fill my letter with what came to me upon the turned-back leaf of seeing Mr. Maffit in the pulpit again, but the comparison between the effects of oratory upon tastes mature and immature, though interesting elsewhere, would be out of place here. He was not so much changed as I anticipated. Macready has always reminded me of him, and they are still alike. Mr. Maffit did not use to shave his temples, and from this peculiar tonsure, his forehead looks higher and his hair less Hyperian and more oratorical than formerly.

He commenced with some general remarks as to the charm of variety in customs and manners, and the common English weakness of condemning pitilessly every departure from the cockney standards and peculiarities, trying, by this This part of the test only, every country under the sun. oration was written in lambent and oily-hinged periods, and delivered-really, in music absolute! I felt the spell over again. It is in the voice and accent of Mr. Maffit that the philtre lies hid. So sweet a tone no other man has, in my knowledge. His inflexions, so long as he remains unexcited, are managed with the skill of the subtlest rhetorician. He hides the meaning of his sentences under the velvet words that are sweetest to linger upon, and to press with emphasis, and in this department of oratory he seems to me unsurpassed. He soon broke the spell, however. As he left generalizing, and got from poetry to analysis, he began to show bad taste and clumsy discrimination, and fell into a kind of grimalkin sputter of sarcasm that let down his dignity sadly. The audience began to applaud, and, with their applause, he grew inflated, both in matter and manner, and for the last half hour of his discourse was entirely off his feet-trashy, inconsequent and absurd-most applauded, however, when most incomprehensible. (And this ill-bestowed applause may easily have been the reverend orator's Delilah.) I remember little of what he said after the first fifteen minutes. There was a good deal of illustration to show that the “Yankees could whip the British," and much more of such clap-trap, and Dickens and Mrs. Trollope were each served out with as much pulpit-pounding and bitter epithet as is commonly given the devil, at a dose. One comparative testimony given by the orator is valuable, as he speaks, on both sides, with authority. He assured us that the society in every part of this country, "from the Aroostook to the Sabine," is as refined and delightful as any society whatever, except that of Heaven. He did not mention how long he had resided in the latter country, but he had been a travelling guest of American families for the twenty years since he left Ireland, and had been treated everywhere as a son and brother, and spoke advisedly. I could wish this Irish and celestial evidence in our favour might be put (for smoking) into the pipe of the London Quarterly.

fers," etc. etc. etc.. This is vernacular, of course, to the ladies, but Greek to us.

Apropos of words; there should be a replevin, (by poetry upon vulgar usage,) to restore the word diaper to its original meaning. Ford says in one of his plays, (The Sun's Darling,)

"Whate'er the wanton Spring,

When she doth diaper the ground with beauties,
Toils for, comes home to Autumn."

Diaper means literally to embroider with raised work,after a stuff which was formerly called d'Ipre from the town of Ipre in Flanders, where it was manufactured. There is such a load of descriptiveness in the world that it is a shame it should be lost to poetry.

Moore's carefully revised and corrected edition of his works is re-published in this country at the price of three dollars and half. Half of it, at least, is uninteresting to the general reader, consisting of his satires, (with names left in unexplained blanks,) local poetry, translations from the classics, and a mass of laboured notes. The popular portions, consisting of "The Loves of the Angels," "The Irish Melodies and Sacred Songs," and the "National airs, bal. lads, and miscellaneous Poems," have been published in three Extras of the Mirror-five shillings for all of them. This will form as beautiful an edition of the enjoyable part of Moore's poetry as could be wished, and as cheap as beautiful.

CHARLES DIBDIN," The Bard of Poor Jack," as he is commonly called, is one of those authors less known than his works; particularly in this country, where his songs are familiar to every lip, and his name hardly recognized. General Morris has made a collection of all the songs of Dibdin that are universal in their popularity, and has added others which from their bold and graphic excellence have been commonly attributed to him. This shilling Extra of the Mirror will become, I think, the sailor's classic, embodying, as it does, all their most remarkable songs.

Montgomery's "World before the Flood," one of the sweetest poems in the English language, is also in press for the " Mirror Library." On looking over the biography of this good man and true poet, I find, by the way, the following passage, referring, I believe, to the father of one of the Editors of the Intelligencer. "Mr. Montgomery removed to Sheffield, (England,) in 1792, and engaged himself with Mr. Gales, the publisher of a very popular newspaper, at that time known by the title of the Sheffield Register. Mr. Montgomery became a useful correspondent to this paper, and gained so far the good opinion and affection of Mr. Gales and his family that they vied with each other in demonstrating their respect and regard for him. In 1794, when Mr. Gales left England to avoid a political prosecution, Montgomery, with the assistance of another gentleman, became the Editor of the Register." Critics have unanimously agreed that "The World before the Flood" is the best production of Montgomery's muse, and it certainly is a noble and pure structure of elevated imagination. Among the sacred classics, Montgomery, I think, will rank first.

I have discovered lately that the household gods have a vocabulary of their own. Search after a trifling invention led me to Windle's furnishing-shop in Maiden Lane, and after spending an hour in marvelling at the mind that has been expended upon the invention of household conveA niences, I asked for a catalogue of the shop's wares. me, and I give pamphlet of twenty-one pages was handed you, for your despair, a few of the names of the necessary utensils by which your comfort is ministered to: "Pope's The critics, by acclamation, pronounce Kendall's Narraheads and eyes," "Shakers' Swifts," "Beef-steak Pounders," "Faucets and Bung-starts," "Boot-jacks and Leg. tive of his Santa Fe expedition and imprisonment in Mexiresters," "Salt-and-spit boxes," "Chinese Swings," "Chi-co, one of the most enjoyable and engrossing books of the nese Punk in boxes," "Sillabub sticks," "Oven-peels," time. I am no judge-having a weakness for the author. I "All-blaze pans," "Ice-cream Pagodas," "Paste-jaggers have read his book with great delight, but with a sotto voce (borrowed from Mrs. Norton :)

and cutters," Crimping and goffering machines," "sugar. nippers and larding pins," "Bread-rasps and sausage-stuf

The terrible calamity at Washington still forms the principal topic of conversation in New-York.

"All thou doest seems well done to me !"

NOT MARRIED YET.
I'm single yet-I'm single yet!

And years have flown since I came out!
In vain I sigh-in vain I fret!

Ye gods! what are the men about?
I vow I'm twenty-oh, ye powers!

A spinster's lot is hard to bear

On earth alone to pass her hours,

And afterwards lead apes-down there!

No offer yet-no offer yet!

I'm puzzled quite to make it out;
For every beau my cap I set,

What, what, what are the men about?
They don't propose-they won't propose,

For fear, perhaps, I'd not say "yes!"
Just let them try-for heaven knows
I'm tired of single-blessedness.
Not married yet-not married yet--
The deuce is in the men, I fear!

I'm like a-something to be let,

And to be let alone-that's clear.
They say "she's pretty-but no chink-
And love without it runs in debt!"

It agitates my nerves to think

That I have had no offer yet!

G. P. M.

SORROW'S RELUCTANT GATE. THIS last turned leaf, dear reader, seems to us always like a door shut behind us, with the world outside. We have expressed this thought before, when it was a prelude to being gayer than in the precedent pages. With the closed door, now, we would throw off restraint, but it is to be sadder than before. It is so with yourself, doubtless. You sometimes break into singing on entering your chamber and finding yourself alone. Sometimes you burst into tears.

But the day glides on, and night comes. We lie down, and unconsciously, as we turn upon our pillow, commence a recapitulation that was once a habit of prayer-silently naming over the friends whom we should commend to God, -did we pray,—as those most dear to us. Suddenly the heart stops-the breath hushes-the tears spring hot to the eyelids. We miss the dead! From that chain of sweet thoughts a link is broken, and for the first time we feel that we are bereaved. It was in the casket of that last hour before sleeping-embalmed in the tranquillity of that hour's unnamed and unreckoned happiness-that the memory of the dead lay hid. For that friend, now, we can no longer pray! Among the living-among our blessings,-among our hopes-that sweet friend is nameable no more! We realize it now. The list of those who love us-whom we love-is made briefer. With face turned upon our pillow-with anguish and tears-we blot out the beloved name; and begin the slow and nightly task of unlearning the oft-told syllables from our lips.

And this is the slow-opening gate by which sorrow enters in! We wake on the morrow and remember our tears of the past night; and, as the cheerful sunshine streams in at our window, we think of the kind face and embracing arms, the soft eyes and beloved lips, lying dark and cold, in a place -oh how pitiless in its coldness and darkness! We choke with a suffused sob, we heave the heavy thought from our bosom with a painful sigh, and hasten abroad-for relief in forgetfulness!

But, we had not anticipated that this dear friend would die, and we have marked out years to come with hopes in which the dead was to have been a sharer. Thoughts, and promises, and meetings, and gifts, and pleasures, of which hers was the brighter half, are wound like a wreath of flow. ers around the chain of the future, and as we come to them There is nothing for which the similitudes of poetry seem -to the places where these looked for flowers lie in ashes to us so false and poor, as for affliction by the death of those upon the inevitable link-oh God! with what agonizing we love. The news of such a calamity is not "a blow." It vividness they suddenly return!-with what grief, made inis not like "a thunderbolt," or "a piercing arrow;" it does not tenser by realising, made more aching by prolonged absence, "crush and overwhelm" us. We hear it, at first, with a kind we call up those features beloved, and remember where of mournful incredulity, and the second feeling is perhaps a they lie, uncaressed and unvisited! Years must pass-and wonder at ourselves, that we are so little moved. The other affections must "sweep and garnish and enter in" to pulse beats on as tranquilly. The momentary tear dries from the void chambers of the heart-and consolation and natural the eye. We go on, about the errand in which we were forgetfulness must do their slow work of erasure-and mean. interrupted. We eat, sleep, at our usual time, and are nour. time grief visits us, in unexpected times and places, its parished and refreshed; and if a friend meet us and provoke a oxysms imperceptibly lessening in poignancy and tenacity, smile, we easily and forgetfully smile. Nature does not but life in its main current, flowing, from the death to the seem to be conscious of the event, or she does not recognize forgetting of it, unchanged on! it as a calamity.

But little of what is taken away by death is taken from the happiness of one hour, or one day. We live, absent from beloved relatives, without pain. Days pass without our seeing them-months-years. They would be no more absent in body if they were dead. But, suddenly, in the midst of our common occupations, we hear that they are one remove farther from us-in the grave. The mind acknowledges it true. The imagination makes a brief and painful visit to the scene of the last agony, the death-chamber, the burial,—and returns weary and dispirited, to repose. For that hour, perhaps, we should not have thought of the departed, if they were living-nor for the next. The routine we had relied upon to fill up those hours comes round. We give it our cheerful attention. The beloved dead are displaced from our memory, and perhaps we start suddenly, with a kind of reproachful surprise, that we can have been so forgetful-that the world, with its wheels of minutes and trifles, can thus untroubled go round, and that dear friend gone from it.

And now, what is like to this, in nature?—(for even the slight sympathy in dumb similitudes is sweet.) It is not like the rose's perishing-for that robs only the hour in which it dies. It were more like the removal from earth of that whole race of flowers, for we should not miss the first day's roses, hardly the first season's, and should mourn most when the impoverished Spring came once more round with out them. It were like stilling the music of a brook forever, or making all singing-birds dumb, or hushing the wind-mur mur in the trees, or drawing out from nature any one of her threads of priceless repetition. We should not mourn for the first day's silence in the brook, or in the trees; nor for the first morning's hush after the birds were made voiceless. The recurrent dawns, or twilights, or summer noons, robbed of their accustomed music, would bring the sense of its loss the value of what was taken away increasing with its recurrent season. But these are weak similitudes-as they must needs be, drawn from a world in which death-the lot alike of all living creatures that inhabit it-is only a calamity to man!

was very ill for a long ume; all, mess ferings, ardently solicited permission to go and join the un-in her role of woman, of a woman of superiour beauty. ɔne fortunate victim on his desolate rock. Much as the emperour desired to have her with him, knowing the deplorable state of her health, he wrote to her several times to dissuade her from the project; but the fraternal contest was terminated by his jailers, who really thought of everything else rather than that of giving a few hours of calm happiness to

appeared upon the stage of the world, on which we are all of us playing, and hissed or applauded according to our want or wealth of talent. I have not exaggerated when speaking of her; every member of her household is still living, and can confirm or affirm what I have said; but, in recounting her levity, that silly importance with which