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NIAGARA
Behold! again I view thee, in thy majesty and might,
Thy broad sheet flashing in the blaze of morning’s glorious light;
I mark thee maddened in thy fall, and pale with hoary rage,
And fretting in thy passion, that hath boiled from age to age.
Like thunder on my startled ear, thine everlasting roar
Hath broken, and reverberates from shore to echoing shore;
Continuous and fearful, with dread power in its tone,
That shakes the earth’s foundations and rives the solid stone!
How tremulous beneath the shock the fearful earth hath grown!
Reeling beneath the mighty plunge, it sighs with ceaseless moan;
Now rush thy waves, with frenzy wild, in foam of dazzling white,
Now, placidly they sweep along, with ever-changeful light.
O, wondrous Power! O, giant Strength! how fearful to behold,
Outstretched on yon o’erhanging crag, thy mad waves downward rolled:
To look adown the cavernous abyss that yawns beneath—
To see the feathery spray flash forth in many a glittering wreath!
Voluminous and ceaseless still, forever swift descend
The waters in their headlong course, then turning, heavenward wend:
Now, disenthralled, their essence hath its spirit-shape resumed;
Bright, bodiless and pure, its fright to yon empyrean plumed!
The Falls, 1842. Claude Halcro.
TO MARY
I wonder if the magic spells
That in the days of yore
Bewitched so oft poor harmless folks
(Unlucky wights!) are o’er?
I can’t believe it, for I’ve felt
The witchery of thy smile;
I’ve felt thy magic arts, and yet
I’ve loved thee all the while.
Is it the gleam of snowy teeth,
Or wave of silken tress,
That brings me to thy side, to gaze
Upon thy loveliness?
It cannot be, for I have seen
Full many a maid as fair;
I’ve seen as ruby lips before,
I’ve seen as glossy hair.
Some dark enchantress has bequeathed
To thee her magic art,
And thou hast bound me with thy spell,
And stolen all my heart.
Horace.
LITERARY NOTICES
Curiosities of Literature, and the Literary Character Illustrated. By I. C. D’Israeli, Esq., D. C. L., F. S. A. With Curiosities of American Literature. By Rufus W. Griswold. Complete in one volume. New-York: D. Appleton and Company, Broadway.
The ensuing remarks refer rather to the Supplement to D’Israeli’s ‘Curiosities of Literature,’ edited by Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, than to the well-known work to which it adds its attractions. It is an excellent collection of the many odd and quaint and foolish and good things which our forefathers ‘did and performed.’ Mr. Griswold has spiced his work with a variety, though he has done it more judiciously than a splenetic author whom he introduces in his work, who, in a vexatious mood at some severe criticisms on a former book, puts a dozen or more rows of interrogation and exclamation-points, commas, semicolons, etc., and tells his readers ‘they may pepper and salt it as they please.’ Mr. Griswold well understands the history of American literature; and we venture to say there is no man in the country who knows the names and contents of so many American books as he. This knowledge he has found of great service to him, enabling him to lay his hand at once on those things most worthy of preservation. If he had understood the linking process a little better, it would perhaps have added to the interest of his work. A sort of running commentary would have given greater vivacity to the numerous extracts. The way isolated specimens of an author are introduced affects very much the impression they make. But Mr. Griswold has succeeded well in gathering up the ravelled ends of our early literature; and the present edition of D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature will be the only one for the future in the American market. The most ‘curious’ part of our literary history is embraced in the revolution, with the short period preceding and following it. The British and Tories furnished endless themes to the pasquinader and ballad-maker, while the grave rights involved in the struggle called forth the efforts of more serious and thoughtful pens. The Puritans of New-England wrote most; and there is a union of the soundest sense with the most childish folly, the strongest character with the weakest prejudices in our good Yankee forefathers, that is quite incomprehensible. Like the Puritans of England in the time of Cromwell, when called into the hall of debate to discuss the rights of man, or into the field to battle for them, he were a bold man who dare smile at them. Yet in their religious acts they were often bigoted, intolerant and puerile. The same incongruity is seen in their tastes. Men of deep poetical sentiment, they often murdered poetry for conscience sake. A man who could write a defence of the colonies with a pen that fairly glowed with the burning Saxon that fell from it, would not be shocked at all at the impropriety of the following epitaph on a tomb-stone:
‘Here lies Jonathan Auricular,
Who walked in the ways of God perpendicular.’
Mr. Griswold gives us a specimen of the versification of the 137th psalm, in the Bible; one of the sweetest lyrics ever written, beginning ‘By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps upon the willows,’ etc. This psalm, whose exquisite beauties are so well preserved in our common English version, was put into verse with the rest of the psalms, by our pious forefathers. To their credit we can say, however, that the authors of the first version declare that they ‘have attended to conscience rather than to elegance’ in completing their work. We cannot excuse President Dunster of Harvard College, so easily, who revised the edition and sent it forth with the advertisement that they had in it a ‘special eye both to the gravity of the phrase of sacred writ, and to the sweetness of the verse;’ especially when we find this same sweet psalm completely murdered by him. After stumbling along through two stanzas, he thus paraphrases. ‘They that led us into captivity,’ he says:
Required of us a song, and thus
Askt mirth us waste who laid,
Sing us among, a Zion’s song,
Unto us then they said.
The Lord’s song sing can we, being
In stranger’s land?—then let
Lose her skill my right hand if I
Jerusalem forget.
Let cleave my tongue my palate on
If mind thee doe not I,
If chief joys o’er I prize not more,
Jerusalem my joy,’ etc., etc.
Such wretched stuff as this our good forefathers sung with the profoundest gravity; and those who thus murdered the king’s English and the Hebrew’s poem were called ‘poets!’ Yet this same age could produce such poets as Mrs. Ann Bradstreet, of whom her great panegyrist, John Norton, in a poetical description of her says:
‘Her heart was a brave palace, broad street,
Where all heroic simple thoughts did meet,
Where nature such a tenement had ta’en,
That other souls to hers dwelt in a lane.’
The pun here is good, but the comparison might have been dropped sooner without damage. The poem of Mrs. Bradstreet, entitled ‘Contemplations,’ possesses a great deal of merit, and proves her to be worthy of the extravagant praise of her extravagant admirer. The extracts from the poetry of Governor Wolcott are very favorable to the poetic reputation of the governor. But the richest thing in the whole collection is the ‘Simple Cobbler of Aggawam,’ occupying ten columns. The king-fashionable ladies, and long-haired young gentlemen, are successively put on the cobbler’s lapstone and hammered most industriously. And we must say, cobbler as he is, he appears to us to give vastly more blows than he takes stitches. This part of the work alone is worth the price of the whole book. It is quite too long to quote entire, and a mere extract would do it injustice. Freneau was a rare character, and his pasquinades on Rivington, a tory editor, are rich specimens. The confession he puts in the mouth of Rivington, in his ‘Address to the Whigs of New-York’ immediately after the close of the war, is equal to ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’ on the poor Scotch quack.
This Rivington, however, was not a more unlucky dog than another tory named Benjamin Towne, editor of the ‘Pennsylvania Evening Post.’ Supposing the cause of the rebels to be hopeless, he undertook to win favor and reward from the British by the most unsparing abuse of the Americans. But when the cause of freedom finally triumphed, the unlucky editor was left on the sand. Without money, without patrons, he found himself in the midst of those whom he had traduced, and dependent on them for a livelihood. In this emergency, he goes to the celebrated Dr. Witherspoon for aid. The stern republican doctor would listen to nothing, unless Towne would make his peace with his country by a most humble confession. Finding no other resource, he consented to publish in his paper any thing the doctor would write. This confession is given by Mr. Griswold at length; and if the tory editor does not make himself out a most precious scoundrel, the fault is certainly not with the doctor. He acknowledges that he had lied without limit, and was willing to publish bigger lies had they been brought him; he assures the people that he did every thing for personal gain, and was willing to do and say any thing now for the same purpose. He was moreover a brave man! ‘I hope,’ says he, ‘the public will consider that I have been a timorous man, or if you will, a coward from my youth, so that I cannot fight; my belly is so large that I cannot run; and I am so great a lover of eating and drinking that I cannot starve. When these things are considered, I hope they will fully account for my past conduct, and procure me the liberty of going on in the same uniform, tenor for the future.’ The collection teems with rich matter, and we have not even skimmed the surface. Here and there only have we touched a point. We could fill twice the space allotted us, with the revolutionary ballads alone, for the gathering of which Mr. Griswold deserves our thanks. New-England epitaphs come in for their share; and there is a capital anecdote of Dr. Dwight and Mr. Dennie, at which we gazed and pondered wistfully for a long time, in the hope, (a vain one, we are sorry to say,) of being able to present it to our readers.
This collection of Mr. Griswold brings together and preserves what was before floating around and slowly disappearing with the lapse of time. Our early literature is now grafted on a work which will secure its life; and those peculiar characteristics of a remarkable age, which grow more valuable the more distant the point from which we view them, will never pass away. Nothing is more difficult than to preserve the scanty and fugitive literature of an early age. A great work will live; but those fragments which are thrown off here and there, in a careless or earnest moment, perish, because they are fragmentary. They do not belong together in a book, and cannot stand alone. In a later period of the history of the country, this would be of little consequence, because there is enough else to stand as exponents of that age. But these fragments are all that is left to tell us how our fathers felt, and thought, and spoke. Without them, we are without every thing. This collection greatly enhances the value of the English edition, and cannot fail to increase its already extensive sale.
North-American Review for the April Quarter. Number CXXIII. pp. 268. Boston: Otis, Broaders and Company. New-York: C. S. Francis and Company.
There has not been issued for many a long month so good a number of this excellent and venerable Quarterly, as the one before us. It abounds in a good variety, alike of theme and style; and there is a manly, vigorous tone, and an independence of thought and expression, which we have not before observed, at least in so marked a degree. The number opens with a caustic and well-deserved critique upon the writings of James, the novelist; and we are the more gratified at this, because the defects of this romancer are the besetting sins of certain of our own novelists, who had at one time a fair degree of transient popularity. A lack of skill in the creation or accurate delineation of individual character, which, instead of representing men and women, are didactic exhibitions of the author himself, projected into various personages, and all bearing an unmistakable family resemblance—this it is that is at the bottom of the sudden decadence into which the writings of one or two of our more prolific romancers have fallen, past all redemption; and this is the great fault of Mr. James. ‘To be successful in the exact delineation of character,’ says the reviewer, ‘requires a rare combination of powers—a large heart and a comprehensive mind. It is the attribute of universality; it can be obtained only by outward as well as inward observation; not by that habit of intense brooding over individual consciousness, of making the individual mind the centre and the circumference of every thing, a habit which only makes of the writer an egotist, and limits the reach of his mind.’ Mr. James has certain types of character which he generally reproduces in each successive novel. His heroine is idealized into something which is neither spirit, nor flesh and blood. ‘His women, like his men, are ideas and feelings embodied; they are constructed, not created nor painted; built, not drawn. They do not stand boldly from the canvass.’ His rascal is an unmitigated rascal, intermingled with the machinery of his plot, and appearing regularly in every novel. ‘Mr. James is a great spendthrift of human life. The carelessness with which he slays, evinces the feebleness with which he conceives. If his personages were real to his own heart or imagination, he would not part with them so easily, nor kill them with such nonchalance.’ A very faithful description is given of Mr. James’s style; and it is one which will apply with equal force, though certainly in a subordinate case, to certain of our own novelists, whom the reader will readily recall, but whom it would be invidious perhaps to mention. ‘His style,’ says the reviewer, ‘has little flow and perspicuity, and no variety. It is usually heavy, lumbering, and monotonous. Half of the words seem in the way of the idea, and the latter appears not to have strength enough to clear the passage. Occasionally, a short, sharp sentence comes like a flash of lightning from the cloud of his verbiage, and relieves the twilight of his diction. There are but few felicitous phrases in his manifold volumes. He has hardly any of those happy combinations of words which stick fast to the memory, and do more than pages to express the author’s meaning. He has little command of expression. His imagery is common; and his manner of arranging a trite figure in a rich suit of verbiage, only makes its essential commonness and poverty more apparent. His style is not dotted over with any of those shining points, either of imagery or epigram, which illumine works of less popularity and pretension.’
The review of Mr. James’s works is followed by an excellent critique upon the poems of Mr. James Russell Lowell, which receive due commendation. There are some ‘rough truths’ in the reviewer’s opening remarks. ‘We have among us little companies of people, each of which ‘keeps its poet,’ and not content with that, proclaims from its small corner, with a most conceited air, that its poet is the man of the age.’ Instances are mentioned, closing with this irresistible climax: ‘One man thinks Cornelius Mathews has written the finest American poetry!’ In allusion to the whimsical peculiarities of Mr. Carlyle—a man of genius, learning, and humane tendencies—and their effect upon the servile tribe of imitators, the reviewer observes: ‘The study of German became an epidemic about the time that Carlyle broke out; the two disorders aggravated each other, and ran through all the stages incident to literary affectation, until they assumed their worst form, and common sense breathed its last, as the ‘Orphic Sayings’ came; those most unmeaning and witless effusions—we cannot say of the brain, for the smallest modicum of brains would have rendered their appearance an impossibility—but of mere intellectual inanity.’ The American Euphuists, being possessed of the demon of affectation, strive to set themselves apart from the common herd, imagine that they are inhabitants of a sublimated ether, and look down with pitying contempt on all who profess an inability to detect a meaning in their vapid and mystical jargon. ‘These be truths;’ and our readers will bear us witness that months ago, with but little variation of terms, we promulgated them in these pages.
There is an excellent paper upon the ‘Forest Lands and the Timber Trade of Maine;’ it is full of interest, despite the nature of its general theme. The ‘Boundary Question’ did not indicate the first usurpations of the British in Maine. It was the acts of parliament that forbade the use of water-falls, the erecting of machinery, of looms and spindles, and the working of wood and iron; that set the king’s arrow upon trees that rotted in the forest; that shut out markets for boards and fish, and seized sugar and molasses, and the vessels in which these articles were carried; and that defined the limitless ocean as but a narrow pathway to such of the lands that it embosoms as wore the British flag; it was these restrictions, to release which the revolution was created. The articles upon the various ‘Theories of Storms,’ and ‘The Recent Contest in Rhode-Island,’ we have not found leisure from pressing avocations to peruse. The paper on ‘Architecture in the United States’ is from the pen of one who ‘knows whereof he writes;’ and he has not been sparing of deserved satire upon the sad and ridiculous mistakes of those among us who are miscalled architects. High praise is awarded to our Trinity Church, now in progress of erection. ‘In size, in the delicacy and propriety of its decoration, and in the beauty of its general effect, it surpasses any church erected in England since the revival of the pointed style.’ In a notice of the ‘Writings of Miss Bremer,’ Mary Howitt ‘suffers some,’ on account of a certain hysteric preface of hers to a translation of one of the Swedish lady’s productions, in which she complains of the American translations from this popular writer. Among the ‘Critical Notices’ which compose the last article in the Review, is a critique upon Mr. Cornelius Mathews’s ‘Writings,’ including his poem on ‘Man in his Various Aspects,’ which embodies the opinions we have ourselves expressed in relation to them. Since the unfounded charge of being ‘actuated by private pique,’ which was brought against us by the author, cannot be assumed against the North American Review, we trust that our ‘complainant’ will not object that we fortify our own estimate of his literary merits by grave authority. The following is an extract:
Mr. Mathews has shown a marvellous skill in failing, each failure being more complete than the last. His comedy of ‘The Politicians’ is ‘the most lamentable comedy;’ and the reader exclaims, with Hippolyta, ‘This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.’ The ‘Career of Puffer Hopkins’ is an elaborately bad imitation of Dickens; and must be ranked in fiction where ‘The Politicians’ stands in the drama. It aims at being comical, and satirical upon the times. The author studies hard to portray the motley characters which move before the observer in a large city; but he has not enough of the vision and the faculty divine, to make them more than melancholy ghosts of what they profess to be. The attempts at humor are inexpressibly dismal; the burlesque overpowers the most determined reader, by its leaden dulness. The style is ingeniously tasteless and feeble. He who has read it through can do or dare any thing. Mr. Mathews suffers from several erroneous opinions. He seems to think that literary elegance consists in the very qualities which make elegance impossible. Simplicity and directness of language he abominates. When he has an idea to express, he aims, apparently, to convert it into a riddle, by inventing the most forced, unnatural, and distorted expressions. If the thing can be obscured, he is sure to obscure it. He seems to say to the reader, ‘Can you guess? do you give it up?’ But then, less obliging than the maker of charades, he leaves the puzzled victim without an explanation at last. He studies a singularity of phrase at once crabbed and finical, and overloads his pages with far-fetched epithets, that are at once harsh and unmeaning. He seems to have been told that he has wit and humor, and—strange delusion!—to believe it. He writes as if he imagined that he possessed the inventive power: never was a greater mistake. These qualities and these mistakes make his prose writings unreadable and intolerable, at least all the later ones. But when to the charms of his ordinary style are added the attractions of verse, then the sense aches with the combined and heightened beauties. The present volume exaggerates all his literary vices. The plan of these poems is very well; if executed with taste and power, the volume would have been interesting. As it is, we have here and there a good line, a striking figure, or a bold expression. But most of the poems are deformed by harshness of versification, feebleness of thought, and every species of bad writing. Compounded words, never seen before, and impossible to be pronounced, epithets detailed on service for which they are wholly unfit, figures that illustrate nothing but their own absurdity, and rhymes that any common book would die of, astonish the reader on every page. Had the poet purposely aimed to twist the English language into every conceivable form of awkwardness; had he designed to illustrate, for the use of beginners, every possible defect and every positive fault of diction; his success in accomplishing the object could not have been more complete.’
We annex a few of the ‘original’ beauties which the reviewer has selected from Mr. Mathews’s poem. Two or three of them, we perceive, are identical with those which we ourselves selected from that luminous effort of the mind and the imagination:
‘We had marked many characteristic passages in the present volume, to illustrate the observations we have felt called on to make. But we have space only for a few lines. In the first poem, besides many other absurdities of thought as well as expression, occurs this line:
‘Strides he the globe, or CANVASS-TENTS the sea.’
Who ever heard of the verb to canvass-tent? To canvass-back the sea would be much more rational.
In the second poem we find this luminous line:
‘Clear as the clear, round midnight at its full,’
which must be very clear indeed.
What can be the meaning of the following words in the ‘Teacher?’
‘Whose eyes cry light through all its dawning void.’
Again, in the ‘Farmer:’
‘Fierce revolutions rush in WILD-ORBED haste.’
In the ‘Mechanic,’ the following very intelligible direction is given to the architect:
‘In the first Builder’s gracious spirit work,
Through, hall, through enginery, and TEMPLES MEEK,
In grandeur towered, or lapsing beauty-sleek,
Let order and creative fitness shine.’
In the ‘Merchant,’ the poet affirms:
‘Undimmed the man should through the trader shine.
And show the soul UNBABIED by his craft.’
This can only mean, that the soul of the trader ought not to be supplied with babies by his craft.
The ‘Sculptor’ ends with this prediction:
‘And up shall spring through all the BROAD-SET land,
The FAIR WHITE PEOPLE of thy love unnumbered.’
In the ‘Journalist,’ we find the following directions to the printer:
‘Hell not the quiet of a Chosen Land,
Thou grimy man over thine engine bending.’
Hell, as a common noun, is a sufficiently uncomfortable idea; but when converted into an active verb, it becomes positively alarming.
The poet thus advises ‘The Masses:’
‘In vast assemblies calm, let order rule,
And every shout a cadence owning,
Make musical the vexed winds moaning,
And be as little children at a singing-school.’
And the ‘Reformer’ is told to
‘Seize by its horns the shaggy Past,
Full of uncleanness.’
A Practical Treatise on Midwifery. By M. Chailly, M. D., Professor of Midwifery, etc., etc. With two hundred and sixteen wood-cuts. Translated from the French, and edited by Dr. Gunning S. Bedford, of the University of New-York. In one volume. pp. 530. Harper And Brothers.
This work comes to us under the fairest auspices. The author, M. Chailly, is a distinguished Parisian lecturer on Obstetrics, a pupil of the eminent Paul Dubois, of the University of Paris, and generally recognized as the exponent of the views of that celebrated accoucheur. By all who are familiar (and who of the medical world is not?) with the high reputation of Dubois for sound medical philosophy and unbounded practical knowledge, it has been long regretted that the just opinions he so eloquently promulgates in the lecture-room have never assumed the diffusible shape of a printed book. M. Chailly, in the work before us, supplies us with that which has been so much desired, and which Prof. Dubois himself, from some cause not easily appreciated, has so long withheld from the world. The Parisian board of public instruction has moreover stamped the work of M. Chailly with their approbation, and fixed it as the standard text-book of the French medical schools. This is a promise of excellence which a diligent perusal of the work will fully confirm. Professor Bedford, the American translator, who has performed his duty as might be expected from his high character and prominent position, as Professor of the flourishing medical school of the University of New-York, felt the want of a good text-book for the student, and a sound practical guide for the physician, and has exhibited a sound judgment in this selection to supply that want. The work of Velpeau, hitherto unquestionably the most popular book with the medical profession, is diffuse and speculative. The present work is direct, concise, and complete. Dr. Bedford has enriched the original with copious notes, the result of his own extensive experience and observation. The publishers have performed their duty well, in presenting the work in a handsome library form; and it is only the very extensive business facilities of the Messrs. Harpers that could afford so full and well illustrated a scientific book at so reasonable a price.
The Literary Remains of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark: including the ‘Ollapodiana’ papers, ‘The Spirit of Life,’ and a choice Selection from his Miscellaneous Prose and Poetical Writings. With a Memoir of the Author. Edited by Lewis Gaylord Clark. Complete in five Numbers of ninety-six pages each. New-York: Burgess, Stringer and Company.
It does not become us, perhaps, to enlarge upon the merits of this work, the character of which is known to many of our readers. As there are other many of them, however, who may not be conversant with much of the prose which makes up a large portion of its contents—having become subscribers to this Magazine since the ‘Ollapodiana’ papers and the other prose miscellanies appeared in its pages—we shall venture to present a few extracts, and to preface them with the following remarks of the able Editor of the United States Gazette, of Philadelphia, upon the writer’s merits; praise, we may add, which has been confirmed by the kindred commendation of almost every journal in the Union: ‘Messrs. Burgess, Stringer and Company, of New-York, have commenced the publication, in a series of numbers, of the Literary Remains of Willis Gaylord Clark. The first number has been for some days upon our table, and after a biographical notice of the author, contains a portion of the ‘Ollapodiana,’ those admirable papers furnished for the Knickerbocker. Almost every body, who read five years ago, knows the beauties of Clark’s composition. They are permanent beauties; beauties that always are to be found by those who ever had taste to admire them. They are not dependant upon a jingle of words for temporary popularity; they appeal from the heart to the heart, in language that knows no variation of time. They express sentiments that are permanent, feelings common to mankind; and those who would profit by a delicate delineation of the affections of the human heart, will love the poetry of Clark. Those who would have a broader seal set upon manners, and the peculiarities of the mind set forth in pleasant grotesqueness, will smile at the ‘Ollapodiana.’ But all will profit by all; and we regard it as a literary obligation conferred upon the age, and carrying with it a moral obligation also, to multiply the copies of such writings as Clark prepared. We express not our feelings, when we write of Clark as an author. There are some of us who knew his heart better than he did, and who have never forgotten his worth. These monuments, that are erected to his fame from his own works, like the trophies of victory, moulded to a triumphal pillar, denote public respect. Individual feeling loves a silent flow, that is constant and hearty.’
If the reader has had the fortune to travel in a canal-packet, in the summer solstice, he will readily recognize the faithfulness of the following picture:
‘At first, when you embark, all seems fair; the eleemosynary negro, who vexes his clarionet, and governs its tuneful ventiges, to pay for his passage, seems a very Apollo to your ear; the appointments of the boat appear ample; a populous town slowly glides from your view, and you feel quite comfortable and contented. As yet, you have not gone below. ‘Things above’ attract your attention—some pretty point of landscape, or distant steeple, shining among the summer trees. Anon, the scenery becomes tame, and you descend. A feeling comes over you as you draw your first breath in the cabin, which impels to the holding of your nose. The cabin is full; you have hit your head twice against the ceiling thereof, and stumbled sundry times against the seats at the side. Babies, vociferous babies, are playing with their mothers’ noses, or squalling in appalling concert. If you stir, your foot treads heavily upon the bulbous toes of some recumbent passenger; if you essay to sleep, the gabble of those around you, or the noisy gurgle of a lock, arouses you to consciousness; and then, if you are of that large class of persons in whom the old Adam is not entirely crucified, then you swear. Have you any desire for literary entertainment? Approach the table. There shall you find sundry tracts; a copy of the Temperance Recorder; Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, and Plutarch’s Lives. By and by dinner approaches: and oh! how awful the suspense between the hours of preparation and realization! Slowly, and one by one, the dishes appear. At long intervals, or spaces of separation from each other—say five for the whole length of the boat—you behold tumblers arranged, with two forlorn radishes in each. The butter lies like gravy in the plate; the malodorous passengers of the masculine gender draw nigh to the scanty board; the captain comes near, to act his oft-repeated part, as President of the day. Oh, gracious! ’tis a scene of enormous cry and scanty wool. It mendicants description. ••• But the grand charm and scene of a canal packet is in the evening. You go below, and there you behold a hot and motley assemblage. A kind of stillness begins to reign around. It seems as if a protracted meeting were about to commence. Clergymen, capitalists, long-sided merchants, who have come from far, green-horns, taking their first experience of the wonders of the deep on the canawl, all these are huddled together in wild and inexplicable confusion. By and by the captain takes his seat, and the roll of berths is called. Then, what confusion! Layer upon layer of humanity is suddenly shelved for the night; and in the preparation, what a world of bustle is required! Boots are released from a hundred feet, and their owners deposit them wherever they can. There was one man, Ollapod beheld him, who pulled off the boots of another person, thinking the while—mistaken individual!—that he was disrobing his own shrunken legs of their leathern integuments, so thick were the limbs and feet that steamed and moved round about. Another tourist, fat, oily and round who had bribed the steward for two chairs placed by the side of his berth, whereon to rest his abdomen, amused the assembly by calling out; ‘Here, waiter! bring me another pillow! I have got the ear-ache, and have put the first one into my ear!’ Thus wore the hours away. Sleep, you cannot. Feeble moschetoes, residents in the boat, whose health suffers from the noisome airs they are nightly compelled to breathe, do their worst to annoy you; and then, Phœbus Apollo! how the sleepers snore! There is every variety of this music, from the low wheeze of the asthmatic, to the stentorian grunt of the corpulent and profound. Nose after nose lifts up its tuneful oratory, until the place is vocal. Some communicative free-thinkers talk in their sleep, and altogether, they make a concerto and a diapason equal to that which Milton speaks of, when through the sonorous organ ‘from many a row of pipes, the sound-board breathes.’ At last, morning dawns; you ascend into pure air, with hair unkempt, body and spirit unrefreshed, and show yourself to the people of some populous town into which you are entering, as you wash your face in canal water on deck, from a hand basin! It is a scene, I say again, take it for all in all, that throws description upon the parish, and makes you a pauper in words. ‘Ohe jam satis!’
Let the old bachelor, who ‘longs but fears to marry,’ perpend the annexed invitation to matrimony:
