loads than raises a wren to fasten the feathers of an ostrich to her wings. Some men's speeches are like the high mountains in Ireland, having a dirty bog on the top of them: the very ridge of them in high words having nothing of truth, but what rather stalls than delights the auditor.'

The greatest excellence of style is simplicity. Its grandeur, like that of a Greek statue, should arise from the soul which the art of the sculptor causes to breathe in every lineament and muscle. In this respect some passages of Webster's have not been approached in modern days. There is a stern, cold, haughty spirit breathing through them that makes them models. He has never been more unsuccessful than when he has momentarily been seduced into unconscious imitation of Burke. Chatham is said to have had half of Barrow by heart, and to have formed his style upon that of the great divine. For a young speaker, Curran and Phillips are the worst possible models. The former is unapproachable; it is almost impossible to imitate-it is easy to caricature him. The latter was himself almost a caricature. Grattan may be studied with much more profit; and with a proper care against their Latinisms, Bacon and Milton are the most profitable studies, even upon the score of style. Now and then there is a wonderful passage in Browne, where magnificence of language is merely the graceful mail that covers the glorious thought and idea. I remember one which I am sure has caused me more thought, and given me, in the humility of my condition, more consolation, than any passage I ever read, although my vanity is not so inordinate as to apply all his expressions to myself. He says: "'T is, I confess, the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind to be destitute of those of fortune; which doth not any way deject the spirit of wiser judgments, who thoroughly understand the justice of this proceeding; and, being enriched with higher donations, cast a more careless eye on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition to desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, not to be content with the goods of mind, without a possession of those of body or fortune; and it is an error worse than heresy to adore these complimental and circumstantial pieces of felicity, and undervalue those perfections and essential points of happiness wherein we resemble our Maker. To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not to enjoy, the favors of fortune. Let Providence provide for fools; 't is not partiality but equity in GOD, who deals with us but as our natural parents. Those that are able of body and mind he leaves to their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion; and pieces out the defect of one by the excess of the other.'

How complete an answer to those who, looking, as he says, 'asquint on the face of Truth,' impugn the justice of Providence and cavil at the order of things, because the knavish, the corrupt and the unprincipled are prosperous and rich and honored, while the honest and upright are oppressed with poverty and environed by toil and care; each during their whole journey through the world. Is it not enough that a man shall enjoy the unspeakable

happiness of being honest, just, true and virtuous ?-and must he also greedily covet more than his share, by asking wealth and honor beside? Is it not good to be honest? Is it not prosperous to be virtuous?—or is there no good and no prosperity except money, and rank and comfort? The greatest wealth, the greatest honor, the greatest comfort, is to be possessed of a conscience that never utters a reproach. He who falls from this condition into knavery and guilt, knows how rich beyond all count he was before; how poor below all imagining he is now.

How often too the cause of Truth suffers from her advocates! upon this subject, how more often than on any other! They have often, in striving to impose their belief on others, ended with the total loss of their own. The champions of religion peculiarly need to remember our author's sharp rebuke: Every man is not a proper champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of Verity: many, from the ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the troops of Error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of Truth. A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender: 't is therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazard her on a battle.'

But I have wandered from my subject; of my liability whereto I notified the reader at the commencement. I was discoursing disjointedly of style, and I return to it again to say a word or two more on simplicity. By that word I do not mean that the writer should not have recourse to all the powers as well as the graces of our language. The stuff should be of the richest and finest material, but the garmenting made thereof for the thoughts should be chaste and severe. One can better understand than explain the difference. We can all appreciate the magnificence and grandeur of that King of Thought and Language, the immortal SHAKSPEARE: we see in his works an unlimited command over the language; the richest imagery, the greatest brilliancy of coloring. But when we analyze a passage, we find not a word too many, nor one that could without injury be exchanged for another. Every word is necessary to the full muscular development of the thought. His words are the colors of the painting; they are exquisite in their adaptation, and the manner in which they harmonize and soften one into the other; but yet, in looking at the painting, we hardly think of the tints and coloring. It is the great idea embodied in them, and speaking through them, that, as in one of Titian's master-pieces, enchains and inthrals the soul at once. In Shakspeare there are few common-places. Thus it is that the great artist is superior to the dauber, and thus it is that the great painter or sculptor is the truest of poets. Unquestionably even in the music of words there is great merit; but ornament, even in music, is, however well executed, worthy of but small praise, unless it is calculated to add power or beauty to the idea pervading the whole.

We are too fond of the meretricious. Fine words take our fancy captive, and the mob elevates every declaimer into an orator; and

thus power of intellect is out-ranked by glibness of tongue and a flourish of fine words; and thus it is that charlatans tread the quarter-deck of the ship of state. Bolingbroke must have been a great orator. I know no writer who in his language was more artistic. I would have him studied, not for his philosophy, but for his style. It is keen and sharp as a Damascus scimetar; there is nothing in it of the strained, unnatural, or grotesque; all of which is as far below true excellence, as the barbaric is below the Grecian taste in architecture. But a truce to criticism: I leave it to those whose proper vocation it is, and crave pardon for shooting over their preserves. I must draw this paper to a close.

M Y SPRING.'

FROM THE COMMON-PLACE BOOK OF A VALETUDINARIAN.

LET poets praise thee, gentle Spring!
I cannot, I must e'en confess;
Nor yet a single offering bring

In honor of thy loveliness;

You think it strange; it is so, surely—
But in the Spring I 'm always 'poorly.'

Those heated, bilious airs of thine,

With breath of flowers so fragrant ever,

With horrid cruelty incline

My head to ache, with raging fever;
And then, to crush thy potent spell

I dose myself with calomel!

Then what are all thy flowers to me?
Thy glowing buds, with beauty rife;
Thy marshy breath, that fearfully
Threatens to rob me of my life;
And often, shivering with ague,

I wish the De'il himself would take you!

"T is very hard, when thy bright sun
His glorious morning walk doth take,
The chills all up my back should run
And every bone begin to ache;
While oft, to ease my reeling head,
I am constrained to go to bed.

There's fever in thy flaming eye,

There's ague in thy chilling breath;
And though thy streams run pleasantly,
Their murmurs are the voice of death;
And then, thy evening-dews, so damp,
They always give me such a cramp!

Bright flowers thou hast, of every hue,
And all thy hills are clad in green;
But when I look at them, 't is through
My window-curtains' hateful screen;
I never hear thy pleasant rills,

But stay at home and-feed on pills

Deceitful Spring! thy jaundiced airs
Clog up the channels of each vein,
Thy every form of beauty wears
A fearful and a deadly stain;
Thy coming puts me on the rack,
With Epsom salts and ipecac!

Avaunt! companion of all ills!

I here forswear thee, and forever;
Thou dost engender doctor's bills,
And inflammation in the liver;
Avaunt! my yellow carcass spare!

Go, feed thy appetite elsewhere!

ADVENTURES OF A YANKEE-DOODLE.

NUMBER THREE.

STUBBS was born in Coos county, in a village which was placed high up on a cool shelf of the mountain, and overreached the whole country for miles around. The minister's name was Carlien, the justice's, Champ, the blacksmith's, Bimb. The schoolmaster was of no account, by reason of old age and ignorance; but this much must be said of him, that he would have his scholars stand together in a straight line on the approach of a decent carriage, and do obeisance to the stranger. Twenty little girls, healthily blooming, curtsied with agreeable graces, and as many boys scraped the green grass courteously with their little feet, for the old man was of the old school,' of which thousands die annually, but a plentiful crop survives they are like the veterans of the states, of whom we see it announced every day, Another revolutionary soldier gone!' Stubbs' father was a miller, placed in a romantic predicament on the mountain, where he had a wheel going of large circumference. His face was white as a pond-lily, but the vivacity of the Yankee countenance shook off the flour and kept the muscles free. So the ghost of Drikmhul, as we read in Dalkeith, kept revealing that he was no ghost. But the son could hop, skip and jump farther than his immediate progenitors, comparatively quiet men; for after reposing some generations, Yankee-Doodleism blazed out in him like a scrofulous tumor in the neck. As a young quail uses its wings with the shell yet adhering to them, so he walked right out of his cradle and 'swapped.'

He imposed upon a baby who had the better of him in crawling by three months; at the age of ten he jockied a boy in his teens. At the age of fifteen he invented an Androscroggin,' so called from the river of that name. Pindarics could not describe his high and wild fancies in the flush of youth. His contrivances were of complex ingenuity. Rabbits were tripped up by the heels in an instant, and hung on 'saplings no larger than a horse-whip, wagging their short tails in the breeze. Possums were cheated on their own gumtrees, frogs harpooned upon the hop, and foxes robbed of their corncobs in mid-stream, while they took that method to get rid of fleas. He shot cats; he gave weasels anodynes, and caught them asleep; he took black-snakes by the tail and snapped their heads off. He broke colts with small trouble; jumped on their bare backs, wound their manes around his arms, and kicked them in the ribs until they were nearly blind. He knocked an old bear's eyes out with his fists, and put the cubs in his pockets. He did not stand on etiquette with wild-cats, and like old Peter Daverill in the wilderness of Zim, as we read in the fairy tale of Pasquerilla, he could equally well have smoothed down a porcupine's back with his hand. He fished for trout, but not with fly; he fished for trout, but not with quill; he fished for trout, but not with angle. Come back to the meadow's edge, pious Walton; O! author of the Piscatory Eclogues,' be present; and ye fishermen who were once mending your nets, while I disclose a tale not recorded in Salmonia, and unheard of in the days of Fly-Fishing.

Seeing an old trout in a pool, poising himself with the uncertain balance of the needle when seeking the exacter pole, Thomas Stubbs thrust his arm into the wave softly, until his crooked fingers were brought to bear, with a seductive tickling, under the immediate belly of the fish. Now commenced a work of exquisite intrigue. The time favored. Not a breeze stirred; not a dimple was on the wave; not a swallow dipped his wing; only the blue sky lay in an exact, unbroken image. (This was on Golden River.) See the mysterious fingers vibrate like a shadow. Softly! softly! They are touching not exactly, but with a magnetic influence. Beautiful rambler of the stream!' they seem to say, 'are these spots of silver? or is this flashing lustre but a fiction? Permit these fingers to touch that fair bosom; not to lacerate it with the barbed steel, but to polish its most exquisite brightness.' The unworthy flattery is successful. The rosy gills shiver as with delight, and the mouth opens with a kind of laughter. Ha! the spanning hand is now over the back; toys with the graceful fins, and smooths them down by way of pleasantry. The thumb and first finger, as if to take snuff from a golden snuff-box, as they approach the head, are refracted sharply into the very ear of the fish. Be silent, and see a deed of death! - for while suspicion is yet lulled, and not a breath stirring, they dart suddenly downward and are buried knuckle-deep in the bloody gills! How many Hip! hip! hurras!' could equal that one? Up comes the flashing arm, and twenty feet in the air, sparkling in the sun with all his dewy brightness, thousand gems,