, still bays, hung round with sparkling woods, or leading through green meadow vistas to blue sunny hills. IT is now noon. In the middle lake speeds the bark over light glancing waves. Dark opens down the clear depth. White toss the crests of foam, and as the sail stoops to the steady wind, swift flies the parted water round the prow, and rushing pours behind the stern. The distant shores glow bright in the sun, that alone in the heaven looks unveiled with vivifying goodness over the earth. How high and broad swells the sky! The agitated lake tosses like a wide field of snowy blossoms. Sweep after sweep of the long-retiring shores; hill gleaming over hill, up to the shadowy mountains; and over these, Alpine needles, shooting pearly white into the boundless azure-all lie still and happy under the ever-smiling sun. AND now it is evening. The sun is sinking behind the dark mountains, and clouds scattered far in the east, float soft in rosy light. The sun is now hidden, and strong and wide sweeps up its golden flame, like the holy blaze of a funeral pile. The breeze slackens, the waves subside in slumber, and slowly the bark steers into its sheltering bay. Long shadows stretch from hill to valley, fall like dark curtains on the lake, and a solemn, subdued serenity broods, like a protecting spirit, over the hushed and quiet earth. Only the far summits yet retain their brightness Faint blushes stain the eternal snows, recalling the first dawning roses, like the memory of early joys in the tranquil moments of departing age. These, too, fade; but the evening star looks bright from the blue infinite, and like the herald of a better world, leads us softly to our haven. A MOONLIGHT SCENE AT SEA. NO DIMPLE On the wave!- the queenly moon, The sails are stirless; not a ripple breaks Swings useless, nor avails the steersman's skill. Of the Azores, September 2, 1835. S. THE PROSPECTS OF THE AGE. ONE of the most striking things in the mental history of modern times, is the interest which thinking men, of whatever class or pursuit, have taken in the political condition and prospects of the world. Even those whose lives have been the most retired, and whose habits the most studious, even those who have sat on the top of Parnassus, - have shared in the agitations of the world around and beneath them. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, have each of them been politicians. Political Economy itself is a modern science and modern Philosophy, in every form, has showed a marked interest in the vast questions that now agitate mankind. But although this is striking, it is not strange. Strange would it rather have been, if thinking men could have turned a cold and indifferent eye upon the stupendous questions which modern history is pressing upon their attention. For although these questions, in their broadest character, do not appeal directly to any selfish feeling, they do appeal to a powerful interest- the interest we feel in our kind. They bring home the subject to us, by the most intimate ties of sympathy. The welfare of the world presents to us, indeed, a vast, but not a vague or abstract theme. Its past history, its struggles and its failures, its risings and its fallings are they not like the steps of our own experience? Its fortunes. are they not those of millions of beings, in whose hearts hope and fear, joy and sorrow, have throbbed, as in our own? The human condition what is it but the extension of our own private history?what is it, but a mighty medium, through which our sympathies most naturally diffuse themselves? The man of Europe-whether the barbarian of the North, the effeminate slave of the South, or the more intelligent dweller in her middle regions- the inhabitant of populous Asia, and he who builds his lowly hut or his mud-walled city on VOL. VII. 7 the scorched plains of Africa does he not feel- want suffersorrow as I do? Then is he part of myself: more than kindred, more than brotherhood, does he claim with me; the tie of humanity is the tie of absolute identity! And then when we consider more particularly the fortunes of this great, widely-extended, and all-embracing humanity when we behold the heavy clouds of error that have settled down upon this mighty mass of living beings - the clouds and the waves through which human reason has been sounding on its dim and perilous way' -- when we behold, beneath this broad and gloomy veil of human delusions, the thousands of instruments whetted for slaughter, and engaged in the work of destruction, and the many engines which human ingenuity has devised, of grinding oppression and cruel torture; when we see how many great experiments in human happiness have failed, -the Assyrian, the Jewish, the Grecian, the Roman, the Feudal of the Middle Ages; when we contemplate all this, I say, can we look upon it as a tale of historic fiction, and pass it by as if it were but a vision of material clouds and storms, or of physical struggles and vicissitudes? No, it is reality; it is the real experience of human hearts: that world which has so long sighed for happiness, which has desired but never seen, and sought but never found that world is still engaged in the battle-strife for liberty, for truth, and for happiness-still engaged, but with a better hope. The validity of this better hope, however, is often called in question. There is an impression prevailing, to a considerable extent, I suspect, that there are insuperable barriers fixed in the circumstances of men, or in their very constitution, to any high state of improvement. It is imagined, by not a few, that the very elements of human nature are such as cannot, in its earthly condition, be wrought up into the elements of happiness. Do what you will with human nature,' they say, or they vaguely think, give it freedom, or bind it in the chains of despotism; enlighten it, or leave it in ignorance; refine it, or bow it down to vulgar degradation; do what you will with it, yet its exposures, its enemies, its temptations, will prove too strong for it: in freedom, it will become licentious; in bondage, base; enlightened, it will be crafty; and ignorant, it will be dull, not innocent; refined, it will be artificial and corrupt, and will be urged to evil by its miseries; degraded and vulgarized, it will only rush into still wilder excess.' Now to this broad and fatal proscription, I cannot for one moment assent. I believe that men have failed, not because they could not, but because they would not, work out their own welfare. There is moral power enough in the world, and always has been, if it were only exerted, to control and to conquer any circumstances to correct, not instantly, indeed, but gradually to correct, any evils to modify governments, laws, institutions to obtain knowledge and virtue - and, in one word, to rise to a point of elevation which the world has never yet seen, nor even conceived of. This power lies in individuals, and it lies in that aggregate of individuals, the world. The primary difficulty has not been the want of good governments, happy institutions, fair opportunities, abundant means, or all-sufficient powers. But the difficulty has been, that men have not been alive to their interests, that they have not intelligently pursued them, and that they have not had the moral will to pursue them, as they ought to have done, |