Schoolin''s wut they can't seem to stan', they 're tu consarned high-pressure,

An' knowin' t' much might spile a boy for bein' a Secesher.

We hain't no settled preachin' here, er ministeril taxes;

The min'ster's only settlement's the carpet-bag he packs his

Razor an' soap-brush intu, with his hymbook an' his Bible,

But they du preach, I swan to man, it's puf'kly indescrib❜le!

They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss-power coleric ingine,

An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, for all he 's used to singein';

Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' to the inards

To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' tough old sinhards!

But I must eend this letter now: 'fore long I'll send a fresh un;

I've lots o' things to write about, perticklerly Seceshun:

I'm called off now to mission-work, to let a leetle

law in

To Cynthy's hide: an' so, till death,

Yourn,

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN.

No. II.

MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE

IDYLL.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

JAALAM, 6th Jan., 1862.

GENTLEMEN,I was highly gratified by the insertion of a portion of my letter in the last number of your valuable and entertaining Miscellany, though in a type which rendered its substance inaccessible even to the beautiful new spectacles presented to me by a Committee of the Parish on New-Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian. My third granddaughter, Rebekah, aged fourteen years, and whom I have trained to read slowly and with proper emphasis (a practice too much neglected in our modern systems of education), read aloud to me the excellent essay upon "Old Age," the author of which I cannot help suspecting to be a

young man who has never yet known what it was to have snow (canities morosa) upon his own roof. Dissolve frigus, large super foco ligna reponens, is a rule for the young, whose wood-pile is yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. A good life behind him is the best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old man to feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of these latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a less inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily more and more our own wisdom (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment), do reconcile ourselves with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the part of the public (as I have reason to know from several letters of inquiry already received), but would also, as I think, have largely increased the circulation of your magazine in this town. Nihil humani

alienum, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbors which is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more fitting season.

As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might be profitably said on the topic of Idyllic and Pastoral Poetry, and concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest author I know of who has emulated the classics in the latter style. But in the time of a Civil War worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it may be reasonably doubted whether the public, never too studious of serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustic in phrase (for, though the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery

and manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question (which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is little better than καπνοῦ σκιᾶς ovap. The plot was, as I believe, suggested by the "Twa Brigs " of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of the last century, as that found its prototype in the "Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey" by Fergusson, though the metre of this latter be different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps the Two Dogs of Cervantes gave the first hint. I reminded my talented young parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there was no greater mistake of an author than to suppose the reader had no fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into activity, it were better to be in for the whole sheep than the shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book, an expression questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is not more familiar than with the printed page. In proof of