ries too soon to behold the materials of story, besprinkled and bespeckled with the dustiness and rustiness of genuine antiquity.

The Devil and Tom Walker, although not quite perfect in its parts, is full of strong points, and fine touches. The niggardly poverty of Tom and the termagant blustering and clamorous clapper-clawing of his rib is worked up to the life. That Proteus the Devil is here made to assume a new shape, which we think is a very near approach to the true beau ideal of that formidable personage. People may say what they please about the Satan of Milton; we never will believe that old Scratch is such a fine looking fellow as he has described him. No, we are convinced that his portrait by Geoffrey Crayon is far the best likeness. Then the tough battle between Mrs. Walker and the Devil-how well is it told, without any description at all, by the 'prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree,' and the handfuls of hair that had been plucked by the vigorous fingers of the shrew from the curly black shock of old Sam. The progress of Tom in iniquity is quite according to nature; and nothing could be better imagined than the making the acme of wickedness consist in the abominable crime of increasing the per-centage of loans in proportion to the badness of the pledge of repayment. By the bye, we are told that there are such wicked people in this very city of New-York, as talk about having laws passed to let people ask any thing they please for the use of their money. Let these men beware. Do they think that old Nick will permit them to meddle with his rights and his privileges? Never; and besides, what a terrible thing it would be. Every broker in Wall Street would ask at least a thousand per cent. for his money, and the poor man that could not or would not repay, would never be able to borrow. We hope that these new-fangled notions will never prevail in a free and enlightened community like ours, and that every cruel usurer may meet with the fate of Tom Walker.

But the best of the stories, we think, is the one that is told by the veritable John Josse Vandermoere-the story of that excellent burgher, Wolfert Webber by name, along with the glorious episode of Mud Sam the Fisherman. Wolfert is a genuine New Nederlander, the last, we may say, of the faithful adherents to the ancient regime of Nieuw Amsterdam. And then Amy, that lovely mooi bloemtje!-who would forgive us, if we omitted the description of this charming Dutch beauty in the words of John Josse himself?

"How her blue eyes grew deeper and deeper, and her cherry lips redder and redder; and how she ripened and ripened, and rounded and rounded in the opening breath of sixteen summers, until, in her seventeenth spring, she seemed ready to burst out of her boddice, like a half-blown rose-bud.

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'Ah, well-a-day ! could I but show her as she was then, tricked out on a Sunday morning, in the hereditary finery of the old Dutch clothes press, of which her mother had confided to her the key. The wedding dress of her grandmother, modernized for use, with sundry ornaments, handed down as heir looms in the family. Her pale brown hair smoothed with buttermilk in flat waving lines on each side of her fair forehead. The chain of yellow virgin gold, that encircled her neck; the little cross, that just rested at the entrance of a soft valley of happiness, as if it would sanctify the place. The-but pooh!-it is not for an old man like me to be prosing about female beauty suffice it to say, Amy had attained her seventeenth year. Long since had her sampler exhibited hearts in couples desperately transfixed with arrows, and true lovers' knots worked in deep blue silk; and it was evident she began to languish for some more interesting occupation than the rearing of sunflowers or pickling of cucumbers."

We feel strongly tempted to insert the whole portrait of the strange buccaneer, who came ashore at Corlaers Hoeck, one dark stormy night, aboard of a great oaken sea-chest; but this must be excluded in order to admit the following fine description of the change of the seasons.

"The little frogs that had piped in the meadows in early spring croaked as bull-frogs in the brooks, during the summer heats, and then sunk into silence. The peach tree budded, blossomed, and bore its fruit. The swallows and martins came, twittered about the roof, built their nests, reared their young, held their congress along the eaves, and then winged their flight in search of another spring. The caterpillar spun its winding sheet, dangled in it from the great buttonwood tree that shaded the house; turned into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine of summer, and disappeared; and finally the leaves of the buttonwood tree turned yellow, then brown, then rustled one by one to the ground, and whirling about in little eddies of wind and dust, whispered that winter was at hand."

We know we will be blamed for omitting the passage which so fearfully depicts the midnight drowning of the old and mysterious buccaneer; but we must pass rapidly over the rest of this narrative, without even inserting any part of Wolfert's unfortunate money-digging enterprise. Admirably told as it is, it has the misfortune to come after the money-searching scene in the Antiquary, to which indeed it bears a resemblance which seems too much the effect of imitation. The catastrophe is happily conceived, and we never felt such hearty satisfaction in the course of our story-reading life, as when we arrived at that exquisite peripetia, the sudden rescue of Wolfert from death and destruction by dint of Alles Kopf and corporation improvements.

Wolfert lay on his back, his nightcap drawn over his forehead; his eyes closed; his whole visage the picture of death. He begged the lawyer to be brief, for he felt his end approaching, and that he had no time to lose. The lawyer nibbed his pen, spread out his paper, and prepared to write.

"I give and bequeath," said Wolfert, faintly, my small farm "What-all!" exclaimed the lawyer.

Wolfert half opened his eyes and looked upon the lawyer. "Yes-all," said he.

"What! all that great patch of land with cabbages and sunflowers, which the corporation is just going to run a main street through?"

"The same," said Wolfert, with a heavy sigh, and sinking back upon his pillow.

"I wish him joy that inherits it!" said the little lawyer, chuckling and rubbing his hands involuntarily.

eyes.

"What do you mean?" said Wolfert, again opening his "That he'll be one of the richest men in the place!" cried little Rollebuck.

The expiring Wolfert seemed to step back from the threshold of existence: his eyes again lighted up; he raised himself in his bed, shoved back his red worsted nightcap, and stared boldly at the lawyer.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed he.

"Faith, but I do!" rejoined the other. "Why, when that great field and that piece of meadow come to be laid out in streets, and cut up into snug building lots-why, whoever owns them need not pull off his hat to the patroon !"

"Say you so?" cried Wolfert, half thrusting one leg out of bed, “why, then I think I'll not make my will yet!"

In a few days Wolfert leaves his room, and soon finds that his dreams are accomplished; for before many months are elapsed, a great bustling street passes through the very centre of his garden, just where he had dreamed of finding a treasure.

With this extract, we conclude the defence of our opinion; and feel assured that with those who do not measure utility with the square and the compass; with those who believe that no source of intellectual delight is unworthy of regard and approbation, we shall find ample indulgence at least, if not a ready concession, that the Tales of a Traveller,' with all their humilities of plan, and with what we acknowledge as their occasional defects of execution, have in them notwithstanding what may serve to beguile the willing reader of his weariness in some of those awkward and inconvenient intervals between our more serious pursuits, when the voice of philosophy, and even the whisperings of interest, are either listened to with languid indifference, or repelled with aversion and disgust.

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An Inquiry into the Moral Character of Lord Byron. By J. W. Simmons. New-York. Bliss & White. 1824.

The writer of this Inquiry has come gallantly forward, in vindication of the principles, and in extenuation of the seemingly exceptionable conduct of the great poet, whose powers and eccentricities have so long excited wonder and speculation. He has presented himself boldly and fairly in the arena; employing philosophy, instead of cant, and truth in place of declamation, in his analysis of the poetical temperament. He has shown that he himself understands the nature and peculiarities of genius; but, from the existence of the original distinction, which he has taken, between those whose minds have created their own worlds, before the time has come for them to be initiated in the actual drama of life, and the plodding and practical majority of mankind, we doubt whether he can succeed in obtaining from the latter an acquittal for moral offences, on the ground of a mental organization which they cannot understand. When the grave has closed over a man of transcendant talents, the better and holier feelings of our nature induce us to speak reverentially of the follies and aberrations of the mighty dead. The pedantic wouldbe moralist and the senseless scribbler may perch like ravens on the cypress that shadows his ashes, and croak their obscene jargon for a time; but all who have not radically bad hearts, or who are not the victims of some unfortunate prejudice, will close their ears against such worthless ribaldry. Still, though mankind are willing to forget the frailties of those who have left them a rich intellectual legacy, it is vain to endeavour to make them excuse moral, on the ground of mental obliquity. And so it should be; for they have the rule of right plainly revealed to them; and to vindicate its transgression by metaphysical subtleties, would be to sap the foundation of their faith and practice.

Yet may not the injunction of scripture, "judge not, that ye be not judged," be urged to the liberal Christian? May we not say that all men are to be judged according to their lights; not according to their opportunities, but to the capability they had of improving them? To use our author's reasoning, we will not put the case of an idiot or a lunatic, whom human laws would absolve from punishment," but of a man whose passive impressions have been confirmed, previous to the development of his active principles; whose morals have been depraved ere his understanding had unfolded itself; with whom the

moral approving and disapproving faculty was no guide, because the agent had become confirmed in those actions which constitute the object of this faculty, ere the faculty itself had been developed." It is a trite remark, that genius is perhaps as rare as idiocy. Of a hundred respectable writers, not one may have more than talent, fostered by education. Of a hundred who can write decent poetry, there may not be one

"Whom Phoebus in his ire

Has blasted with poetic fire."

The reply to such an appeal would be, as we have said, that the world can understand no such singular constitution of the intellectual faculties; and that no human tribunal would allow of such a plea, even in mitigation of the penalty incurred. But surely God, the author of all intelligent souls, and to whom their mysterious operations are palpable, in requiring from each the talents intrusted to his charge, will exact less from him, whose moral perceptions were weaker, from the early development of a craving imagination, before reason could control, orexperience test, the fallacy of its wanderings, than from him whose vision was unclouded by false creations, and whose perception of truth and error was distinct.

The lives of men of genius, and their confessions, support our author in his examination of the poetical temperament. The different effects of education upon those possessed of it, and upon those who are not, are well pointed out by him.

'Tis education forms the common mind,

Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

But before the age when education can effectually adapt its instructions to the capability and disposition of the learner, "the disposition, whatever it may be, has become so confirmed by nature herself, that it may be said to react. It assumes the reign, and directs, instead of being directed, by education." The destined victim of imagination has lived too much in a dreamy reverie. His creations of possible existences and circumstances are not merely the warm anticipations of youth, which are sure of disappointment, but which experience may correct, but are impossible and unprofitable chimeras-longings which are hugged the closer, the more wild and preposterous they grow, and which enfeeble the rational faculties of the mind, and render it unfit for practical labor. When the volume of knowledge and the lessons of morals are presented to the youthful subject of these delusions, his appetite, already become sickly, neglects or loaths too often the useful and the