Among our brief mention of excellent papers which are worth looking at by particular readers, we did not name, as we should have done, the Scientific American, an admirably conducted weekly journal, published in this city; its title sufficiently indicates its character, and it is sufficient to say that its character entitles it to its title. It is an excellent paper for scientific readers, but it is not destitute of pleasant reading for other persons. The Yankee Blade, a miscellaneous weekly paper, published in Boston, is a very pleasant, sprightly, and well filled weekly miscellany, of literary, political, and religious news. Among its distinctive peculiarities is an able corps of out-of-town correspondents, who furnish it with a great amount of local matter of interest. The fashionable circles of the city have been agitated, during the past month, by two grand balls, which caused a good deal of talk, and cost a good deal of money, but gave very little pleasure, and did no particular good to anybody. One of these balls was given at the Racket Club, in Broadway, and was so exclusive that none but the "first people" were present; the other was given at the Astor Place Opera House, and was so purely democratic that anybody had the privilege of going, provided he put on a fancy-dress and paid six dollars for the privilege; but worse than this, spectators were admitted at the very low price of three dollars each. It does not really tell much for the character of the city, that a good many people went, even on these terms. A shopkeeper in Broadway exhibited to us a dress which he had just sold to a lady at the price of ten dollars a yard, to wear on the occasion; and we saw it stated in a public paper, that Stewart, in Broadway, sold thirty thousand dollars worth of finery to be worn there; but, worse than all, it was said that the wife of a certain editor wore diamonds to the amount of ten thousand dollars on this " fancy occasion." The object of the ball was to raise money to pay off the debts of the Opera Company-this peculiar amusement of the upper classes not being sufficiently patronized so meet the expenditures of the managers. This is really encouraging. While the middling classes, the mechanics, traders, and so forth, support in the most liberal manner, those who administer to their amusement or instruction, the wealthy classes, the " upper circles," par excellence, cannot pay the expense of the Italians who were imported expressly for their recreation. By the way, speaking of the Italians, that pretty little Italian singer-Clotilde Barilli, who sung so sweetly at Palmo's Opera House, and charmed everybody by her black eyes -has run off with a son of Colonel Thorn, the “American millionaire," as they used to call him in Paris, who now resides in a palatial house which he has erected in Fifteenth street, near the Fifth Avenue. The old Indian proverb, that the winter never rots in the sky, has been remarkably fulfilled this year. After our spring-like winter we are suffering from a winter-like spring. The weather through March has been such as we had a right to anticipate in January, but not in the first month of spring. Another musty old proverb has been verified by the unseasonable frost : "As the day lengthens. The cold strengthens." But, thanks to the spirit of progress, March is marching away, and will soon be gone, and April, with her pale flowers and soft rains, will be with us. The trees had begun to bud, and the crocusses to open their yellow leaves in the gardens, when the northwesters came and put nature back a month in her reckoning; she was going on at too fast a rate, and it is better that the frost should come now than when the fruit trees are in blossom, as that might spoil the next crop of peaches, and deprive Captain Rawbold of his profits. On the departure of the great statesman, Henry Clay, from the city, his distinguished relative, Captain Cassius M. Clay, arrived among us. He hardly made so great an excitement as the city's guest, but from his former celebrity he has attracted a good deal of attention; he appears in fine health, but shows in his countenance the effects of his exposures in the Mexican War. It is said that his object in coming to New York, is to publish his life and writings, which are to be edited by Horace Greely, the editor of the Tribune. As Mr. Clay is a popular speaker, and not averse to popular applause, it is not unlikely that he will deliver some addresses while he remains among us. In a speech which he recently made in Kentucky, he gave the following picturesque account of Mexico: "So soon as you cross the Rio Grande you feel yourselves in a foreign land. Mexico has no forests. It is true that along the streams and on mountain-tops there are trees, but you are struck with the great characteristic, that the land is bare of trees. The numerous varieties of the Cactus of all sizes, intermixed with the Palmetto, stunted or long grass, cover the whole land. You are among a people of a novel colour, and a strange language. The very birds and beasts, and dogs, seem different. The partridge, the lark, the crow, the black-bird, differ in size and plumage, and sing differently from ours. The buildings are of Moorish and Spanish style. The goat and the sheep feed together. The bricks are of clay and straw, sun-dried. The women go with time of the Patriarchs of Judea. The roofs of the houses are flat earthen vessels to the well, just as Rachael was sent of old in the and places of recreation, and the people wear sandals as in the East, in olden time. Wheat, Indian-corn, and herds of cattle, sheep and goats, the Banana and red-pepper, and garlic and onions, are the principal sources of subsistence. The products of the mines are the principal articles of foreign exchange, added to woods, tallow, and cochineal. Garbeille, the sculptor, who made those capital busts and statuettes of General Taylor, is now in New York, making burlesques in plaster of some of our notorieties about town. Garbeille is a Frenchman, and a man of genius; he was a pupil of the great Thorwaldsen, in Rome. He is a native of Marseilles, and came to New Orleans two or three years since, in search of fortune, which we have little doubt of his achieving. The city of New Orleans sent him to Monterey to make a bust of General Taylor, which he executed to the entire satisfaction of his employers; but he has been obliged to depend upon the sale of copies of this work to remunerate himself fully for his trouble. He is likely to be robbed of his property by some unprincipled plaster dealer, who has had the dishonesty to copy his bust, and they have been hawked about the streets like the busts of Washington and Jackson, to the great injury of the artist. Being a stranger in the country, and unable to speak the language, hequer eight millions of souls! The clergy plunder the people, the did not know that it was necessary for him to procure a copyright for his work, to ensure him the right of property in it. This he has since done, and he will be free from such dishonest attempts to injure him in future. "The whole people do not exceed eight millions, and of these about two millions are white and mixed bloods, the remainder are native Indians: I never, in all Mexico, with the exception of foreigners in the Capital, saw a single white man at work. Wherever there is slavery, there is labour dishonourable-it is more creditable to rob than to work! Yet Mexico surpasses the Slave States of America in Manufactures! As Rome was overrun by the Barbarians, so is Mexico now by the Americans; the slaves will not fight, the masters are too few to defend the country. Bigotry in Religion has abased the mind-the corruptions of the Church have destroyed the morals of the people; the oppressions of the masters have exhausted the lands. Mexico is decreasing in population and resources. Since her independence, her revenues are falling off, her villages are decaying, her public works falling to ruin. She has lived by the sword, she must perish by the sword. The time for her to die has come! Yet, like South Carolina, she talks large She whipped Spain, Spain whipped France, France whipped the world and consequently, Mexico is the mistress of the world! Yet fifty thousand Americans conarmy now begin to plunder the clergy, whilst independent robbers begin to plunder the government, the clergy, and the people. Such is the fearful retribution of nature's violated laws. Seeing Texas, that it was a lovely land, we coveted our neighbour's goods; seeing the weakness of Mexico, we took it by force. Thus within a few weeks have been removed four great luminaries from our midst-Kent, Adams, Spencer, and Wheaton. They were all lawyers by profession, but they would have won distinction by their talents and virtues in any sphere of life. The times have greatly changed since these men entered upon the stage of action; the spirit of progress has been busy among the We began this month, our topics, with the death of John Quincy Adams, the most eminent of our statesmen, and we must close our monthly gossipiad by recording the death of the two most eminent of our Jurists. By a singular coincidence, the telegraph from the East, and the telegraph from the West, announced the death of the Honourable Henry Wheaton, formerly our Minister at the Court of Berlin, and the death of the Honour-people, and great reforms have been undertaken and accomplished, able Ambrose Spencer, formerly Chief Justice of the State of New York. Judge Spencer was in his 83d year when he died; he was a native of the State of Connecticut, but he achieved all his greatness in the State of New York. His father was a mechanic and a farmer, who, although in very moderate circumstances, by his industry and economy, obtained the means of giving to his sons the best education which the country afforded. His two sons entered Yale College in the autumn of 1779, and, after remaining three years, were removed to Harvard University, where they graduated in July, 1783. The subject of this notice was then but 17 years and six months old. He devoted himself to the profession of the law, and studied with John Canfield, an eminent lawyer of Sharon, Connecticut, and completed his studies at Claverack and Hudson, in this State. Before he was nineteen he married Laura Canfield, a daughter of his preceptor, and made Hudson his residence. In 1786 he was appointed Clerk of that city; and in 1793 he was elected a Member of the Assembly of this State, from Columbia county. In 1795 was elected to the Senate for three years; and in 1798 he was re-elected for four years. In 1796 he was appointed Assistant Attorney General for the counties of Columbia and Rensselaer. In February, 1802, he was appointed Attorney, General of the State; and in 1804, he received the appointment of a Justice of the Supreme Court, of which he was made Chief Justice in 1819. For nearly twenty years he was associated on the bench of the Supreme Court of this State, and in the Court of Last Resort, with Kent, Thompson, Platt, Woodworth, and Van Ness. Having nearly arrived at the period limited by the then constitution for judicial service, Judge Spencer retired from the bench in January, 1823. After retiring from the bench he continued to practice at the bar; but for many years he has resided on a farm at Lyons, in this State, where he died, full of years and honours. Henry Wheaton was born at Providence, Rhode Island, on the 27th November, 1785, and graduated at Brown University in 1802. He travelled in Europe after he left College, studied law on his return home, and moved to New York, where he began to practice his profession, and acted for a while as the editor of the National Advocate, a paper which was for many years under the editorial charge of Major Noah. In 1815, Mr. Wheaton published a Digest of the Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes. In 1816, he was appointed reporter of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1823; he published his life of William Pinckney; he was a member of the Constitutional Convention of this State in 1821; in 1825 he was a member of a committee for revising the Statutes of the State. In 1827, Mr. Adams appointed him Charge to Copenhagen, where he remained until 1834, when he was transferred to Berlin, as resident min ister. In 1846, he was recalled by President Polk. While abroad he published his History of the Northerner, and his Elements of International Law. He returned here last year--was received with honours by his countrymen, and died in Dorchester, near Boston, March 11, 1848. Mr. Wheaton wrote a good deal for Reviews and other Periodicals; his style was heavy and inelegant, but correct. In person he was slight, and in appearance was strikingly a literary man. in which they had no part, and for which they felt no sympathy. They were bookmen; but the new men, the greatnesses of to-day, are men of action, of science, of art. The last great lawyer has already been born; the new generation require something better than a student of musty volumes, with his head crammed full of precedents. A really great man neither wants nor cares for precedents. Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Peter the Great, had no precedents. What they did they did from the necessity of conviction, and not because other men had done so before them. They were men by themselves, they were geniuses, public benefactors-in two words, they were not law yers. A great lawyer is, in truth, a contradiction of terms; a lawyer who is great, is great in spite of the law, and not by its aid. OUR CONTEMPORARIES.--We are under great obligations to many of our city contemporaries, daily and weekly, for kind and flattering notices of our Magazine, which there is no necessity for copying into our columns, as our readers must themselves be the better judges of our merits. To the always gentlemanly and pleasant Home Journal we are under particular obligations for a handsome notice, which was as unexpected as it was generous. With a pen fuller of gratitutie than ink, we may be allowed, without an imputation of selfishness, to wish that Mi Boy and the Brigadier may gain at least half as many subscribers to their Journal as its merits entitle it to, which would give them a longer list than any Philadelphia paper can boast of. And while speak ing of these Siamese of the press, we must not forget their former associate, Mr. Fuller of the Mirror, who has also generously laid us under obligations by his kindness. It gives us pleasure, too, at this time, to add a word of praise for his paper, which, we are happy to hear, is daily gaining the rewards to which its independence and high moral tone entitle it. It is a capital paper for the centre table, and among its other excellencies, its theatrical department can always be relied upon. The gentan who has charge of that particular province, one more difficult to fill creditably than is generally supposed, is capable and discriminating. He does not deal in the senseless generality which for the theatrical notices of the daily press generally so worthless and farcical. BEAUX AND HATS.-The beaux are beginning to look after new styles of dress for the spring,-new-fashioned coats, vests, boots, and hats. It seems to us that the latter articles of dress are the most important in a bachelor's budget of costume. A hat should be chosen to fit the face and form as well as the head. A hat which becomes one man will make another look like a fright. A hatter should be a skilful phrenologist and physiog nomist, so as to reconcile his head gear to the peculiar appearance of the person wearing it. GENIN, of 214 Broadway, sells his hats, we are told, in accordance with this principle. His hats are really excellent in more respects than one. They are not only tasty and elegant, but are adapted to all sorts of faces and styles of person. Such a hatter, speaking" by the card," is "a trump." * Tut! there are other Trojans that thou dreamest not of, the which, for sport sake, are content to do the profession some grace; that would, if matters should be looked into, for their own credit sake, make all whole. I am joined with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff, sixpenny strikers; none of these mad, mustachio, purplehued malt-worms; but with nobility, and tranquility; burgomasters, and great oneyers; such as can hold in; such as will strike sooner than speak, and speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than pray: And yet I lie; for they pray continually to their saint, the commonwealth; or rather, not pray to her, but prey on her; for they ride up and down on her, and make her their boots.-Shakspeare. world. Sometimes nothing comes from them, but this does not go to prove that they are not. In some kind and degree they form a portion of every personage's conformation. Man may lose his hair, but never-we generalize our assertion-his intellect. He may abuse, pervert, and injure the latter, but he cannot rob himself of it entirely. Even the idiot occasionally experiences and exhibits glimpses of mental brilliancy, and if the proof of this fact were considered to be wanting by us we could cite it in abundance. GOD has instilled into each man's heart a noble quality of self. The Supreme has endowed the lower order of animals with instincts which bid them cling to life and enjoy it, and upon us, who rank above all other created things, he has bestowed an infinite knowledge of our superiority. The meanest of our race possesses this information. Whatever walks erect knows of its divine origin, and is cognizant of its immortal destiny. No phase of degradation can totally obliterate this knowledge. The veriest pauper, whose defiled rags offend the pure air of heaven, is at times -Every soil grows one or two particular subwarned of his mind-like capabilities by some event stances best, and most prolifically. Rocks, hard and unsought and unexpected. The fact may flash upon moistureless, present a peculiar production, which his brain with a meteor-like haste-it may illumine can be obtained from no other source. Soil may be the intellect as the streak of electricity from the too rich or too dry. It is the happy medium in the clouds lightens up the horizon-and though it does not soil of the mind, as in the material of the planet calllinger in itself, it leaves a record which can never be ed the Earth, that we find the greatest utility. A wholly effaced. The sun-light of nature daguerreo- mind too productive, or capable of running riot in its types upon the brain of man an indelible representa- creative and fostering power, is of comparative usetion of his wondrous qualities. Circumstances may lessness. One too niggard in its yieldings may also injure them with their owner; unforseen and fortui- be, like papers frequently lost in pocket-books, "of tous contingencies may render them unserviceable; no use to any but the owner," and of scarcely any to yet they exist, even if they lie dormant, and apparently him. Happy the genius whose promptings can be never existed. From these qualities spring all the curbed! Happy the man who can adapt his gigantic various great things that astonish and benefit the intellect to the worldly and practical efforts that bring both fame and emolument! Happy, in the greatest | agonized minds of his best admirers. If the pecudegree that human being can hope for, is he whose liarities of his style were his own, the fault of embrain is that of genius, and yet can be adapted in its bracing them would be diminished one half; but operations to his own pleasure and benefit, and the they are not his own; they are imitations of other's admiration and elevation of his fellows. Such a man peculiarities; they are reflexes of ancient styles, is HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. He is one of daguerreotypes of oil paintings, copies of the old the poets worthy to rank with the best of the modern masters. We have seen copies of Correggios, tribe. The English critics, who would deny, if they Raphaels, Titians, Rembrandts, etc., quite as good, could, a shadow of poetical merit to America, have, (at least for all available intents,) as the originals, under compulsion, pronounced Mr. Longfellow "one yet their value would not be acknowledged, and of the most accomplished of the brotherhood." "But," the faded, worm-eaten, ruinous canvass that had says one of these acute literary surgeons, "having been coloured by the famous hand, was prized as spent the greater portion of his life in Europe, he be- being worth all, and the most superior copies, ever longs, in his capacity of author, rather to the Old made. We are not prepared to determine the World than the New." By which we are to under- character of Mr. Longfellow's own style, or to stand, that his mind was formed and finished after say that he has any. Sometimes he indulges in European models, and is tinged with the hues and an imitation of the old Norse poetry; at another prejudices of European life. Much as we despise time he treats us to a little of Tennyson; occasionviews like these, we are forced to admit that they are ally he affords us a view of some other particularity, the proper ones in which to regard Mr. Longfellow but that he ever gives us an unadulterated specimen truly. He was born in Portland, Maine, in the year of himself is not to be declared with any positive 1807. At a very early age he crossed the Atlantic, confidence. and remained in foreign countries several years. He We have just risen from a third reading of the studied at Gottingen. Had we never been informed work he published last and recently, entitled "EVANof this fact, we could have detected it in his writings. GELINE." After the first reading of the book, we They have all the characteristics of the German could scarcely reconcile ourself with the belief that school-all the peculiarities of the German style of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was its author. construction, and are coloured by all the deep philo- We could detect nothing of the poet whose genius sophy of the German thinkers. They are not of the was considered so resplendent that the "Foreign Haarz mountains legend department of letters, but Quarterly" authoritatively stated, that he was Ameare German in epithet, sentiment, and finish. We rican only by birth, and not in actual existence. A never read the title of his best volume of poems-second reading partially restored us to confidence "VOICES OF THE NIGHT"-without thinking of a pale in the assertions of the title page, and a third reading Gottingen Student at midnight, in spectacles and completely changed our critical sentiments, and reslippers, before a large folio, with pen in one hand fashioned the guise of our opinion. "EVANGELINE" and meerschaum in the other. In spite of himself, it is written in a strange and execrable style-an ancient seems that Mr. Longfellow must employ supernatural and classical style-a style for which the scholar and or unearthly subjects in the illustration of his written brain-worker will galvanise up an affection of premorals. He presents you with the startling and the cedent; but it might as well have been fabricated in polished in combination, and it is seldom that we find plain prose, and offered to the world as a chastened nicety and the "startling" together in a commend-example of Carlyle, as to have been measured off able condition of familiarity. He takes a skeletonthan what can be more repulsive to the sight or fancy-and clothes it so finely that you forget the effigy of death. He discourses of midnight horrors, spectre-armies, and such like matters, in a tone so elevated, a style so Christian-like, and by a method so pure and gratifying to the virtuous, that the grim and ghastly features depicted are almost entirely lost. Lost they are, excepting for the purpose intended by the author; and that purpose is never any but one that commands praise, and is adapted to the development of some phase of the spirit of general benevolence. All men have hobbies! Writers are not exempt from the curse of this mortal weakness. Involuntarily many of us embrace some strange desire or propensity, and without knowing that we do so, we are continually seeking to gratify it. Mr. Longfellow rides a hobby and his Pegassus at one and the same time. He is devoted to the production of certain effects in his effusions, and the result of this devotion may be observed in nearly every line recorded by his pen, whether of poetry or of prose. It is easy enough to perceive that he aims at being peculiar and unique. The struggle to accomplish this aim cannot be concealed--is not, at all events-if it were, our poet's greatest fault would have vanished from before the into lines of so many poetical feet each, and so sent drive the poor Acadians forth to a remote corner of he can, if he chooses, present the reader with enough the land. And forth they went-broken-hearted, to redeem any waste of time or words. The faculty poverty-stricken exiles. Men were torn from their wives, parents from their children, and sweethearts from their lovers. But very few of them ever settled again; while large numbers of near relatives were separated for all time, never to see each other again in this life. A legend connected with this mournful subject, comprises the story of EVANGELINE. She was betrothed to the son of a blacksmith, when ruin came upon them all. In the process of exile they lost each other, and her whole life was spent in endeavours to rejoin him. Sometimes in her wanderings she would arrive in the trackless west, at a point which he had visited a week before. Time flies-the beautiful young girl becomes old and grey. She joins the Sisters of Charity at Philadelphia. The fever fills the hospitals and gives to her constant employment in soothing the agonies of the friendless, sick, and dying. In one of the patients—a thin, dying old man-she recognizes the once handsome youth who had won all her affections. The recognition is mutual, and as he yields his last breath, the happy Sister of Charity, her search over, dies upon his bosom. In a description of the village, occurs the following discursive passage touching a season called by the peasants, the "Summer of all Saints." of condensation he possesses in an extraordinary de- "Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember, people. Even the birds had built their nests in the scales of the balance, Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the Having no fear of the sword that flashed in the sunshine above landscape Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. Peace seemed to reign, upon earth, and the restless heart of the ocean Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in harmony blended. Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farm- Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons, Sun Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapours around him; While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels." them. But in the course of time the laws of the land were corrupted; Might took the place of right, and the weak were oppressed, and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's pa! ace, That a necklace of pearls was lost, and ere long a suspicion Down on the pavement below, the clattering scales of the bal ven. This is fine; but we can extract something still Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the finer: blacksmith Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no language; And all his thoughts congealed into lines on his face, as the vapours Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window panes in the winter." Farther on we have this beautiful simile: Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of Heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels." Speaking of morning, the poet says: "Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labour Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morn ing." In this brief description of an old notary of a village there is nothing to wish for. The climax, "and heard his great watch tick," summons up a host of childish reminiscences, and individualises an old man patiently submitting to the romping caresses of a We are culling these flowers from the bouquet before troupe of his "children's children," as he allows them us, quite as much with a desire to illustrate Mr. Longto tweak his nose, push his spectacles awry, stick their fellow's claim to the title of poet as to afford our little feet into his aching sides, and examine the in-readers the pleasure of perusing them for their intrinside of the aforesaid "great watch." What person who has ever known the blessings of a familiar acquaintance with a happy grandfather, will fail to appreciate the elaborate skill of the poet conveyed in those seven simple lines! Mr. Longfellow excels in saying a great deal in a few words, and he can afford to deal in verbiage now and then, because, in one sentence, sic value. In another page the jolly face of an old fiddler at a festival is likened to "a living coal when the ashes are blown from the embers." The figure of a sturdy blacksmith who suddenly uprises in a mob to irritate the people to action, is compared to a "spar on a stormy sea, tossed by the billows." The close of the day suggests the following: |