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of those who devour Prof. Ingraham, and catch-penny sonnets, and new music, and immodest fashions -wear not at all. Mr. Willis may tell in his inimitable way, some story of Hebrew Lament, with true religious sympathy-but do Mr. Willis' living readers look up his verse or prose for doctrines of morality, or for imbibing any sort of sympathies with what is better, and purer, and holier, in mental living? Here comes up an accidental but very pertinent illustration of what we have previously remarked, in regard to acknowledged authorship. Few lessons of morality, or of any true wisdom, are in any way enforced by the names of these exhibitors. The Christian Hero, un acknowledged, might have effected much good among those whom it only provoked to scorn; knowing, as they did, that Sir Richard Steele was the author, and that Sir Richard Steele was a drunkard and a debauchee. But we have no fear for the publishment of Christian Heroes in the works under notice; on the contrary, we have a fear of a widely different sort-a fear that the general vapidness, the untruth, the frivolity, which characterize them, will sadly unfit the minds of our female and youthful population, for any thing like healthy, vigorous, sustained moral action. Taking the readers and writers in the gross, we find on the one side, youth, susceptibility, ignorance; on the other, brilliancy, novelty, sensuality. Who shall say, to what dreadful results in the forming of youthful minds, these characteristics operating reciprocally, shall not speedily tend? Upon the man of high intellectual resources, we may suppose the puling sentimentalities of such as William Gilmore Simms, if swallowed in sinning hours, to have as little effect, as the wisp of paper thrown in, to mark his last reading of Milton, Chillingworth, and Burke. Can we predicate the same, of the

ignorant city girl? Tom Jones might provoke only one or two quiet sallies of laughter in the man of education, while it would bane. fully vulgarize the tastes of a schoolboy, and debauch the feelings of a miss. The Sentimental Journey might be very harmlessly read by the mere lover of Sterne's humors; and Lydia, if like her father, might read, and not blush, and be none the worse for the reading; but what shall we say of Eliza's, and of Mrs. J.'s admiration?

There is more, far more respon sibility resting on those who profess to teach or amuse our women and young people, through the medium of these monthly issues, than their conductors seem to be aware of. It is not the youth of the land-especially of our great capitals, with their superficial attainments in letters, who can read week after week such literary trifling, to call it by no worse name, without some time a serious day of reckoning with their consciences-for time misimproved, faculties disarranged, perception of truth deadened, and love of it abused. What a school of training these embellished perditas afford for the mothers of the coming generation! If life were one everlasting round of soirées, and waltzes, and flirta. tions-ladies all belles, and men all apes-we could hardly conceive of any thing more indicative of what might be supposed the literary taste, than some of these monthlies. Nor could we contrive better tutors for the private meditations of such a society than some of these highly extolled, most eminent American writers.' Here and there, indeed, as in the Philadelphia Ladies' Book, we see an urgent push for a moral teaching; but when most successful, among the crudities which environ it, affecting us very much like the throwing in of Yorick's text"we trust we have a good conscience," among the odd low things of Shandy's history.

If, as we remarked in limine, the rout-going, party-giving, waltz-loving women, want matter to give food to the illusory dreams which wealth and fashion nourish, while the little bubble of their eminence remains unbroke, any one of the herein mentioned monthlies will be appropriate. We commend the Ladies' Companion, the World of Fashion, and, with more reservation, the Graham Magazine, to their tender charge! confident that they will find each one of them all they could desire in fashion-plate, in engraving, in tale, in morals, and in religion. But if thinking, reasoning, observing people want something of a somewhat racier cast than we offer to them, to pay them monthly visits; to keep their minds open to the great topics of the day; to bring home agreeably and intelligibly to those unused to a mere dry recital of facts, stirring questions of social, political, and commercial interest; to tell them stories of life as it is, or may be some such stories as that of worth not wealth' making the man; to offer rare interludes of poetry, not made out of a known name as the head, nor of rhyme, nor alliteration only, but of strength and grace; then they must look somewhere else for it than to the journals we are noting.

It is not now our purpose to dissect our whole monthly literature, or to say whether we have, or have not, such an issue altogether as we could wish. Though we should like nothing better, than to spend an hour or two, and as many of these clean, white pages, in drawing to the full our beau ideal of a monthly journal; yet, in want of this, for which we have neither time nor space, we will set down a few extemporaneous hints toward making up the character of a good organ-one that should have a tone and a reputation of its own-a unity, consistency, and straightforward ness of purpose, such as the intelli

gent public would soon begin to respect, and when once respected, would amply sustain. But it should be premised that there must be some reasonable limit to the number of such periodicals. The regard of the literary part of the nation, can not be attached ad libitum to a score of changeling monthlies. There must be permanence and comparative scarcity. Both constitute value, and neither in any way retards the widest distribution. Both constitute wealth, which alone will ensure successful action; not indeed in securing old English annual plates to be retouched by Jordan and Halpin, or a host of great names, but the best efforts of all writers. That degree of wealth which would. just serve to keep in existence a dozen, would render a single one treble the value of all. The abandonment of some expensive and needless features in the papers before us, would furnish a surplus, that under judicious management would greatly extend their usefulness. Thus, what need in a periodical instituted to refine taste and cultivate the mind, of those grotesque fashionpictures? Is it not enough that milliners and mantua-makers should have them, or must they be brought into the family for school-girls to dilate upon and to form their notions of elegance by? Will they teach simplicity to put on beauty, any more than the printed pages will teach truth to innocence? Such gewgaws and their lifeless accompaniments have destroyed simplicity, and, to speak most charitably, disguised innocence, in the hearts of those once merry-faced, brighteyed, whole-souled New England girls, who now with their French, and fashion, and finery, become mouthing and mincing simpletons.

A good monthly journal must show constant variety. The mind of the general reader craves it, and will have it at the expense of poverty. It will not do for tale writers

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to be forever telling, after Mrs. Lee, of living beyond the means; nor of city dissipation, nor of parties and weddings; nor in journals with pretensions to sobriety, will it ever do to have all the matter cumbrous with facts, or gorgeous with description; nor yet all chaste to severity. There must be something to teach; something to waken a smile; something, it may be, to draw down a tear. The over-wise and the prudish, may depend upon it, that the mingling of pleasantry with instruction, of humor with satire, of fancy with fact, will carry a monthly (why not a quarterly?) to a thousand readers, who were else wholly unblessed of it. It should not be full of graces, but only so many, as, like the garland about the Bacchan thyrsus, should hide the point, without impairing the power to pierce.

To a good journal there must always pertain an air of newness. We are not going to set down under this head any clap-trap ideas about originality and the creative power. Nothing of the kind; we mean simply, that it ought to keep pace with the social, political, and literary progress of the world. We mean that the reader ought to find in it no mere recapitulation of old doctrines or truths, taught in the schools, but vigorous inquiry as to what men are doing with those truths and those doctrines now, what they might do with them now, and what they ought to do with them now. If an inquiry runs back two centuries or ten, still it should have its terminus and its bearing now. People who subscribe for periodical reading, are most apprehensive and curious and earnest about the now. And if the reader in order to feel the piquancy of the good things upon the pages of a periodical, must fling out of mind all the stupendous changes of the day; forget that the doughty O'Connell is measuring himself against the stern old Duke of Wellington; forget about Mr. Newman

and the Churchman; forget that the whole British peasantry are shouting and yelling for American beef and wheat; forget whether Mr. Clay or Mr. Birney is the most probable successor of Mr. Tyler ;-and he will very likely give up the monthly for more of the dailies. Not that scholars who live among their books would find it at all irksome to forget the struggling present; but all printers know that scholars are poor pay

masters.

Again, if we are to have a journal for intellectual sustenance, there must be some reach, and consequently some length to the setting forth of opinions. It is absurd to suppose that any subject of great and general interest, can be dispatched in a way worth the reading within limits which could be run over by our lady-readers, in the intervals of nursing sick babies. What intelligent man or woman wants to take up a discussion of the copy-right, or any other important question embraced within a couple of pages careless suoiye done's? It is not one page, or two pages, or half a dozen, of readable type, that can afford scope for a strong man to write down his strength.

It is necessary that a journal to be what it ought, should have some pretty well sustained pretensions to a correct moral tone. There should be no pandering to vitiated appetites, no matter by whom, or how finished and gracile, the conveyancing of licentious thoughts. We will not take this late occasion to particularize; but well might a fair-hearted woman blush at some unmistakeable entendres, which have besmeared things from the pens of eminent contributors for the fashionable monthlies. If readers in love with such entertainment want diversion, we commend them to Roderick Random, and like discarded stories.

Again, a good American paper ought to be republican in its character. There should be no lurking

efforts to build up through it exclusive classes-set apart by adventi tious circumstances; no foolish notions incorporate about rank and caste, farther than mental independ⚫ ence and culture generate them.

Yet again; it should be national. And what do we mean by nation ality or is there no meaning at tachable? We think there is. We do not mean that its province should be narrowed to a consideration of what transpires this side of the seas, with an affected neglect of the great truths which are evolving beyond the waters, giving thoughts and feelings to myriads, born like ourselves to a mixed destiny of sorrow and hope; not

possessed of a phantasy that the sphere of its influence is central and sovereign; not showing prejudices bounded by landmarks, or loves so measured;-but in the range of its observation, and the justness of its decisions, cosmopolitan. Yet while viewing with interest the progress of the race every where, is, at the same time, regulated by mind conscious of its heritage-conscious that it is part of a new nation, whose language is its own, whose institutions are its own, whose hopes are its own, whose fears belong to it also, and whose progress in whatever is good, or whatever makes good, belongs to it more peculiarly than any beside.

HENRY CLAY, AS AN ORATOR.*

We intend to speak in the praise of Mr. Clay. His place among the great men of our country is permanently fixed. He stands forth prominent above the politicians of the hour, in the midst of the chosen few, who are the perpetual guardians of the interests and the honor of the nation. The foundations of his fame are laid deep and imperishable, and the superstructure is already erected. It only remains that the mild light of the evening of life be shed around it.

The speeches of Mr. Clay belong to the country, and it is a most valuable possession. The citizen who is familiar with them, will feel a stronger love for the inheritance of freedom which has fallen to him. The statesman who studies them, will be inspired with a more eleva ted ambition. No man can read them without being deeply impressed by the noble thoughts, the warm

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sympathies, the high-toned honor, in a word, the large soul which dwells in them. He may not agree with every opinion which he finds in them, he may not approve of every measure which they support; but on every page he will meet with the convictions of a comprehensive understanding, and the sentiments of a generous heart. The generations of young men, which may be successively trained up in their spirit of lofty patriotism, will cherish with sacred enthusiasm the institutions of freedom. The country which shall maintain the same spirit, will be strong and prosperous and honored.

Almost every noble feeling of our nature finds an utterance in these speeches. It is this, as we regard it, which constitutes their great, their peculiar excellence. They breathe the soul of humanity into the measures of state. They make government itself to seem to have a living, beating heart. They unfold and support systems of policy with strong arguments, but the arguments themselves are congenial with our best

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