only the touch exerted under the direction of the will. According to the strength or faintness of the impression that a sensation, or an idea (which is but a sensation operated upon by the cerebral organ,) has produced on the fibres of that organ, will be the liveliness and permanence of the recollection. Thus we may have reminiscence of it, or recall faintly that we have been so affected; or less disturbed by the sensations sent to them at once, from all the organs of sense; and we should acquire but confused notions of the bodies from which they proceed, if one stronger perception did not silence, as it were, the rest, and fix the attention. In this concentration of the soul upon a single object, the brain is feebly stirred by many sensations that leave no trace; it is thus. that after the attentive perusal of a book, we have lost the sensations that were pro-memory, which is a representation of the duced by the different colour of the paper and the letters. When a sensation is of short duration, our knowledge of it is so light, that soon there remains no remembrance of it. It is thus, that we do not perceive, every time we wink, we pass from light to darkness, and from darkness to light. If we fix our attention on this sensation, it affects us more permanently. After occupying one's self, for a given time, with a number of things, with but moderate attention to each; after reading, for instance, a novel, full of events, each of which in its turn has interested us, we finish it without being tired of it, and are surprised at the time it has taken up. It is because successive and light impressions have effaced one another, till we have forgotten all but the principal actions. Time ought then to appear to us to have passed rapidly; for, as Locke has well said, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, "We conceive the succession of times only by that of our thoughts." This faculty of occupying one's self long and exclusively with the same idea, of concentrating all the intellectual faculties on one object, of bestowing on the contemplation of it alone, a lively and well supported attention is found in greater or less strength in different minds and some philosophers appear to have explained, very plausibly, the different capacity of different minds, the various degrees of instruction of which we are capable, by the degree of attention we are able to give to the objects of our studies. Who, more than the man of genius, pauses on the examination of a single idea; considers it with more profound reflection, under more aspects and relations; bestows on it, in short, more entire attention? Attention is to be considered as an act of the will, which keeps the organ to one sensation, or prepares it for that sensation, so as to receive it more deeply. To look, is to see with attention; to listen is to hear at tentively: the smell, the taste, in the same way, are fixed upon an odour, or a flavour, so as to receive from them the fullest impressions. In all these cases, the sensation may be involuntary; but the attention by which it is heightened, is an act of the will. This distinction has already been well laid down with regard to the feeling, which is object, with some of its characteristic attributes, as colour, bulk, &c. Finally, if the brain is easy of excitation, and at the same time faithful in preserving the impressions it has received, it will possess the power of bringing up ideas with all their connected and collateral ideas; of reproducing them, in some sort, by recalling the entire object, whilst memory presents us with a few of its qualities only. This creative faculty is called imagination. If it sometimes produces monsters, it is that the brain, by its power of associating, connecting, combining ideas, reproduces them in an order not according to nature, gathers them under capricious associations, and gives occasion to many erroneous judgments. The affections of the soul, or the passions, whether they come by the senses, or some disposition of the vital organs favour their birth and growth, may be ranged in two classes, according to their effects on the economy. Some heighten organic activity: such are joy, courage, hope, and love; whilst others slacken the motions of life; as fear, grief, and hatred. And others there are, that produce the two effects alternately or together. So ambition, anger, despair, pity, assuming, like the other passions, an infinite variety of shades, according to the intensity of their causes, individual constitution, sex, age, &c. at times increase, at times abate the vital action, and depress or exalt the power of the organs. Of all knaves, your fools are the worstbecause they rob you both of your time and temper. It is not the force of friendship, but the prevalence of vice, that makes the moderns so often exceed that admirable rule of the ancients, usque adaras-Carry not your friendships beyond the altar.' The ancients' manner of commemorating their gods, heroes, and friends, was by libations, not potations. Would it were the same among the moderns. Wine is often better spilt then drank. All young animals are merry, and all old ones grave. An old woman is the only animal that ever is frisky. It is better to do the idlest thing in the world, than to sit idle for half an hour. POETRY. CHRISTMAS MELODY. IT is the Day! the Holy Day! on which our Ford was born, And sweetly doth the sun-beam gild the dew-besprinkled [thorn: And hymns float through the heavens, and the breezes gently play, And song and sunshine lovelily begin this Holy Day. With cattle at his infant feet, and shepherds at his head, He came to save the perishing, to waft the sighs to hea-The sun is sinking in the crimson west; [en: ven The clouds are rushing on their wild, wet wings: Of guilty men, who truly sought to weep and be forgiv-The lightning, like an eagle from its nest, At his Altar's feet for meekness upon this Holy Day. And no breath, Save of the winds, be on the unbounded wave! Or show the place where strong Despair hath died! Is made with Death, who shall forbear To generate new nations for his use: War with yourselves, and hell, and heaven, in vain, With the blood reeking from each battle plain; Shall oversweep the future, as the waves The winds. too, plume their piercing wings! The clouds have nearly filled their springs; The fountains of the great deep shall be broken, And heaven set wide her windows; while mankind View, unacknowledged, each tremendous tokenStill, as they were from the beginning, blind. We hear the sound they cannot hear, The mustering thunders of the threatening sphere; Save to the Spirits' all-pervading e ye. Thy death is nearer than thy recent birth: In dazzling circles round the mountain springs; The groaning forest in the whirlwind swings, Strewing the marble cliffs with branches boar: And when the sullen sounds of earth are o'er, Now close the portal!-'Tis the hour of hours! Come, fill the bowls, and beap the faggots high! To birds and flowers let Summer's'morning shine, To nobler man alone the Winter eve's divine. CROLT. BALLAD OF CRESCENTIUS. I look'd upon his brow,-no sign He stood as proud by that death-shrine He had a power; in his eye A spirit that could dare The deadliest form that death could take, And dare it for the daring's sake. He stood, the fetters on his hand, He raised them haughtily, With freer pride than it waved now, The rack, the chain, the axe, the wheel, I saw him once before; he rode And tens of thousands throng'd the road Of many a soldier's deed; The sun shone on his sparkling mail, And danced his snow-plume on the gale. But now he stood chained and alone, The headsman by his side, Came from that lip of pride; AMERICAN POETRY. Leisure Hours at Sea. By a Midshipman of the U. S. Navy. There is not a more estimable set of men perhaps in the world, than the officers of our navy. A high sense of honour, a liberal and manly spirit, and a demeanour alike modest and gentlemanly, characterize a great majority of them; and those whom we have had the pleasure of knowing personally, we have, with scarcely an exception, found intelligent and well-informed. The author of this volume shows, in several of his pieces, a poetical spirit, and a depth and delicacy of feeling that candid criticism cannot pass over without praise; while at the same time, there are inaccuracies and faults of style, and occasional marks of neglect and carelessness in suiting the ideas to the theme, which taste must condemn. There is considerable inequality in the pieces—some bear the marks of having been written before the author had had much practice in composition, and are distinguished by the faults of a young writer; there are some which might better have been omitted altogether, and there are others that are fine specimens of poetry. The following verses are well sustained from first to last, and are fraught with true poetical feeling; the 10th stanza is particularly fine. LINES Written on the Island of Elba. The heart that feels as I have felt, When forced from kindred hearts to sever, The idol-home where youth has dwelt, To leave-and leave, perchance, for ever; I kiss'd a mother's pallid cheek; But let me wander where I will, My heart is with my kindred still: My dreams by night, my thoughts by day, And sighing zephyrs curl the waves, Where erst I follow'd to their graves, When Learning call'd me to her bowers; But ah, the circean cup I tasted Madden'd my brain, enerv'd my powers; And Learning's call was disobey'd I sought for pleasure, found-a shade. I think of her whose heart of truth Is crumbling now to kindred clay; Eliza, torn in sinless youth From me, and from the world away; Forget thee! no! my heart is broken; And o'er that timeless grave lie weeping: What seek I here?-Fame's fleeting breath! Sent awe throughout the world around; Who o'er the brow of fallen France A sun-bright wreath of glory bound, A coronal of crowns-each gem Some conquer'd nation's diadem! Come hither, peasant! tell me, where Is he who dwelt in yonder vale? "Signor, I neither know nor care; "He came-he's gone: though short the ""Tis all I have to tell"-He cameHe's gone! oh yes! this, this is fame! [tale, The following is not the less praiseworthy for terminating with a moral after its bacchanalian commencement. LET'S DRAIN THE GOBLET DRY. We three have met together, While others yield to sorrow, And heave the ready sigh, Why should we give to sadness The moments as they fly? I deem it worse than madnessLet's drain the goblet dry! Hold!-can you then no anguish In ruby wine descry? In pain how many languish, Who drain the goblet dry! Think of life's closing hour, Think how you'll bear to die; Then, if you have the power, Let's drain the goblet dry! New-York Literary Gazette. SIR, ANOTHER HIT AT THE NOSE. In a previous number, you took the liberty of handling your own nose more unceremoniously, I hope, than you would allow any other person to do, always excepting and reserving that worthy mortal, your barber. With your favor, I will take some Our third extract is the language of love liberties with my own snuff-asylum. It has ere it has ceased to remember. THE MEETING. We met, and only met, But ah! I can forget I seem to hear it still, 'Twas evening when we met, (In dreams I see thee yet Like breast of listening maid, That meeting with thee-never! With these we must conclude, by welcoming the author to the republic of letters. From the specimens which we have given, it will be evident to our readers, that our praise has not been injudiciously bestowed: we could go on and find faults, and show where amendments might be made, but we are not in the fault-finding humour; we are pleased with the writer, and wish him success in his literary career. His style wants pruning and finishing, but experience will enable him to do both. A definition of what are generally styled bargains, is, the buying a bad commodity that you don't want, because you can get it cheaper than a good one when you do. never sneezed me out of a lady's affections, but it has led me into divers scrapes and quarrels, and has been the primal cause of a tendency to misanthropy in my disposition. You must know, sir, that my nose has always had an inveterate tendency to curl its nostrils at presumption, vanity, self-importance, and folly. Physiognomists have long since decided that this curl of the nostril is, as Sir Geoffry Hudson says of Sir Geoffry Peveril's Psha!" an expression of slight esteem, nay, of contempt"-and contempt is more piercing than a north-easterly wind. Not to dwell on the minor troubles in which my ungovernable nose has involved me, I will pass immediately to that which has most severely injured my comfort and happiness. I was once in company with a conceited coxcomb, who was inflicting the Egyptian plague of his nonsense, upon a circle of ladies, who, to do them justice, bore it with exemplary patience. Although my organs of speech said nothing, my fastidious nose said Psha-the coxcomb, unfortunately for me, understood its language, and the next morning, I was waited upon by a gentleman, who, with all imaginable courteSy, required of me an apology for the insult I had offered his friend, Philip Furnival, Esq. the coxcomb aforesaid. I have a peculiar, although perhaps not a rare notion, that in whatever I may say or do, I am never in the wrong. With much politeness I stated my regret that I could not comply with so reasonable a request, and the friend of Philip Furnival, Esq. desired me to name my friend with whom he might make the necessary arrangements for a meeting. In due time we met, and by a most unlucky chance the fellow's bullet, instead of hitting the offending member, astonished my ribs by the abrupt and unceremonious manner in which it took lodgings amongst them, without so much as saying "By your leave, gentle- motion by its descent; fifty voluptuous forms were in the attitude of expectation— eyes sparkled; cheeks glowed; toes were pointed; and the language of all was to know this argues one's self unknown" in the circles of polite life. Our grandfathers and grandmothers followed this custom, but what Goths they were! the latter wore hoops as wide as the tropical circles, and pockets sufficiently capacious to contain the ammunition of Napoleon's army, while the former wore square-toed shoes, and buttons each as big as the shield of Achilles. The joining of hands all round was one of their ridiculous customs. To be sure it is not long since this "remnant of a barbarous age" was dismissed by us of the ton, like the remnant of a bottle of claret, for the use of our servants and inferiors. For my own part, I am sorry for it—there was something social, something expressive of good-fellowship and good-will in the custom-it seemed to form un cordon d'amitiè of all the dancers in the set, and to express a congeniality and sympathy of feeling in all. Why the ladies have dispensed with it I am at a loss to guess, unless it be for the sake of economy in the article of gloves-its disuse is certainly a saving of leather. men!" I have walked lop-sided ever since; and that form which was once the admiration of the ladies and the embellishment of the ball-room-that form which was "On with the dance-let joy be unconfined."— once as straight as the Schenectady turnpike, If sir, you are an observer of the mutais now as crooked as the Tennessee river. tions of fashion, you must have noticed that I have been compelled to forswear my fa- the old custom of hands round in the comvourite recreation, dancing, for which na- mencement of a cotillion is now an explodture gave me a genius, and Monsieur Ver-ed heresy, it is now antediluvian, and "not becque, who died a martyr to his art, an education. I only attempted it once after my shoothing-match-the pretty Fanny Land myself formed the side couple in a cotillion; I stood, of course, on her left, for it is a settled point of etiquette that a gentleman should stand to the left of a lady as well as of a horse. Talking with my partner was out of the question, for by attempting to bring my head in a line with hers, my feet were protruded nearly in the centre of the neighbouring cotillion. By the way, I ought to have remarked previously that before I was complimented with the bullet in my ribs, it was full six feet six inches from the earth to the crown of my head-if the mind be lodged in the head, no one can say that I was not once high-minded-at present, woe worth the change, the upper half of my body inclines as much from a perpendicular to the surface of the earth, as the earth's axis does from a perpendicular to the ecliptical plane. However, sir, not to dwell on the contrast between my eram and my sum, let us return to the ball-room. It was a long and unusually narrow apartment, with a You will have perceived, sir, that I am very low ceiling, which latter circumstance discursive-whatever you may think, I conmight once have alarmed me, but which at sider this quality one of my greatest merits. the time formed the least of my apprehen- I hate the humdrum way of telling a story in sions. The floor was crowded with dan- a direct straight-forward manner, I hate cers, and the space allotted to each set did straight roads, straight jackets, and straight not afford room enough "to swing a cat," circumstances-I like a note of interrogaalthough I believe no one actually swung a cat for the purpose of ascertaining the truth of this remark. Well, sir, there we stood, I and Fanny, or rather (to comply with the politeness of grammar) Fanny and I. The man of music, who, according to Ephraim Smooth, "scrapeth the tail of the horse on the bowels of the cat," sat in all the conscious majesty of power, like Timotheus of old "at the feast for Persia won"-that bow, the first sound of which was to set all the gentlemen bowing,* was suspended in air like an enchanter's wand, to put us all in tion more than a note of exclamation-in short, I have hated every thing straight ever since I myself became crooked--and if you call my manner tedious, I have it "in my heart to bestow it all on your worship!" I shall tell my story in my own way, whether you like it or not, and if you refuse to publish it, I shall lampoon you-if you provoke me, you shall find that I have "fœænum in cor * Quere. Has no sagacious lexicographer traced the origin of a bow of the body to the bow of a fiddle, from the connexion between the words and the actions respectively? I ask, like a certain member of Con gress, for information. Printer's Devil. |