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change? Not so. Here is a proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men, and the military boys, are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that regulates each simultaneous foot-fall. The soldiers yield the path to the dusty hearse, and unpretending train, and the children quit their ranks, and cluster on the sidewalks, with timorous and instinctive curiosity. The mourners enter the church-yard at the base of the steeple, and pause by an open grave among the burial stones; the lightning glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the thunder rattles heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid. Verily, the shower is near."

"Lo! the rain drops are descending and now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far distant points, like snowy mountain tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is striding in robes of mist, and at the town, whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead and turning a single moment to the sky, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the rainbow!"

Next to the discourse of the pump, we should rank 'Sunday at Home,' of which we have before spoken in these pages, Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe,' The Gentle Boy,' and 'Little Annie's Ramble.' 'The Minister's Black Veil,' and 'The Prohphetic Pictures,' are less to our fancy; but they are marked by good taste, and managed with adroitness. In short, in quiet humor, in genuine pathos, and, deep feeling, and in a style equally unstudied and pure, the author of Twice-Told Tales' has few equals, and with perhaps one or two eminent exceptions, no superior in our country. We confidently and cordially, therefore, commend the beautiful volume before us to the attention of our readers.

THE LIFE OF FRIEDRICH SCHILLER: Comprehending an Examination of his Works. In one volume. New-York: GEORGE DEARBORN AND COMPANY.

THIS is undoubtedly the most complete and philosophical biography of the great German poet which has yet been written in English. To use the words of Dr. FoLLEN, by whom the American edition has been edited, and than whom no one on this side of the Atlantic is better qualified for the task: 'This account of the life of Schiller is a biography, in the full sense of the word; not merely a recital of events, or a description of the peculiarities and the gradual unfolding of the personal character of the author, but chiefly a critical analysis of his works, of which the main part of such a life consists.'

The correction of many errors in the English edition, especially of those committed in the translations from the works of the author, made by the American editor, adds much to the value of this edition, as does likewise the entire preface, which is characterized by the critical acumen and scholarship of the learned writer. We hope that Dr. Follen may be encouraged to superintend a similar biography of the illustrious contemporary and friend of Schiller- adding to our standard libraries an adequate history of the great Göethe.

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EDITORS' TABLE.

CHEVALIER'S WORK ON THE UNITED STATES. An attentive friend in Paris has sent us two handsome volumes, from the press of GOSSELIN, entitled 'Lettres Sur l'Amérique Du Nord: Par MICHAEL CHEVALIER.' We have perused them with more respect for the talents and researches of the author, than for his candor in many cases; though we really believe that his intentions were as impartial as possible. If we take from his volumes that yearning for effect that solicitude for pointed contrasts which give to French literature in general so much of its piquancy and charm; if we make due allowance for the first influences of a country upon the mind of a stranger, with a proper reflection upon the difficulty which any one, however scrutinizing and observant, must find in comprehending the social or political economy of a foreign nation — we shall readily concede to our author an honesty of purpose, not always, but in the main, accompanied with judgment; and a discerning mind, from whose impressions it is impossible not to learn something of value.

We make one translation, to show the misconceptions of M. CHEVALIER, arising from a hasty and somewhat dramatic style of observation, as well as to protest against contrasts so preposterous and unjust :

"The Yankee and the Virginian are two beings very dissimilar. They love each other but passably, and often quarrel. They are the same men who cut each other's throats in England, under the names of Cavaliers and Round Heads. In England, they have made peace, thanks to the interference of the new dynasty, which is neither Stuart nor Cromwell. In America, they would have quarrelled as they had formerly done in the mother country, had not Providence placed them, the one at the north, the other at the south, extending between them the territory which includes the middle states of Pennsylvania and New-York, with their satellites New-Jersey and Delaware.

"The Virginian of the pure blood, is open, accessible, and gruerous. He is courteous in his manwers, noble in sentiment, and lofty in his ideas. He is the worthy descendant of the English gentleman. Surrounded, from his infancy, by slaves, who obey all his commands, he not only wants energy, but is extremely lazy. He is lavish and prodigal. Around him, and in the new states, even more than in impoverished Virginia, profusion reigns. When the cotton crop has been good, and the prices are firm, he calls all his friends and dependants, not even excepting his field hands, to enjoy his wealth, without troubling himself with considering the prospects of the next crop. The practice of hospitality is with him a duty, a pleasure, a happiness. After the manner of the eastern patriarchs, or the heroes of Homer, to entertain the guest whom accident has sent, or an old friend recommended, to him, he places an ox upon the spit; and to wash down this substantial repast, he produces his old Madeira, which has made two voyages to India, and laid twenty years in his own cellar. He loves the institutions of his country, but nevertheless will show with satisfaction to a stranger his family plate, the armorial bearings upon which are half effaced by time; attesting its descent from the first colonists, whose ancestors were of respectability in England. When his mind has been cultivated by study, and when a voyage to Europe has given grace to his form, and refinement to his imagination, there is no place in the world that he would not dignify; there is no destiny so elevated, that he might not aspire to it. He is one of those men, with whora one is happy as a companion, and one desires as a friend. Gifted with an ardent mind and a warm heart, he is the stuff of which great orators are composed. He knows better how to command men, than to conquer nature, and fertilize the soil. When he possesses a certain portion of wit and order, and of that active perseverance so common among his brethren of the North, he unites all things that are required to constitute a great

statesman.

"The Yankee, on the other hand, is reserved, cautious, and distrustful. His character is thoughtful and gloomy, but uniform; his manner is ungraceful, but modest, and without vulgarity. His exterior is cold often forbidding; his ideas are narrow, but practical; they are rather directed toward the useful than the luxurious. He has no particle of chivalry in his character, and yet he is bold and adventurous, and delights in a wandering life. He has an imagination, active and full of original conceptions, which are here called Yankee notions.' He is not poetical, but fantastical and odd. The Yankee is like the laborious ant; he is industrious and steady; he is economical. Upon the barren soil of New-England it amounted to meanness; transplanted to the promised land of the West, his character is subdued, and he counts his coppers with less carefulness.

"In New-England, he has a good share of prudence, but once thrown among the treasures of the west, he becomes a speculator, and even a gambler; although he has a natural horror of cards, and all games of hazard, except the innocent game of nine-pins. He is cautious, subtle, calculating, delighting in those tricks by which he overreaches a careless or confiding purchaser of his wares, be

cause he regards them as proofs of his superior wit and talent for business. Cautions though he be, he is expeditious in his affairs, because he knows the value of time. His house is a sanctuary which is seldom violated by the stranger. He is not hospitable; or rather, he rarely dispenses his hospitality; but when he does entertain, he does it well, and liberally. He speaks without effort, and is a close logician, but not a brilliant orator.

"If, however, he is not a great statesman, he is a skilful manager, and a wonderful man of business. If he cannot control men, he is without his equal in the management of details; in their arrangement and placing them in train.

"There are no merchauts more skilful than those of Boston. But it is as colonist that the Yankee is admirable above all others. Fatigue or hardship cannot conquer him. He has not, to so great a degree as the Spaniard, the power of enduring hunger or thirst; but he possesses a faculty which is far superior; that of providing in any place, and at all times, food and raiment; and of guarding against the cold, first his wife and children, and afterward himself. He lays siege to nature herself, and notwithstanding her resistance, brings her into subjection, and forces her to surrender at discretion."

Now any one at all acquainted with the provincial characteristics of our countrymen, would instantly set this picture down, as exaggerated and absurd; and we are quite sure that every liberal man among the great multitude of our southern brethren would stamp it as such at once, without hesitation. We are perfectly willing to consider that 'the honors are equal' between the two sections of the Union, with respect to sporting, speculating, and gambling, (as M. CHEVALIER chooses to call it ;) and in the latter respect, we are sure we concede rather too much. However, we are willing to let that pass. There may be there undoubtedly is - a floating class of yankees to be found in various quarters- pedlars of tin-ware, 'notions,' nutmegs, maps, books, flints, cum multis aliis, in various quarters of the country; and they are stigmatized by HALLECK, in his poem of Connecticut, as men on whom the Virginians look

With some such favorable eyes

As Gabriel on the Devil in Paradise.'

But let the substantial people of New-England be seen at home. They are cautious, it is true, but hospitable, and warm-hearted; faithful to death in friendship, and chivalrous in war; (witness! ye fields of Concord, thou, Bunker Hill, and you, ensanguined Lexington, whose soil drank in the most devoted rain of blood that was ever showered for the salvation of a continent, and the welfare of millions yet to live!) Let the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers be seen and known, and we fear not the verdict which will assign them a place, superior we will not urge, but equal, to that of any province or commonwealth on the globe.

We should be pleased, did our limits allow, to translate sundry quotations which we have marked among others a truly idiomatic and amusing sketch of Crockett's appearance and phraseology - and which we are sure would afford pleasure to our readers; but they will doubtless soon meet with the volumes, entirely rendered. The indiscriminate re-publication of foreign matter from the English press, and the avidity in Great-Britain for French comments upon the political and social condition of the United States, render such a result highly probable.

CORPOREAL PUNISHMENT. - In another department of this Magazine, will be found an article descriptive of the Russian mode of inflicting corporeal punishment upon criminals. We are indebted for it to a gentlemen recently from England, who informs us that it was written for a Scottish annual, which was attempted at Glasgow, and which promised well, but was subsequently given up.' It will have the effect, we hope, to convince the advocates of whipping in the prisons of the United States - which is, after all, but a variety of the knout — that the practice is a species of barbarism, and that, possibly, there may be some punishment devised, a little less cruel, and more effective, than lacerating the human body by scourging. We are no advocates of a blind philanthropy; but this subject is one which has excited the attention of some of the wisest and best men of the age.

'UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN.'- This sentence is true of crowned heads generally, yet it is most particularly applicable to the citizen-king of the French, whose every movement appears to be watched by some lurking assassin. But the printed reports of the attacks on the life of Louis PHILIPPE have always struck us as laughable in the extreme. The minuteness of detail, the far-fetched inferences, and the tortuous ramifications of suspicion, are peculiarly French, and tend to distract sympa< thy from the grand monarque, whose life has just been placed in imminent peril. The following is something after the common formula: 'Last evening, at seven o'clock, another attempt was made upon the life of our beloved king, by a man named FranCOIS SPRIGGINS. He had for some days attracted the attention of a police agent of the third division, and the inspector-general of the interior of the chateau, by a certain daring cock of his eye, whenever any of the National Guard passed near him, and by the contemptuous manner in which his hat was placed upon the side of his head. At the moment the king passed, in his carriage, the criminal was observed to thrust his right hand into the left hand pocket of his surtout, and draw from thence a pistol, which, before it was possible for any of the by-standers to arrest his arm, he presented and fired. The ball entered the middle of the carriage window, and narrowly missed the very head of the king, who was fortunately at the moment seized with a violent attack of sternutation, which threw it downward with great suddenness. Instantly, persons from all sides rushed upon the culprit, and, to use an expressive English term, before he had time to vociferate 'Jacobus Robinson,' he was firmly secured, and not a little maltreated by the crowd. He was perfectly cool and self-possessed so much so, that, turning to the first indignant citizens who had grasped his arms and legs, in the attempt to secure him, he exclaimed, Well? — what of it? His eye, as he uttered these words, beamed with much intensity. The assassin was immediately taken to the Tuilleries, and placed in one of the lower cells, under a tripple guard of twenty-four soldiers. His clothes were at once removed from his person. They consisted of a dark-brown surtout, quite passé, one of the elbows of which, in particular, was very much dilapidated, as if worn by constant friction. This circumstance was noted by an officer, and may lead to a disclosure of the nature of the culprit's calling, and to the discovery of his accomplices. He had, beside, a pair of gray cloth pantaloons, much worn, with a small fissure or hole in the lower region of the backward portion, through which, previous to his being undressed, it was remarked by several persons that a dingy fragment of linen hung suspended, like a pocket-handkerchief. His waistcoat was of faded black, and exceedingly tattered, and in one of the pockets was found a single franc. In the pocket of his bodycoat, the least valuable of all his garments, was found a discolored pipe, from which arose an effluvia very offensive to the examining functionary. He had four shirts upon his body, varying in hue and cleanliness, downward to the first in which he had encased himself. A pair of old boots were taken from his feet, on one of which was a blue, and on the other a white, stocking - both in very bad condition. The pistol which the culprit used, was of a medium size, with a screw rifle barrel: it was a very common weapon, with a damaged stock, and had been very slightly charged, although it made a very loud report. In the hat which he wore, and which was not found until some time after his arrest, was the name of the maker, in the Rue St. Martin. An officer immediately went to this address, when it was found that the artizan, a tall, one-eyed man, very fond of snuff, and well known to the police, had been absent from Paris for three months, but that it would be very easy to find him out. The criminal has been removed to the Conceirgerie, under a strong escort. Other important particulars will be given in the bulletin at noon. A public affiche may be seen at the Bourse.'

Such is a fair sample of the gossip which attends a shot at that animated target whose misfortune it is to be Monarch of the French. But, poor man! he cannot help it. As Byron would say, 'it is all owing to his bitch of a stai.' He was born to trouble' when he was born to be a king.

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'SPRING-TIME OF THE YEAR IS COMING!' We had newly nibbed our gray goosequill, to say a few words upon the season which, as we write, is breaking upon us in the song of birds, and the glow of unclouded skies — when, in glancing over our latest London periodicals, we chanced upon the annexed, from a work in press by 'THOMAS MILLER, Basket-maker,' the delightful prose-poet of 'A Day in the Woods.' Truly, it cannot be improved; and desiring the reader to make the slight changes necessary to give the descriptions an American 'keeping,' we commend it to his affections. Spring,' says he, 'is come at last! There is a primrose color on the sky-there is a voice of singing in the woods, and a smell of flowers in the green lanes. Call her fickle April, if you choose; I have always found her constant as an attentive gardener. Who would wish to see her slumbering away in sunshine, when the daisies are opening their pearly mouths for showers? Her very constancy is visible in her changes: if she veils her head for a time, or retires, it is but to return with new proofs of her faithfulness, to make herself more lovable, to put on an attire of richer green, or deck her young brows with more beautiful blossoms. Call her not fickle, but modest - an abashed maiden, whose love is as faithful as the flaunting May or passionate June. Robed in green, with the tint of apple-blossoms upon her cheek, holding in her hands primroses and violets, she stands beneath the budding hawthorn, her young eyes fixed upon the tender grass, or glancing sideways at the daisies, as if afraid of looking upon the sun, of whom she is enamoured. Day after day she wears some additional charm, and the sky-god bends down his golden eyes in delight at her beauty; and if he withdraws his shining countenance, she is all tears, weeping in an April shower for his loss. Fickle Sun! He, too, soon forgets the tender maiden, clothed in her simple robes, and decorated with tender buds, and, like a rake, hurries over his blue pathway, and pines for the full-bosomed May, or the voluptuous June, forgetting April, and her sighs and tears.

'Oh! how delightful is it now to wander forth into the sweet-smelling fields; to set one's foot upon nine daisies - a sure test that spring is come; to see meadows lighted with the white flowers; to watch the sky-lark winging his way to his blue temple in the skics,

Singing above, a voice of light;

to hear the blackbird's mellow, flute-like voice ringing from some distant covert, among the young beauties of the wood, who are robing themselves for the masque of Summer.'

MOTTOS.-We have somewhere seen the quotation which ScOTT appended to his acknowledgment of the authorship of the Waverly novels, cited as a happy specimen of an appropriate motto:

And must I then

This lengthened skein unravel?'

But it seems to us scarcely more felicitous than the lines selected by the clever author of 'The Fidget Papers,' to preface the history of the 'reduced fashionable,' whose history he records in the present number of this Magazine. Let the reader remark, after perusing the article, with what entire aptitude every word of the quotation may be applied to the events narrated. Appropos of the 'Fidget Papers.' The author says, in a private note: "They came to us with the effects of FRANCIS FIDGET, Esq., a gentleman recently deceased, who was an old bachelor, had seen much of the world, and recorded every thing which he deemed worthy of preservation. He was frequently solicited, during his life-time, to publish a portion of his papers; but being totally destitute of literary ambition, he refused to comply with the request of his friends. A large portion of the Mss. relate to the fortunes of a family by the name of MORTHAM, whose country villa was not far from the humble residence of Mr. Fidget. This family consisted of Col. Mortham, and a lady who was his second wife, two sons, and a daughter. Of the two

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