all times for worse than nothing, and might be forgotten, had she not added thereto, in later years, the indelible dishonor of repudiating father and mother, even amid the mementos of filial affection that cluster around the Puritan metropolis. And why did she scorn them? Because sham humanity can not bear prosperity; and, having profited by the circumstance of a husband's money, she had recently risen from the Vice-Presidency of a Skipper's home to the editorial chair of a maudlin magazine. Thus, one of Young America's literary grand mother's spurned one of the noblest of human instincts, and one of the highest of divine precepts. And thus we leave her with all her fame and respectability, her cant and pretensions to piety and propriety, to draw near and nearer to the shadows of the Alleghanies, until the morning sun shall refuse to light up her abode, and her gigantic vulgarity shall be buried, with all her disgrace of her sex and literature, beyond the scope of vision, and beyond the grasp of memory. Till that time comes, let us be thankful that the picture is redeemed from darkness by the severely and sincerely chaste genius of a Sigourney. Mere humanity, patriotism, worldly ambition, even, could ask no less. For, aside from considerations of natural affection, that nation has need to hope for miraculous blessings, from whose literary bosom is banished the one sublime virtue from whence springs all social order and harmony and all human greatness, whether that greatness be enthroned in the affections of a household, as everywhere sterling greatness is; or in the hearts of a nation, like one who is immortal with us; or marching at the head of a victorious army, like him in whose footsteps were heard lamentations for "Babylon the great;" a virtue respected even by brutes; a virtue sacred among heathen millions; treasured in the heart of Epaminondas, the Theban warrior and philosopher, and sung almost habitually in the golden numbers of Virgil, as he recounts the stories of Eneas, Euryalus, and Lausus.

But, besides those mentioned, there are still a host of other real or supposititious geniuses, all eager for fame and wealth, at the expense of prose and poetry. Of the male portion, we are sorry to say-but mention the fact as an evil needing a remedy-an occasional specimen, with fatal prodigality, divides his time about equally between literature, loaferism, and liquor. Let us only suggest, in addition to that poetical proverb which says, success rides on every hour," that he who lets the hours run by must content himself with failure.

แ

It is not worth while for our present purpose to overhaul the

coarse and well-nigh vulgar diction of "Uncle Tom," or to disturb the sweet dreams superinduced by "Sunny Memories," whose amiable author has yet scarcely recovered from the repeated scarifications of the leeches of the pseudo-abolition London press.

And as for the pyrotechnic and effervescing author of "Ruth Hall," that net which has "snared the fowler," and brings to mind the school-boy fable of the stork found in bad company, she has already been turned upon the "oyster-house" spit, and basted down by loving literary sisters, beyond the limits of gallantry and decency. And she may wear her "Fern Leaves," her laurels, and the weeds of her antedated widowhood-nay, although

This superficial tale

Is but a preface to her worthy praise,

continue to quaff her liquor silicum, and let

Her sunny locks

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,

to eternity, without further molestation from us.

And, to get a glimpse of some of our elder and beloved brethren, we pass, here, with a mere recognition, that prurient herd of sub-sentimental, scribbling philosophers, male and female, a whole host of plague-smitten mongrels, who advocate "freedom of the affections, ad libitum," which means community of the sexes ad infinitum. They flourish in our midst to an extent which would startle the uninitiated, and gives force to the movements of their leaders-empiric moralists of a venomous type, who drip their poison into a thousand innocent hearts, and spread their contaminations into every circle of society. For the literary fungi with which they periodically serve the community, let them not be cheated of unmitigated abomination in return.

He

But who comes here? A man five feet plus-twice that in his own estimation! Whom do we look upon? He hears, and is flattered at your amazement. That interrogatory has touched his vitals and his vanity, which are one and the same. soars ecstatically, and is already in cloud-land, ascending to communion with immortals-in imagination at least-(and, according to Madame Necker, the "imagination is a power which it is dangerous to brave.") Nay, he groans with extreme sensation of felicity, and is just now either an Apollo or a

Mercury, or both. Yet to him as to a thousand others of our "remarkable" men, "it appears to be as necessary to make way in society, that a man should be an arrant humbug, as it is that a man should eat his breakfast;" hence, when a few years since he was employed by the proprietor of a leading local journal to sketch the leading literary characters of the country, he commenced article number one by announcing the patent discovery that New-York was the greatest city of the greatest country in the world; and proceeded to an awful peroration upon the greatest intellect of said city, somebody so remarkable that all eyes turned back in amazement and admiration as he passed along the street, and every tongue wagged idolatrously concerning his origin, fame, destiny and greatness. And at length-as if indignant at the marvellous stupidity of his readers in not calling out his own name at once, and remembering, doubtless, the painter who wrote "horse under his picture of that estimable beast, that it might not be mistaken for a donkey-he, for the same purpose, it must seem, appended his own autograph to his matchless portraiture; and that too, when,

To aggravate the case,

There were but two grown donkeys in the place.

But the Celestial estimates female beauty by weight, regarding the fattest belle as the climax of loveliness; and we suppose the imaginarily stalwart editor of "Fish's Money-Box," fortified in his judgment by the asseveration of a critical cotempory, that he was "the tallest toad in the puddle," upon a similar principle, estimated his intellectual merit by the gigantic stature of his own fancy. And yet, when all was over, nobody seemed seriously alarmed at his amiable inflatability,

And earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.

But, it is said, "men of the pen are always party men, even when they have no political faith;" and we observe that in this community that party very often consists of a single individual. Hence this great man has his imitators, as wry-necked Alexander the Great had his, when the Macedonian court conducted all matters of business with their necks considerably out of the spinal perpendicular; and thus, now as then,

one fool lolls his tongue out at another,

And shakes his empty noddle at his brother.

S., T., W., and others, from time to time hanging on to one or another of the "leading" journals, manage to puff themselves into notoriety; in fact, a majority of the subjects of the literary lower empire, including "Graceless Greenhorn" and his sister and her friends, perform substantially the same operation.

The literary prize business is also ordinarily conducted upon a similar, only a more fraudulent and injurious plan, in order that our national intelligence may from time to time receive fresh sneers from over the water-fit reward for the rude doggerel that is so often suffered to afflict the country under the sanction of a, very unfortunately, eminent "committee." But the "prize system" has failed everywhere, and always-in London as well as here; and we would not say a word concerning it, were there not to be found influential penny-a-liners enough connected with a portion of our daily press, to bolster up such and all other abominations; and this too, notwithstanding a small blustering and huckstering demagogue, who incumbers one of the least responsible of our diurnal tripods, is especially loud-mouthed upon the increased purity of the press-a palpable madness of words, when spoken by an editor so conscientious a twelvemonth before as to publish the fact that he could not afford to be honest.

To offset such a character, it is refreshing to find the other extreme; and here he is:-physically, not large or strong, either in appearance or reality, over thirty and under forty years of age, a man of good morals and good impulses, and possessed of an intellect which absorbs the whole of him, except his literary self. About him you will find no agonizing pretension; he loves literature, and excels in it; but he is more appreciated abroad than at home, and more in the future than in the present; because he has, with characteristic benevolence, taken upon himself the guardianship of the literature of his country, and not only will not write for effect, but heartily despises those who do. His ambition is vast, but of a quiet kind. He will not go with the crowd to literary "smash;" and, having no power to stop them immediately, seems, unwisely, to have concluded to let them alone, and wait for the rolling years to wheel him into an honorable place in the literary and social world. Alas! he is alone of his kind, and we must on to a harder "subject."

Here comes one of Addison's "circumforaneous wits, whom every nation calls by the name of that dish of meat which it loves best," and of whom he says, "in Holland they are called

Pickled Herrings; in France, Jean Pottages; in Italy, Macaronies; and in Great Britain, Jack Puddings; but the influx of from six to eleven millions of Irish and Germans, with their offspring, and their "sour krout," and "paraties," has so broken in upon the Puritan luxury of Baked Beans, which would have been our christening of such a character had he lived thirty years ago or less, that the most universal dish remaining is of that unsubstantial, but highly appreciated character, known as Humbug. And here is the genius himself;-traditionally, an editor; and as such, a heathen journalist of the first order; prince of biographers; pattern of moral rectitude, and teacher of ethics to the rising generation in both hemispheres; patron of "sea-serpents" and "petrified amazons;" and tutelary deity, in prospective, of negro monstrosities, and fat women; socially and morally, politically, and altogether, an incomparable specimen of brazen statuary, concerning which it is an unsettled question whether its peculiarities belong most to the human, the bovine, or the asinine species.

And there comes another stalwart character; inventor of suspenders for the conscience, ex-clergyman, ex-author ex officio, and professor of Hindo-political literature and newspaper "science of correspondences," quid pro quo.

There too, a lesser pile of courtliness, appears the Knight of St. Bernard and hero of St. Andrea, like and unlike the amorous prodigies, real or traditional, of past ages, who, when study had watched over him with the care of the vestal in the temple of Juno, and after he had passed from the man of pleasure to the kitchen diplomat and gambolled over Western Europe in the prosecution of an amour which, for a time, threatened to make him omnipresent and the history of which seems almost fabulous, if not altogether foolish, spent a year of love in communion with the living, greedy, and insinuating myriads of an Italian prison, in acquiring the additional accomplishment of a "sardonic smile." He is thinking terrors of merited condemnation against certain statesmen and editors who have marred the romance of his devotion and veiled the radiance of his destiny. So let him pass.

And now for

A sweat among the Mohocks

litteraires, those male and female

Tenants of life's middle state,

Securely fixed between the small and great,