Wile to slav'ry, invasion, an' debt they were swep' on, Wile our Destiny higher an' higher kep' mountin', (Though I guess folks'll stare wen she hends her account in,). Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em, They wunt hev so much ez a feather left in 'em. An', ez fer this Palfrey,* we thought wen we'd gut him in, He'd go kindly in wutever harness we put him in ; Supposin' we did know thet he wuz a peace man ? Doos he think he can be Uncle Sammle's police man, An' wen Sam gits tipsy an' kicks up a riot, Lead him off to the lockup to snooze till he's quiet? Wy, the war is a war thet true paytriots can bear, ef It leads to the fat promised land of a tayriff; In the Tower Victory sets, all of a fluster, An' old Philip Lewis-thet come an' kep' school here Fer the mere sake o' scorin' his ryalist ruler *There is truth yet in this of Juvenal,— "Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas." H. W. On the tenderest part of our kings in futuroHides his crown underneath an old shut in his bureau, Breaks off in his brags to a suckle o' merry kings, How he often hed hided young native Amerrikins, An, turnin' quite faint in the midst of his fooleries, Sneaks down stairs to bolt the front door o' the Tooleries.* You say, "We'd ha' scared 'em by growin' in peace, A plaguy sight more then by bobberies like these "? Who is it dares say thet "our naytional eagle Wun't much longer be classed with the birds thet air regal, Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an', she, arter this slaughter, * Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of other prophecies? It is granting too much to Satan to suppose him, as divers of the learned have done, the inspirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser, I esteem it, to give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is said here of Louis Philippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea will suit here: "Rapida fortuna ac levis, Præcepsque reguo eripuit, exsilio dedit." Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of Eschylus, ̓Απας δὲ τραχὺς ὅστις ἂν νέον κρατῇ. H. W. 'll bring back a bill ten times longer'n she ough' to "? Wut's your name ? Come, I see ye, you upcountry feller, You've put me out severil times with your beller; Out with it! Wut? Biglow? I say nothin' furder, Thet feller would like nothin' better'n a murder; He's a traiter, blasphemer, an' wut ruther worse is, He puts all his ath'ism in dreffle bad verses; Agin sellin' wild lands 'cept to settlers with axes, corner Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner! In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages, An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions He writes fer thet ruther unsafe print, the Courier, I'll be thet is, I mean I'll be blest, Ef I hark to a word frum so noted a pest; I shan't talk with him, my religion's too fervent.— Good mornin', my friends, I'm your most humble servant. [Into the question, whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good or evil, I shall not here enter at large, The two faculties of speech and of speech-making are wholly diverse in their natures. By the first we make ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature every thing runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings, School Committees, Boards (lumber) of one kind and another, Congresses, Parliaments, Diets, Indian Councils, Palavers, and the like, there is scarce a village which has not its factories of this description driven by (milkand-) water power. I cannot conceive the confusion of tongues to have been the curse of Babel, since I esteem my ignorance of other languages as a kind of Martellotower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity. For this reason I have ever preferred the study of the dead languages, those primitive formations being Ararats upon whose silent peaks I sit secure and watch this new deluge without fear, though it rain figures (simulacra, semblances) of speech forty days and nights together, as it not uncommonly happens. Thus is my coat, as it were, without buttons by which any but a vernacular wild bore can seize me. Is it not possible that the Shakers may intend to convey a quiet reproof and hint, in fastening their outer garments with hooks and eyes? This reflection concerning Babel, which I find in no Commentary, was first thrown upon my mind when an excellent deacon of my congregation (being infected with the Second Advent delusion) assured ine that he had received a first instalment of the gift of tongues as a small earnest of larger possessions in the like kind to follow. For, of a truth, I could not reconcile it with my ideas of the Divine justice and mercy that the single wall which protected people of other languages from the incursions of this otherwise well-meaning propagandist should be broken down. In reading Congressional debates, I have fancied, that, after the subsidence of those painful buzzings in the brain which result from such exercises, I detected a slender residuum of valuable information. I made the discovery that nothing takes longer in the saying than any thing else, for, as ex nihilo nihil fit, so from one polypus nothing any number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the attention of vivâ voce debaters and controversialists the admirable example of the monk Copres, who, in the fourth century, stood for half an hour in the midst of a great fire, and thereby silenced a Manichæan antagonist who had less of the salamander in him. As for those who quarrel in print, I have no concern with them here, since the eyelids are a divinely-granted shield against all such. Moreover, I have observed in many modern books that the printed portion is becoming gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are called) greater. Should this fortunate tendency of literature continue, books will grow more valuable from year to year, and the whole Serbonian bog yield to the advances of firm arable land. The sagacious Lacedæmonians hearing that Tesephone had bragged that he could talk all day long on any given subject, made no more ado, but forthwith banished him, whereby they supplied him a topic and at the same time took care that his experiment upon it should be tried out of ear-shot. I have wondered, in the Representatives' Chamber of our own Commonwealth, to mark how little impression seemed to be produced by that emblematic fish suspended over the heads of the members. Our wiser ancestors, no doubt, hung it there as being the animal which the Pythagoreans reverenced for its silence, and which cer |