yet, the heaven-sent "know thyself," has given place to "know thy neighbor"-an injunction apparently sent from some other quarter. Hence the same philosopher at the same time remarked,

that,

With an-I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air,

Of all quiet pleasures, the very ne plus

Was in hunting wild bores, as the tame ones hunt us,

And

a proposition which commands our immediate attention. with these jewels of wisdom for our guide we approach the ample presence of that august multitude with whom we have a fraternal duty to perform, and stand in the gateway to that delectable vision of an incog and unpublished clerical bard who saith:

in New-York alone,

There are two thousand poets all full grown,

every one of these having large families; from which circumstance he concludes:

"Tis plain, in future years the throng

Will think in rapture and converse in song;
Value forsake our dollars, cents, and dimes,
And be transferred to novels, plays, and rhymes;

Merchants in poems deal, as now in cotton,

And dry-goods clerks, alas! be no more tho't on;

Epics become what cotton is, and stand

The staple produce of a tuneful land;

And all our brokers too, be ruined by

A fall in novels, odes, or clegy;

While Wall-street bulls and bears shall raise their clamors

'Gainst one who's broke for 40,000 dramas,

And fled, with a song crammed portmanteau,

While his estate won't pay a stanza in the canto!

This wondrous bard stops, and we are about to proceed,

when he sings out,

Hold! are you mad? you damned confounded dog;

I am to rise and speak the epilogue!

and proceeds to say,

That the one-day's tailor, snob, or tinker,

May be to-morrow's greatest thinker;

and then details a

plan the muse prefers,

For turning fools into philosophers;

a procedure so well understood among most of our embryo literati, male and female, that it is not worth while to repeat it; for there is no evidence among the whole crowd of them of any deficiency in understanding that old saw which says, "If you are to be made an ass of, an ass you must make up your mind to be." And yet there are those whose temple of fame rises with the dubious rapidity of the Washington Monument, who will thank us for throwing a ray of light upon the road to notoriety, believing as they do, in the sincerity of their ambition, that it is "better to be damned than not mentioned.' They are not chained to that dictum which says, "most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind take their original either from the love of pleasure, or the fear of want." Notoriety, however evanescent, is the beginning and end of their life's endeavor. What does our aspiring poetaster, or crushing and triturating story-teller care for the future? Let him or her but blaze for an evening amid the scribbling satellites of the present, and as a compensation, you may pitch the exultant genius into Oblivion or Tartarus on the morrow.

We have been told that the Chinese seem less afraid of death than of wanting a coffin, insomuch that a son will sometimes mortgage himself to procure that post-mortem convenience for his father. And so with our nursery poets and our blood-and-thunder authors and authoresses; "written poetry is a sepulchre inhabited by phantoms;" they are familiar with hobgoblins; and they, too, seem less afraid of a moral and social death, than of wanting a mercurial renown wherein to envelope themselves as they make the transit from letters to Lethe, or plunge headlong from Pegasus to perdition.

With the majority, 1 is the cardinal number, and self the cardinal principle. And whoever takes the responsibility of trotting them out for exhibition among their gaping kindred may be sure of their fervent gratitude.

There is a tradition, at least, if nothing better, which intimates that an inordinate love of finery in dress is characteristic of the so-called gentle sex; and it is not altogether improbable that the legends of America may tell, in future years, the heroic tale of a score of Cleanthes and Camillas of the present time, whose fate was sealed, for good or worse, by an extra

ruffle in the bosom of some lordly shirt standing up in the place of a man. And on the other hand, it is beyond question that there are in our midst whole acres of locomotive pantaloons, who would peril their fortunes and their honors to gather about them a few more ells of superincumbent broadcloth. But these are nothing beside those eager masculinities and femininities who are scribbling for glory. Marvel not at any egotism, drollery, or device which they may present in that high endeavor. But look about you.

Over there in the suburbs of the world by the snaky borders of the Passaic, sits a pensive maiden beauty and wit, tiny in form, yet trenchant in intellect, who, having done well in prose and doggerel before she had passed from the romantic sphere of girlhood, conceived a huge desire for gaining notoriety, and is said to have made a large investment therein, at a cost of a thousand daguerreotypes, distributed promiscuously among male and female acquaintances throughout the country-and the world. It was a bold stroke, and a genius directed it. And some day we hope it may startle the now wiser author by the magnitude of its results.

And away there in an opposite direction, warmed into life under the blue lights of a dominion famous for its hebdomedal virtues and its genius in counterfeiting the nux moschata, sits an amiable and ardent miss, listening the year through to the whispering of stately elms that commemorate the repose of revolutionary heroes; conning rhymes in obedience to the dictates of a great head and a warm heart; sanguine in hope; sending forth pathetic and philosophical portraitures of love and heroism, devotion and despair, at the rate of something less than a cart-load in a year, traced in a penmanship that puts to shame chirographical professors, and—so gallant are editors-fortunate in getting "accepted" written upon a respectable number of her title-pages. She is already before the world in hundreds of pages, 12mo, cloth, as an authoress, and has the elements of success within and around her. She enjoys that great blessing, the love of a true mother, and profits by the counsel of wise friends. And yet there too, along with the safe and earnest desire to know, is manifest, in no mean undercurrent, the same dangerous agonizing to be known; as if a really meritorious character could remain unknown in an enlightened community.

And, unfortunately, in obedience to her desire, thither are first turned the serpent eyes of older and bolder dames, desperate in the chase of literary renown, determined alike upon novels

and notoriety, and who would willingly sacrifice the lovely genius of Ether-Wood to add a sand-grain to their fictitious exaltation, before its inevitable abasement by the returning surges of popular moral rectitude. Let her thank her stars if she escapes unscathed by the Judas kiss and unsmitten by the attendant malaria of those precious male and female harpies who everywhere fasten themselves upon the innocent skirts of real merit and who for ever curse their kind and country with the reeking and repulsive rant of their extravagant and execrable conversation and scribblings.

We have spoken unceremoniously of older and bolder dames. Let no one ask wherefore; for if we may judge the whole by the somewhat secret but real antecedents of a portion of them, they are about equally inclined to flash literature, family dramatics, and Old Knick-in saying which, we mean no special disrespect to belles lettres, the "legitimate" drama, or his grim majesty.

For some years the chiefs of Down-Eastern Amazons have been quartered upon this meridian; and if they are missed there, let their friends console themselves with the patriotic assurance, that, in departing hence, these red lights of literature "left their country for their country's good;" and though there are some old maids of the other gender still remaining, we have no time to mention them; although, in passing, let us not be suspected of undervaluing old maids of a genuine quality, whose children, the proverb tells us, are perfect, and-according to the assertion of Margaret Fuller-without whom, and their brothers, the bachelors, together "roaming about, mental and moral Ishmaelites, pitching their tents among the fixed and ornamental homes of men," the complex business of society could scarcely be carried on for a day. Besides, is not matrimony a foe to ambition and the achievement of renown?

But let us take a glance at our modern Athens; a single character demands recognition. There, flouting her trumpery bib and drapery before the modest eyes of young Athenians, the first observation reveals a feminine monstrosity, passably graceful in appearance, but perfectly graceless in fact, whose nature, to be perfectly hated, needs only to be fairly seen. She can write! oh, terribly! and is now, perhaps, at the head of her class in the slaughter-house school of fiction-with a single swoop of her pen getting beyond nature, and committing murder in the wilderness of impossibilities upon the most trivial occasion. Read a single chapter of her last production. Nor is this strange; for such is her composition that she can

not stop to be true to nature, herself, or her kindred; intellectually, she presents the novel spectacle of a human head drinking in its sustenance from a devil's heart. She is dexterous in treachery and extortion, where either wealth or talent attracts her attention. Of her other vices we will not disturb her own reckoning. Some other tyros in the literary world are familiar with "black mail;" but here is a black female. If you doubt the fact, summon the mediums and call up the spirit of poor Lippard, or interrogate a hundred living witnesses.

Yet this woman is not solus in her soullessness. She has a successful rival operating in a larger field: a rival greater with her pen; less in pure inhumanity, but equal in moral impurity, and, perhaps, superior in social infidelity; a woman, in a word, of accomplished mind and accursed morals; not small in intellect, or large in virtue; whose selfish audacity braves justice under the garb of humanity; who affects heroic devotion to a friendly malefactor, while practising conjugal duplicity. worthy, at best, of other ages and other countries. And yet it is the fashion in certain circles, here, as among the rotten hulks of despotic states, to cover up vice in proportion as it becomes reprehensible on account of its eminence. And for this the stalking laxity of the inferior but "flash" portion of our literati is likely to be received among the mass of the people as a characteristic of the profession of letters; thus fastening upon the mass of the educated the stigmas which belong only to the few of the class who "know too much;" and thereby, in effect, degrading intelligence and offering a premium for ignorance of every thing beyond dollars and cents and physical luxury. And thus this woman, like her kindred of both sexes, maintains an imperious position among filching second-class publishers and a multitude of morally fetid admirers, solely upon the strength of a temporary reputation as a writer of ordinary

romance.

But even this last is not the bell-dame of the tribe. She is only a feeble imitator, in some respects, of an exemplar now ripe in years, and whose fame rests upon an older, broader, and deeper basis, a genius in literature and literary chicanery, who owes much of her distinction to successful "appropriations" of the long-studied and matured schemes of younger and more honest authoresses, who confided their professional schemes to her only to be requitted for their friendship by a species of literary brigandage of which she is mistress.

The maiden history of this eminent, highly esteemed, and now extremely respectable, authoress and editress, must pass in