In looking at the world as it is, we shall find it folly to deny that, to worldly success, a surer path is villany than virtue. What the Scriptures mean by the "leaven of unrighteousness" is that leaven by which men rise.

Bolles's Phonographic Dictionary has "controvertible" and not "controvertibility," "self-conceited" and not "selfconceitedly," "worldly-minded" and not "worldly-mindedly." Are these omissions intentional? We presume not. Some of its definitions are inaccurate, if not odd-whether these are adopted from other works we have not leisure to ascertain. For example, "jealousy" is defined as "suspicion in love," but is it not rather the passion aroused by suspicion in love? "Museum is defined "a collection of learned curiosities," but neither Tom Thumb nor the Anaconda are particularly "learned." A printer is said to be "one who prints books," then one who merely prints handbills is no printer at all. A regicide is described as a "murderer of one's king," and yet the murderer of anybody's king is still a regicide.

In a dictionary, if anywhere, we look for rigorous accuracy of definition. We are not finding fault with Mr. Bolles's work in especial. He is no worse than his prede

cessors.

Note.—The foregoing marginal notes include a large number now collected for the first time, together with nearly the whole of those included in the four volume American edition of Poe's works. The few which have been omitted here will be found elsewhere in this collection, in the longer works in which their author subsequently embodied them.-Ed.

FIFTY SUGGESTIONS.

I.

It is observable that, while among all nations the omnicolour, white, has been received as an emblem of the pure, the no-colour, black, has by no means been generally admitted as sufficiently typical of impurity. There are blue devils as well as black; and when we think very ill of a woman, and wish to blacken her character, we merely call her " a bluestocking," and advise her to read, in Rabelais' "Gargantua,' the chapter "de ce qui est signifié par les couleurs blanc et bleu." There is far more difference between these "couleurs," in fact, than that which exists between simple black and white. Your "blue," when we come to talk of stockings, is black in issimo—“ nigrum nigrius nigro "—like the matter from which Raymond Lully first manufactured his alcohol.

new

II.

Mr. I perceive, has been appointed Librarian to the -Athenæum. To him the appointment is advantageous in many respects. Especially:-" Mon cousin, voici une belle occasion pour apprende à lire!"

III.

As far as I can understand the "loving our enemies," it implies the hating our friends.

IV.

In commencing our dinners with gravy soup, no doubt we have taken a hint from Horace. "Da," he says,

V.

Of much of our cottage architecture we may safely say, I think (admitting the good intention), that it would have been Gothic if it had not felt it its duty to be Dutch.

VI.

James's multitudinous novels seem to be written upon the plan of "the songs of the Bard of Schiraz," in which, we are assured by Fadladeen, "the same beautiful thought occurs again and again in every possible variety of phrase."

VII.

Some of our foreign lions resemble the human brain in one very striking particular. They are without any sense themselves, and yet are the centres of sensation.

VIII.

Mirabeau, I fancy, acquired his wonderful tact at foreseeing and meeting contingencies, during his residence in the stronghold of If.

IX.

Cottle's "Reminiscences of Coleridge" is just such a book as damns its perpetrator for ever in the opinion of every gentleman who reads it. More and more every day do we moderns pavoneggiarsi about our Christianity; yet, so far as the spirit of Christianity is concerned, we are immeasurably behind the ancients. Mottoes and proverbs are the indices. of national character; and the Anglo-Saxons are disgraced in having no proverbial equivalent to the "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Moreover-where, in all statutary Christendom, shall we find a law so Christian as the "Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur" of the Twelve Tables? The simple negative injunction of the Latin law and proverb-the injunction not to do ill to the dead-seems, at a first glance, scarcely susceptible of improvement in the delicate respect of its terms. I cannot help thinking, however, that the sentiment, if not the idea intended, is more forcibly conveyed in an apothegm by one of the old English moralists, James Puckle. By an ingenious figure of speech he contrives to imbue the negation.

VOL. III.

2 I

of the Roman command with a spirit of active and positive beneficence. "When speaking of the dead," he says, in his "Gray Cap for a Green Head," "so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence,"

X.

I have no doubt that the Fourierites honestly fancy "a nasty poet fit for nothing" to be the true translation of "poeta nascitur non fit."

XI.

There surely cannot be "more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of" (oh, Andrew Jackson Davis !) "in your philosophy."

XII.

"It is only as the Bird of Paradise quits us in taking wing," observes, or should observe, some poet, "that we obtain a full view of the beauty of its plumage ;" and it is only as the politician is about being "turned out" that, like the snake of the Irish Chronicle when touched by St. Patrick, he "awakens to a sense of his situation."

XIII.

Newspaper editors seem to have constitutions closely similar to those of the Deities in "Walhalla," who cut each other to pieces every day, and yet get up perfectly sound and fresh every morning.

XIV.

As far as I can comprehend the modern cant in favour of "unadulterated Saxon," it is fast leading us to the language of that region where, as Addison has it, "they sell the best fish and speak the plainest English."

XV.

The frightfully long money-pouches, like "the Cucumber called the Gigantic," which have come in vogue among our belles, are not of Parisian origin, as many suppose, but are strictly indigenous here. The fact is, such a fashion would

be quite out of place in Paris, where it is money only that women keep in a purse. The purse of an American lady, however, must be large enough to carry both the money and the soul of its owner.

XVI.

I can see no objection to gentlemen "standing for Congress" provided they stand on one side, nor to their running for Congress " if they are in a very great hurry to get there, but it would be a blessing if some of them could be persuaded into sitting still for Congress after they arrive.

XVII.

If Envy, as Cyprian has it, be "the moth of the soul," whether shall we regard Content as its Scotch snuff or its camphor ?

M

XVIII.

having been" used up" in the ".

-Review,"

goes about town lauding his critic, as an epicure lauds the best London mustard, with the tears in his eyes.

XIX.

"Con tal que las costumbres de un autor sean puras y castas," says the Catholic Don Tomas de las Torres, in the preface to his "Amatory Poems," importo muy poco qui no sean igualmente severas sus obras," meaning, in plain English, that provided the personal morals of an author are pure, it matters little what those of his books are.

For so unprincipled an idea Don Tomas, no doubt, is still having a hard time of it in purgatory; and by way of most pointedly manifesting their disgust at his philosophy on the topic in question, many modern theologians and divines are now busily squaring their conduct by his propositions exactly conversed.

XX.

Children are never too tender to be whipped; like tough beef-steaks, the more you beat them the more tender they become.