Wy, these chaps frum the North, with | We don't go an' fight it, nor aint to be back-bones to 'em, darn 'em, 'Ould be wuth more 'an Gennle Tom Thumb is to Barnum: driv on, Nor Demmercrats nuther, thet hev wut to live on; Ther's enough thet to office on this very plan grow, Ef By exhibitin' how very small a man can grow; But an M. C. frum here ollers hastens to state he Belongs to the order called invertebraty, Wence some gret filologists judge primy fashy Thet M. C. is M. T. by paronomashy; An' these few exceptions air loosus naytury Folks 'ould put down their quarters to stare at, like fury. It 's no use to open the door o' success, Ef a member can bolt so fer nothin' or less; Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers Our fore-fathers fetched with 'em over the billers, Them pillers the people so soundly hev slep' on, 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 kicken' 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 peace man? a Doos he think he can be Uncle Sammle's policeman, 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; It it aint jest the thing thet 's well pleasin' to God, makes us thought highly on elsewhere abroad; The Rooshian black eagle looks blue in his eerie An' shakes both his heads wen he hears o' Monteery; In the Tower Victory sets, all of a fluster, An' reads, with locked doors, how we won Cherry Buster; An' old Philip Lewis kep' school here - thet come an' Fer the mere sake o' scorin' his ryalist ruler On the tenderest part of our kings in futuro Hides 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 * 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 Beelze bub neither! That of Seneca in Medea will Wun't much longer be classed with the birds thet air regal, Coz theirn be hooked beaks, an' she, arter this slaughter, 'll bring back a bill ten times longer 'n she ough' to"? Wut 's your name? Come, I see ye, you up-country 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 in our national legislature everything 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 In these days, the manufacture of gabble. 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 (milk-and-) 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 Martello-tower, 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 pos sible 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 me 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 anything else, for as ex nihilo nihil fit, so from one poly pus nothing any number of similar ones may be produced. I would recommend to the attention of viva 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 in many modern books that the printed portion against all such. Moreover, I have observed is becoming gradually smaller, and the number of blank or fly-leaves (as they are called) great er. 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' to eat our porridge cold, and gulp down our Chamber of our own Commonwealth, to mark | dignity along with it. Low 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 certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet cold-blooded, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Faneuil Halls, meeting-houses, and other places of public resort. -H. W.] No. V. THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT. SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME. [THE incident which gave rise to the debate satirized in the following verses was the unsuccessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians. Had Tripoli, instead of Washington, been the scene of this undertaking, the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as they now are of the practical part of martyrdom. I question whether the Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours at the seat of government. Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow himself to be made the instrument of locking the door of hope against sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of the ocean can cleanse the vile smutch of the jailer's fingers from off that little Key. Ahenea clavis, a brazen Key indeed! Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the Past. The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. will not do for us to hide our faces in her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out her arms and asks us to come to her. It But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken away from us, and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get into our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire revenge of going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we get our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more than enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither as a hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of a great statesman, and, if it be great statesmanship to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the Spirit of the Age with the certainty of being next moment hurled neck and heels into the dust amid universal laughter, he deserves the title. He is the Sir Kay of our modern chivalry. He should remember the old Scandinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest of gods, but he could not wrestle with Time, nor so much as lift up a fold of the great snake which knit the universe together; and when he smote the Earth, though with his terrible mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet all the while it seemed to Thor that he had only been wrestling with an old woman, striving to lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the head. And in old times, doubtless, the giants were stupid, and there was no better sport for the Sir Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about cutting off their great blundering heads with enchanted swords. derfully changed. It is the giants, nowadays, But things have wonthat have the science and the intelligence, while the chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still cumber themselves with the clumsy armor of a bygone age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy morning at last. With an involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and shoal of the Past. H. W.] "The North haint no kind o' bisness | Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflec "Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther 's no doubt on, It's sutthin' thet 's-wha' d' ye call it? - divine, An' the slaves thet we ollers make the most out on Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he ; "Fer all thet," sez Mangum, "'T would be better to hang 'em, An' so git red on 'em soon," sez he. "The mass ough' to labor an' we lay on soffies, Thet 's the reason I want to spread It puts all the cunninest on us in office, An' reelises our Maker's original idee," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he ;"Thet 's ez plain," sez Cass, "Ez thet some one 's an ass, It's ez clear ez the sun is at noon,' sez he. "Now don't go to say I'm the friend of oppression, But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' your broth, Fer I ollers hev strove (at least thet 's my impression) To make cussed free with the rights o' the North," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he ;- Is in skinnin' thet same old coon," "Slavery 's a thing thet depends on complexion, It's God's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe; 66 tion!) Wich of our onnable body 'd be safe?" "Thet exception is quite opper- Gen'nle Cass, Sir, you need n't be twitchin' your collar, Your merit 's quite clear by the dut on your knees, At the North we don't make no distinctions o' color; You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you please,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he ;- ; Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he "The South's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery, Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest,' Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; "O," sez Westcott o' Florida, In God's name, let all, who hear nearer and nearer the hungry moan of the storm and the growl of the breakers, speak out! But, alas! we have no right to interfere. If a man pluck an apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the justice; but if he steal my brother, I must be silent. Who says this? Our Constitution, consecrated by the callous consuetude of sixty years, and grasped in triumphant argument by the left hand of him whose right hand clutches the clotted slave-whip. Justice, venerable with the undethronable majesty of countless æons, says,-SPEAK! The Past, wise with the sor rows and desolations of ages, from amid her shattered fanes and wolf-housing palaces, echoes, - SPEAK! Nature, through her thousand trumpets of freedom, her stars, her sunrises, her seas, her winds, her cataracts, her mountains blue with cloudy pines, blows jubilant encouragement, and cries, SPEAK! From Then our priv❜leges tryin' to proon?" the soul's trembling abysses the still, small sez he. [It was said of old time, that riches have wings; and, though this be not applicable in a literal strictness to the wealth of our patriarchal brethren of the South, yet it is clear that their possessions have legs, and an unaccountable propensity for using them in a northerly direction. I marvel that the grand jury of Washington did not find a true bill against the North Star for aiding and abetting Drayton and Sayres. It would have been quite of a piece with the intelligence displayed by the South on other questions connected with slavery. I think that no ship of state was ever freighted with a more veritable Jonah than this same domestic institution of ours. Mephistopheles himself could not feign so bitterly, so satirically sad a sight as this of three millions of human beings crushed beyond help or hope by this one mighty argument, Our fathers knew no better! Nevertheless, it is the unavoidable destiny of Jonahs to be cast overboard sooner or Jater. Or shall we try the experiment of hiding our Jonah in a safe place, that none may lay hands on him to make jetsam of him? Let us, then, with equal forethought and wisdom, lash ourselves to the anchor, and await, in pious confidence, the certain result. Perhaps our suspicious passenger is no Jonah after all, being black. For it is well known that a superintending Providence made a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descendants, to be devoured by the Caucasian race. voice not vaguely murmurs, -SPEAK! But, alas! the Constitution and the Honorable Mr. Bagowind, M. C., say - BE DUMB! It occurs to me to suggest, as a topic of inquiry in this connection, whether, on that momentous occasion when the goats and the sheep shall be parted, the Constitution and the Honorable Mr. Bagowind, M. C., will be expected to take their places on the left as our hircine vicars. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus? There is a point where toleration sinks into ? Has our experiment of self-government succeeded, if it barely manage to rub and go Here, now, is a piece of barbarism which Christ and the nineteenth century say shall cease, and which Messrs. Smith, Brown, and others say shall not cease. I would by no means deny the eminent respectability of these gentlemen, but I confess, that, in such a wrestling-match, I cannot help having my fears for them. Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere divos. H. W.] No. VI. THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED. [AT the special instance of Mr. Biglow, I preface the following satire with an extract from a sermon preached during the past summer, from Ezekiel xxxiv. 2: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel." Since the Sabbath on which this discourse was delivered, the editor of the "Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss" has unaccountably absented himself from our house of worship. "I know of no so responsible position as that of the public journalist. The editor of our day bears the same relation to his time that the clerk bore to the age before the invention of |