and was the only door convenient for the purpose the rest being blocked up by the chairs of the company.

"Well," shouted they, now put her into the gallery, while we choose the word." "Yes, now go, Leonora," said Emilie, who was in the height of her enjoyment; “now go" and she opened the door.

"I cannot, you know," whispered Leonora; "I cannot go in there: it leads into the gallery, the picture is there,-1 will go somewhere else."

"Pho-you can't- all the other doors are blocked up; it will create such a confusion; come, do go. It's so foolish-no place is so good as this."

"I cannot, you know-I am afraid to.Don't urge me."

"What's the matter?" cried out several at once," seeing the pause; -"why don't she go?"

66

“Ŏ!" answered Emilie, laughing, "she Is afraid to go, because there's a picture of Sir Hildebrand in there, that frightens her." Then arose a great laugh, and Leonora turned pale, and whispered again: -"How can you, when you know the reason?"

"Now that is so silly!" cried Emilie so nonsensical! Come girls, let us make her go in, and then you will see, Leonora, that Sir Hildebrand is not so awful after all."And the company crowded round her, crying out "what nonsense,"-" how ridiculous," until Leonora, half-persuaded that it might be folly, and fearful of making herself ridiculous, and half yielding to a

feeling of false shame, though pale as death, suffered herself to be urged gently through the door, into the dark gallery.Emilie then closed the door, and said

"Now don't listen, and we'll be ready in a minute.”

Then ensued a whispering, and twenty words were suggested and set aside as being too difficult, and too easy, and too peculiar, and too common, and a thousand faults were found with each. Never had so much difficulty been found-for the best words were exhausted. Meantime, the thunder growled, and the lightning flashed, and the rain beat incessantly. Some one suggested the word "picture."

"Such fun as we might have out of it," said one. "Yes, but it's too hard - it would be detected immediately." The word was under most earnest discussion, when suddenly a shrill and piercing shriek from the gallery, and a sound as of something falling, startled the whole assembly into silence.Emilie, terrified, instantly sprang to the door, and thrust it open, exclaiming,— "Leonora, what's the matter? Where are you?" There was no answer. With a sudden impulse Emilie turned her eyes towards the picture, and the light that streamed in, shewed the wall bare. She rushed forward, and found it fallen, and half covering the body of Leonora. They instantly lifted it up, but Leonora moved not she was dead.

-

J. J.

POPE, you know, Mr. Editor, celebrates the praise of letters,

Heaven first taught letters for some wretches' aid, Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid

they may also serve the turn of a poor contributor, who, tired of the stiff broadcloth and neat neckerchief of the Essay, in these mid-summer days, ventures to appear before you in the loose undress,- the flowing robes of a negligent Epistle. Essays are voted a bore; people dislike the dogmatism of which they are too susceptible, and more tedious still the set phrase in which a few overlabored ideas are spread before them. Essays are apt to have a great deal of batter to very few plums. They must have a beginning, a middle, and an end;they must set forth with Addison's everlasting" there is" and be rounded with a moral. The Letter needs no beginning, the reader is content if it have at some time an end. Though the world is very unwilling to sit down and be lectured,- or at least the magazine reading world, which by the way is a far more comprehensive world than is generally understood when a man speaks of the world-meaning thereby, if a business man, his bank directors and endorsers; if a clergyman, his vestry and his sexton; if an author, his publisher and his puffers. This very world has its itching love of curiosity, loves its bit of scandal, its morsel of private history, its dash of unsparing criticism, its little anecdotical facts,—its scraps of personal feeling and meditation,-in short needs no argument to be a convert to the most winning perusal of letters. A letter promises something confidential; if it does not keep its promise, it invites expectation, it excites interest, and that, if no more, is something in a magazine. If the reader fall not asleep before the last line, it is enough.

Of the value of letters, he knows not a better proof than the characteristic anecdote of the late Charles Mathews, who used to haunt the post-office and buy second-hand letters from those who had just read them, to add to his collection-a collection in which many honest lines of palmistry were doubtless figured.

Willis deserves the credit of having successfully revived the letter as a branch of literary composition. His "Letters from Under a Bridge," it would be no stretch of critical wisdom to call classical: they have originality and beauty, and if these

VOL. II. NO. II.

qualities do not entitle him to be written down or rather up with the classics, you may ever consider me among the romanticists. He leaves the heavy port and madeira to others, and gives the champagne of literature. Long may your readers be entertained with the

Tales and other country messes

Which the neat-handed Willis dresses. Old Howell, who published his Ho-elianæ, (which doubtless gave his sobriquet to our Elia) is at the head of the early professed letter-writers. He was a traveller,- of course a gossip and retailer of the picturesque, and above all, a classic Elizabethan spirit; for he was "sealed of the tribe of Ben," and hailed Johnson father. He published his letters in his life time,an example that amidst all the variety and ingenuity of modern literature, we wonder has not been more eagerly followed.

He has hit off the conditions of a letter: "We should write as we speak; and that is a true and familiar letter which expresseth one's own mind as if he were discoursing with the party to whom he writes, in succinct and short terms. The tongue and the pen are both the interpreters of the mind; but I hold the pen to be the more faithful of the two. The tongue in udo posita, being seated in a most slippery place, may fail and falter in her sudden extemporal expressions; but the pen, having a greater advantage of premeditation, is not so subject to error, and leaves things behind it upon firm and authentic record."

The best topic for a letter is a man's whereabouts. Does he live in the city or the country, by the sea-shore or out of sight of ships,-in the attic of a boarding house or in a home? Is he surrounded by friends or associates? Has he books, music, above all has he a wife; and does he draw as from a fountain, perpetual youth and hope from the perfect flow,the kindling apprehensiveness, the happy looks of childhood? These are questions, Mr. Editor, your readers must solve according to their own fancy; but your correspondent does boast without vain glory,-for he shows his complacency with some three hundred thousand souls, that he lives in a city the largest in the Union, and therefore the best, for it has most of man in it, more variety, more action, more humors, and withal the least or no pretension. You may predicate anything of London, you may assert no one preva'

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characteristic,- and New-York is fast gliding into the same easy metropolitan character. Humanity is here thrown on its original elements. The text of the dramatist is reversed

“That not a man for being simply man
Hath any honor."

Wealth, aristocracy, here create no distinction, at least you do not feel their influence in the streets. The collision of crowds wears off the peculiarity of fortune, and men look each other in the face with a glance of brotherhood. How different is the case where the perpetual rich man of a village or town haunts the pavement, shedding constraint and deference every where about him. I was not displeased, the other day with an illustration of this humanitarian feeling. I was passing along with an umbrella, in a sudden shower, when a bustling dapper gentleman sprang out from the covert of a grocer's awning, and in a pleasant frank tone, asked the privilege of shelter for a street or two, which was cheerfully granted. He was very communicative, and his first remark was: "I should not have ventured upon this request at home; but in New-York it is quite a different thing." On which side in the account-current of humanity does the favorable balance lie? You would not think of troubling the Mr. Smith in a village, for he would suspect you were desirous of his acquaintance, with an eye to his daughters or his bank; but there are five hundred Messrs. Smith, of equal calibre, in the city, to whom you may make up without suspicion.

New-York is every day getting ripe for the novelists and tale writers. Its extent throws over it an air of mystery and concealment. It offers many a hiding place for an intricate plot, or a humorous denouement. Its police records verify the wonders of fiction. Its variety offers the greatest contrasts of character. It is full of merriment and energy. See the expenditure of good writing in its daily press. The editorials of the poorest of the cheap papers, often show more intellectual activity than at the beginning of the century did the columns of the very best. New classes

of men are daily growing up,- stereotyped characters which we have not inherited, but which will be handed down to the next generation. Early in the morning you will see the chiffonier with his iron picker, jerking stray fragments of broken linen and paper into his basket with a professional air learnt upon the Rue St. Honoré and the Quai Voltaire. One day, not long since, cabs made their first appearance, to the great laughter of the hackney coachmen, who said they were not fit for a gentleman

to ride in. But cabs have already lost the gloss of novelty, and may be seen in every degree from freshness to decrepitude; while the old funereal respectability of hackneycoach stands, has passed away. Cabs, omnibusses, and the three-penny-post, are seven league strides on the road of civilization. They all bring with them new sets of people. The news-boys should not be forgotten,- there is no danger of their being out of mind on the spot, while they are crying extras so lustily, and with the provocation of rhyme —

The New World, double sheet
Lady Blessington, all complete.

Charles Lamb wrote a paper on the decline of beggary,- here he might have reversed the picture, and written of its progress and advancement. We have not yet, what may be seen in Paris, the coryphoeus of the craft, a beggar on horseback (an habitué of course of the Rue de l'Enfer) but here beggary assumes its livery, and puts forth its professionalities. Like monuments of the instability of fortune set along the highway of the city, here and there in Broadway a mute beggar has his station. Day after day a hand held forth (with a steadiness and muscular vigor health might envy) challenges the pence and small coin of the passengers. An old negro is ruffled in as many garments as the cauliflower,a revolutionary soldier has a printed placard on his hat, and sits lettered like a tombstone, a counterfeit Belisarius asking for an obolus. Unctuousness is the characteristic of a professional beggar, as good living is his failing. The calling has its perquisites. Your beggar is the offertory of the week day Christians. In pontifi calibus, in his canonicals of rags,- in the odor of sanctity,- his coat shorn of buttons and cut down to a cassock,-his feet sandalled, and his hat pinched by wind, weather and hard knocks, to a mitre, he receives the penance of the passing world. If you would be absolved from peccadiloes, put a penny in his pouch. A shilling quietly dropped into the open hat, will relieve the mind from the remorse of the harsh word to the friend you have just quitted; will sanctify the bargain of the morning. In equity you owe him something. He is an out-of-door theatrical performer, a satirist of your government,— fortune's comedian, burlesquing the emptiness of wealth and luxury;-pay him the honorarium of the theatre. The penny-aline, or by your grace more, Mr. Editor, that he shall receive for these paragraphs, shall be his. We are beggars all.

Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense
I live a rent charge on his providence.

Honor the beggar. If you would appear well with men, cultivate his kind aspect,for he takes more note of you, than ninetenths of your associates. When the wise Ulysses returned to Ithaca, he looked through the riotous suitors in the garb of a beggar.

Ulysses enter'd slow The palace, like a squalid beggar old, Staff-propp'd, and in loose tatters foul attir'd. Within the portal on the ashen sill He sat, and seeming languid, lean'd against A cypress pillar by the builders' art Polish'd long sinee, and planted at the door."

MORLEY ERNSTEIN, Or, The Tenants of the Heart. By G. P. R. James.

We remember a review of "The Fortunes of Nigel," published, at the time when that romance appeared, in the London New Monthly Magazine, which, in discussing the then unsettled question of the authorship of the Waverly Novels, proved to the writer's entire satisfaction that they could not be wholly the work of Walter Scott. No one, it was argued, so much engrossed as he was, by professional occupation, could command the time barely necessary for the transcript of those tales. We have wondered since what that critic would have said of the works of some of our more modern authors; the great Unknown outdid most of his predecessors in rapidity of performance; but among several of his successors, Mr. James especially we believe, out-does him. This rapidity of composition has naturally, perhaps fairly, exposed him to a great deal of ridicule. Unconsciously to himself, he has used in composing his different works, similar plans and materials, and the result is that hardly one of his later novels leaves any distinct impression on the reader's mind, a week after he has finished its perusal.

We have never been willing however to speak lightly of Mr. James's ability on this account. We have received too much pleasure from his original works, from those in which he did not copy himself, to have any right to do so. He has more than once exhibited great power, both in the arrangement of his plot and in his descriptions and narrative. Whenever he leaves his own beaten track, he hardly fails.

In Morley Ernstein, he has left this beaten track, and has shown himself fully successful; it surprises the reader because it differs so widely from the author's previous efforts, and while it surprises, it pleases him, both from its intrinsic interest, and because that interest is of a nature so entirely unexpected. We are not sure but that Mr. James meant to promote some such surprise as this, in giving his book a title which has an air so decidedly

melo-dramatic. In it he has left chivalrous ages, has left France, has left pirates, gypsies and smugglers, and has thus made a great change, and taken a great step in the mere location of his story. Its interest rests on points quite as new with him; on the contests of feeling and impulse in the minds of his leading characters, more than on any stirring or exaggerated incident. Although the plot must be owned to be unnatural, we believe that the interest of the book does not depend, as in the novels of the melo-dramatic school, on its unnaturalness or improbability.

In an introductory note, which the reader ought not on any account omit, Mr. James says that this romance is a continuation of a general plan which in all his tales he has borne in view, by which he has hoped to improve the minds and hearts of his readers. We must own that this declaration took us by surprise. We had always supposed his novels to be written as read, without any definite view of any moral end to be attained or promoted by them. We will not doubt, however, that their very general circulation has had the effect which he hoped, "the elevation of the feelings and moral tone of those who read them, by displaying the workings and results of the higher and better qualities peculiar to times of old - ancient courtesy, generous self-devotion, and the spirit of chivalrous honor." Having illustrated these principles and their effects, as they formerly existed, in his historical tales, he has attempted to sketch their influence in later times in "The Ancient Regime," and now in Morley Ernstein has tried to exhibit them in action in the refined life of our own days. As we have said, we think his effort has been very successful.

FOREST LIFE. By the Author of " A New Home," 2 vols. Charles S. Francis: New York. WHEN Mr. Francis made the announcement that he had in press and would soon publish a new work by the author of "A New Home," he de

lighted every body, who had been tempted "to follow" the western Pioneers by the life-like descriptions of that most amusing book, or who had been deterred by them from the hardships of an emigrant's life. We all felt that thrill of satisfaction which we feel when we have a full certainty that a letter has arrived from a distant friend, and that when the postmaster and his helpers have dispersed their other cares they will be happy to deliver it.

And now that "Forest Life" lies before us, in all its beauty of fair paper, pretty type, and neat binding, it is as if that letter had been brought from the post office, and lay in our hands crossed and re-crossed in every part, and its many sheets gushing from the envelope. "Mrs. Clavers, " is perfectly right in addressing, as she does in it, every one who was interested in her first book a friend who would take an interest in all that he could gather of her and hers. We do not read this book as we read other books. It brings us intelligence from friends who have been silent so long that we began to fear we should not hear from them directly again.

"Forest Life" is not so much a connected narrative as is "A New Home," yet it is, as the author says, a continuation of that work. Indeed, she opens her heart, and feelings, and experience so entirely to her readers in each of these books, that the latter of them could not fail to show itself what it is, the result of two years more of life in the almost wilderness. "Forest Life" contains some tales of adventure and action in the West, which will interest the reader independently of the admission which they give him into that new and almost untrodden world. In the liveliness and gracefulness of these sketches, "Mrs. Clavers," reminds us of Miss Mitford, though we cannot but feel that she has the advantage over this English author, as perhaps she would over any old-country author in the spirit and energy and vivacity of her

narrative.

The great charm of "A New Home" and of a "Forest Life" is, that they tell us "just what we want to know" of that wonderful country to which half of us mean to go, while the other half, in resolv

ing to stay at home, think of, and talk of it almost as much as the emigrants themselves. Half an hour with one of these books, is like half an hour's chat with one of those pleasant western cousins or kinsfolk whom we all know, and who sometimes, thanks to the rapidity of locomotive and steam. boats come back to tell us of the cities of refuge which they have found (or founded) in their wanderings. We welcome happily the announcement that though "Forest Life" is a continuation, it is not a sequel to "A New Home." May it be long, very long, before the sequel shall come which shall put an end to the hope of many more such continuations.

THE GREAT WESTERN MAGAZINE. Chiefly devoted to American Literature, Science, Art, Commerce, &c. Edited by Isaac Clarke Pray. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Nos. 1, 2, and 3 for April, May, and June, 1842.

MR. I. C. PRAY is a gentleman whose publications have been well known in Boston and in New York, in which cities he has formerly resided. In establishing in London the "Great Western Magazine," he proposes to give to American interests and feelings an organ by which they may be heard in the Great Metropolis, where stupid and blind prejudice have so often thwarted and misrepresented them. A considerable part of the magazine is therefore devoted to the discussion of such topics of American politics as have any interest on the other side of the ocean; another portion is devoted to the criticism of American books, and a third, the greater part of the whole work- to selections from the American periodicals, and to such miscellaneous literary matter from various sources as might come within the scope of any magazine. Besides these branches, some space is devoted to the fine arts, literature, and the drama in London.

The plan is a comprehensive one, and if it is well carried out, the work will become one of interest and value, both to foreigners who desire to be well versed in the state of American affairs, and amused by American literature, and to the class of American residents or visitors abroad, which is constantly increasing.

LADIES RIDING DRESS of dark purple or green merino or Queen's cloth-tight sleeves with a slashed shoulder, cuff trimmed with fringe-buttons and tassels-chemisette high en cavalier with stock and collar-low crowned and broad brimmed beaver hat with ostrich feathers.

LADIES FULL DRESS, of thin India muslin over a pink, blue, or lemon colored silk, trimmed on each side with a double row of rich lace, and joined

in front with rosettes of the same color as the under dress-sleeves tight with a lace cuff turned over-Cap of net trimmed with a rich thread lace, the lappets falling far down upon the neck, bows of ribbon or flowers forming a contrast to the color of the dress-Scarf of black net.

GENTLEMAN'S EVENING DRESS. Our plate, we believe, is so clear as to need no explanation.