same true stalk of Gouda between his lips. Let us see how completely he transplanted the observances of Old Amsterdam to the sedgy swamps on which (in the midst of innumerable noble, dry, and airy, and unoccupied situations,) it was Mynheer's good will and pleasure to found the new. Of course, the whole picture is meant to be a severe satire on the more fashionable manners of the present possessors of the city of New York.

"In those good days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewifea character which formed the utmost ambition of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on marriages, funerals, new year's days, the festival of St Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes into the device of a dog, and sometimes of a lion's head, and was daily burnished with such religious zeal, that it was oft times worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water-insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us, that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; and some of them, he had little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would be found to have the tails of mermaids-but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or what is worse, a wilful misrepresenta

tion.

"The grand parlour was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one was permitted to enter, excepting the mistress and her confidential maid, who visited it once a week, for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning, and putting things to rights-always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly on their stocking feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked into angles and curves, and rhomboids, with a broom-after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fire-place-the window shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day.

"As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and most generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous

household assembled around the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported back to those happy days of primeval simplicity, which float before our imaginations like golden visions. The fire-places were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young,master and servant, black and white, nay, even the very cat and dog enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a prescriptive right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half shut eyes, and thinking of nothing for hours together; the goede vrouw on the opposite side would employ herself diligently in spinning her yarn, or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New-England witches-grisly ghosts-horses without heads-and hairbreadth escapes and bloody encounters among the Indians.

"In those happy days a well regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sun down. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers shewed incontestible symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness, at being surprised by a visit from a neighbour on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bands of intimacy by occasional banquetings, called tea parties.

"As this is the first introduction of those delectable orgies, which have since become so fashionable in this city, I am conscious my fair readers will be very curious to receive information on the subject. Sorry am I, that there will be but little in my description calculated to excite their admiration. I can neither delight them with accounts of suffocating crowds, nor brilliant drawing rooms, nor towering feathers, nor sparkling diamonds, nor immeasurable trains. I can detail no choice anecdotes of scandal, for in those primitive times the simple folk were either too stupid, or too good natured to pull each other's characters to pieces-nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag-how one lady cheated, or another bounced into a passion; for as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers, who met to win each other's money, and lose their own tempers at a card table.

"These fashionable parties were generally consigned to the higher classes, or noblesse, that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own waggons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies

might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company to iced creams, jellies, or syllabubs; or regaled them with musty almonds, mouldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement.-Our ancestors were fond of more sturdy, substantial fare. The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company being seated around the genial board, and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish-in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks-a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families.

"The tea was served out of a majestic delft teapot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses, tending pigs with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot, from a huge copper tea kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup-and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth -an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany; but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flat-Bush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

"At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting-no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones-no self satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets-nor amusing conceits, and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen, with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rushbottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say yah Mynher, or yah ya Vrouw, to any question that was asked them; behaving, in all things, like decent, well educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of

the blue and white tiles, with which the fire places were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously pourtrayed-Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet, and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion. They were carried home by their own carriages, that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy, as could afford to keep a waggon. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door: which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it at the present-if our great grandfathers approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to say a word against it."

The dress of these primitive worthies next engages the attention of the historian-and he proceeds to draw various portraits which will probably be envied by the author of the Mad

Banker.

"Their hair untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatomed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, rivalling the many coloured robes of Iris though I must confess these gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen's small clothes; and what is still more praise-worthy, they were all of their own manufacture of which circumstance, as may well be supposed, they were not a little vain.

"These were the honest days, in which every woman staid at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets aye, and that too of a goodly size, fashioned with patch-work into many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles, where all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed-and I remember there was a story current when I was a boy, that the lady of Wouter Van Twiller once had occasion to empty her right pocket in search of a wooden ladle, and the utensil was discovered lying among some rubbish in one corner-but we must not give too much faith to all these stories; the anecdotes of these remote periods being very subject to exaggeration.

"Besides these notable pockets, they

likewise wore scissars and pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbands, or among the more opulent and showy classes, by brass, and even silver chains indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted with magnificent red clocks-or perhaps to display a well turned ankle, and a neat, though serviceable foot; set off by a high-heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle. Thus we find, that the gentle sex in all ages, have shown the same disposition to infringe a little upon the laws of decorum, in order to betray a lurking beauty, or gratify an incontinent love of finery.

"From the sketch here given, it will be seen, that our good grandmothers differed considerably in their ideas of a fine figure, from their scantily dressed descendants of the present day. A fine lady, in those times, waddled under more clothes even on a fair summer's day, than would have clad the whole bevy of a modern ball room. Nor were they the less admired by the gentlemen in consequence thereof. On the contrary, the greatness of a lover's passion seemed to increase in porportion to the magnitude of its object-and a voluminous damsel, arrayed in a dozen of petticoats, was declared by a low-dutch sonnetteer of the province, to be radiant as a sun-flower, and luxuriant as a full blown cabbage. Certain it is, that in those days, the heart of a lover could not contain more than one lady at a time; whereas the heart of a modern gallant has often room enough to accommodate half-a-dozen. The reason of which I conclude to be, that either the hearts of the gentlemen have grown larger, or the persons of the ladies smaller-this, however, is a question for physiologists to determine.

"But there was a secret charm in these petticoats, which no doubt entered into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock of petticoats and stockings, was as absolutely an heiress as is a Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear skins, or a Lapland belle with a plenty of rein deer. The ladies, therefore, were very anxious to display these powerful attractions to the greatest advantage; and the best rooms in the house, instead of being adorned with caricatures of dame nature, in water colours and needle work, were always hung round with abundance of homespun garments; the manufacture and the property of the females -a piece of laudable ostentation that still prevails among the heiresses of our Dutch villages. Such were the beauteous belles of the ancient city of New Amsterdam, rivalling in primeval simplicity of manners,

the renowned and courtly dames, so loftily sung by Dan Homer-who tells us that the princess Nausicaa washed the family linen, and the fair Penelope wove her own petticoats.

"The gentlemen, in fact, who figured in the circles of the gay world in these ancient times, corresponded, in most particulars, with the beauteous damsels whose smiles they were ambitious to deserve. True it is, their merits would make but a very inconsiderable impression upon the heart of a modern fair; they neither drove their curricles nor sported their tandems, for as yet those gaudy vehicles were not even dreamt of-neither did they distinguish themselves by their brilliancy at the table, and their consequent rencontres with watchmen, for our forefathers were of too pacific a disposition to need those guardians of the night, every soul throughout the town being in full snore before nine o'clock. Neither did they establish their claims to gentility at the expense of their taylorsfor as yet those offenders against the pockets of society, and the tranquillity of all aspiring young gentlemen, were unknown in New Amsterdam; every good housewife made the clothes of her husband and family, and even the goede vrouw of Van Twiller himself, thought it no disparagement to cut out her husband's linsey woolsey galligaskins.

Not but what there were some two or three youngsters who manifested the first dawnings of what is called fire and spirit. Who held all labour in contempt; skulked about docks and market places; loitered in the sunshine; squandered what little money they could procure at hustle cap and chuck farthing; swore, boxed, fought cocks, and raced their neighbours' horses in short, who promised to be the wonder, the talk and abomination of the town, had not their stylish career been unfortunately cut short, by an affair of honour with a whipping post.

"Far other, however, was the truly fashionable gentleman of those days-his dress, which served for both morning and evening, street and drawing-room, was a linsey woolsey coat, made, perhaps, by the fair hands of the mistress of his affections, and gallantly bedecked with abundance of large brass buttons.-Half a score of breeches heightened the proportions of his figure-his shoes were decorated by enormous copper buckles-a low crowned broad brimmed hat overshadowed his burley visage, and his hair dangled down his back, in a prodigious queue of eel skin.

"Thus equipped, he would manfully sally forth with pipe in mouth to besiege some fair damsel's obdurate heart-not such a pipe, good reader, as that which Acis did sweetly tune in praise of his Galatea, but one of true delft manufacture, and furnished with a charge of fragrant Cowpen tobacco. With this would he resolute

ly set himself down before the fortress, and rarely failed, in the process of time, to smoke the fair enemy into a surrender, upon honourable terms.

"Such was the happy reign of Wouter Van Twiller, celebrated in many a long forgotten song as the real golden age, the rest being nothing but counterfeit copperwashed coin. In that delightful period, a sweet and holy calm reigned over the whole province. The burgomaster smoked his pipe in peace-the substantial solace of his domestic cares, after her daily toils were done, sat soberly at the door, with her arms crossed over her apron of snowy white, without being insulted by ribald street walkers or vagabond boys—those unlucky urchins, who do so infest our streets, displaying under the roses of youth, the thorns and briars of iniquity. Then it was that the lover with ten breeches and the damsel with petticoats of half a score indulged in all the innocent endearments of virtuous love, with out fear and without reproach-for what had that virtue to fear, which was defended by a shield of good linsey woolseys, equal at least to the seven bull hides of the invincible Ajax.

"Ah blissful, and never to be forgotten age! when every thing was better than it has ever been since, or ever will be again— when Buttermilk channel was quite dry at low water-when the shad in the Hudson were all salmon, and when the moon shone with a pure and resplendent whiteness, instead of that melancholy yellow light, which is the consequence of her sickening at the abominations she every night witnesses in this degenerate city!

Behold the form of one of the primitive rulers of this primitive race the great Willhelmus Kieft, commonly called William the Testy, who ascended the Gubernatorial chair of New Amsterdam anno domini 1638.

"He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years, and partly from being parched and burnt up by his fiery soul; which blazed like a vehement rush light in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valourous broils, altercations and misadventures. I have heard it observed by a profound and philosophical judge of human nature, that if a woman waxes fat as she grows old, the tenure of her life is very precarious, but if haply she withers, she lives for ever such likewise was the case with William the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion as he dried. He was some such a little Dutchinan as we may now and then see, stumping briskly about the streets of our city, in a broad skirted coat, with buttons nearly as large as the shield of Ajax, an old fashioned cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His visage was broad, but his fea

tures sharp, his nose turned up with a most petulant curl; his cheeks, like the regions of Terra del Fuego, were scorched into a dusky red doubtless in consequence of the neighbourhood of two fierce little grey eyes, through which his torrid soul beamed as fervently, as a tropical sun blazing through a pair of burning glasses. The corners of his mouth were curiously modelled into a kind of fret work, not a little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an irritable pug dog-in a word, he was one of the most positive, restless, ugly, little men, that ever put himself in a passion about nothing.

"Such were the personal endowments of William the Testy, but it was the sterling riches of his mind that raised him to dignity and power. In his youth he had passed with great credit through a celebrated academy at the Hague, noted for producing finished scholars with a dispatch unequalled, except by certain of our American colleges, which seem to manufacture bachelors of arts, by some patent machine. Here he skirmished very smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences, and made so gallant an inroad in the dead languages, as to bring off a captive host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, together with divers pithy saws and apothegms, all which he constantly paraded in conversation and writing, with as much vain glory as would a triumphant general of yore display the spoils of the countries he had ravished."

Great as these accomplishments might be esteemed at New, or even at Old Amsterdam, they were, however, very far from producing nothing but good either to the governor or the governed. William the Testy is compared, by his historian, to a bad swimmer, who, floundering about on the surface, and with splashing head and tail, makes fifty times more noise and splutter than the experienced diver that plunges calmly to the bottom, and brings up whatever he sees worth the trouble. In an evil hour he set about the erection of debating societies, and had he carried over the whole of the Select Society of Edinburgh in the Goede Vrouw, he could not have conferred a more pestiferous present on his colony. The portrait may well furnish matter of reflection to wiser bodies than debating societies.

"But the worst of the matter was, that just about this time the mob, since called the sovereign people, like Balaam's ass, began to grow more enlightened than its rider, and exhibited a strange desire of governing itself. This was another effect of the ⚫ universal acquirements' of William the Testy. In some of his pestilent researches among the rubbish of antiquity, he was struck

with admiration at the institution of public tables among the Lacedæmonians, where they discussed topics of a general and interesting nature at the schools of the philo sophers, where they engaged in profound disputes upon politics and morals-where grey beards were taught the rudiments of wisdom, and youths learned to become little men, before they were boys, There is nothing,' said the ingenious Kieft, shutting up the book, there is nothing more essential to the well management of a country, than education among the people; the basis of a good government, should be laid in the public mind.'-Now this was enough, but it was ever the wayward fate of William the Testy, that when he thought right, he was sure to go to work wrong. In the present instance, he could scarcely eat or sleep, until he had set on foot brawling debating societies, among the simple citizens of New Amsterdam. This was the one thing wanting to complete his confusion. The honest Dutch burghers, though in truth but little given to argument or wordy altercations, yet by dint of meeting often together, fuddling themselves with strong drink, beclouding their brains with tobacco smoke, and listening to the harangues of some half a dozen oracles, soon became exceedingly wise, and-as is always the case where the mob is politically enlightened exceedingly discontented. They found out, with wonderful quickness of discernment, the fearful error in which they had indulged, in fancying themselves the happiest people in creation-and were fortunately convinced, that, all circumstances to the contrary notwithstanding, they were a very unhappy, deluded, and consequently, ruined people!

In a short time the quidnuncs of New Amsterdam formed themselves into sage juntos of political croakers, who daily met together to groan over political affairs, and make themselves miserable; thronging to these unhappy assemblages with the same eagerness, that zealots have in all ages abandoned the milder and more peaceful paths of religion, to crowd to the howling convocations of fanaticism. We are natu

rally prone to discontent, and avaricious after imaginary causes of lamentation-like lubberly monks, we belabour our own shoulders, and seem to take a vast satisfaction in the music of our own groans. Nor is this said for the sake of paradox; daily experience shows the truth of these observations. It is next to a farce to offer consolation, or to think of elevating the spirits of a man groaning under ideal calamities; but nothing is more easy than to render him wretched, though on the pinnacle of felicity; as it is an Herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple, though the merest child can topple him off thence.

"In the sage assemblages I have noticed, the philosophic reader will at once perceive the faint germs of those sapient convocations

called popular meetings, prevalent at our day-Thither resorted all those idlers and squires of low degree,' who, like rags, hang loose upon the back of society, and are ready to be blown away by every wind of doctrine. Cobblers abandoned their stalls, and hastened thither to give lessons on political economy-blacksmiths left their han dicraft and suffered their own fires to go out, while they blew the bellows and stirred up the fire of faction; and even taylors, though but the shreds and patches, the ninth parts of humanity, neglected their own measures, to attend to the measures of government Nothing was wanting but half a dozen newspapers and patriotic editors, to have completed this public illumination, and to have thrown the whole province in an up

roar !

"I should not forget to mention, that these popular meetings were always held at a noted tavern ; for houses of that description have always been found the most congenial nurseries of politics; abounding with those genial streams which give strength and sustenance to faction-We are told that the ancient Germans had an admirable mode of treating any question of importance; they first deliberated upon it when drunk, and afterwards reconsidered it when sober. The shrewder mobs of America, who dislike having two minds upon a subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by which means a world of cold and tedious speculations is dispensed with-and as it is universally allowed that when a man is drunk he sees double, it follows most conclusively that he sees twice as well as his sober neighbours."

We cannot, at present, venture upon any more extracts—and yet we have done nothing to give our readers a due notion of what Knickerbocker's book contains. We shall return to the volumes again, for we suppose we may consider them as in regard to almost all that read this Magazine, "as good as manuscript." Enough, however, has been quoted to shew of what sort of stuff Mr Irving's comic pencil is composed-and enough to make all our readers go along with us in a request which we have long meditated, viz. that this author would favour us with a series of novels, on the plan of those of Miss Edgeworth, or, if he likes that better, of the author of Waverley, illustrative of the present state of manners in the United States of America. When we think, for a moment, on the variety of elements whereof that society is every where composed-the picturesque mixtures of manners derived from German, Dutch, English, Scottish, Swedish, Gothic, and Celtic settlers, which