With its saving grace surround;
And when life’s last link is riven,
To my soul be glory given,
That in Paradise is found.
St. Paul’s College. G. H. H.
Our Pine-street correspondent, who addresses us upon the ‘Fashionable Society in New-York,’ writes from the promptings of an honest-hearted frankness, that is quite clear; but he has not yet acquired that sort of useful information which is conveyed by the term, ‘knowing the world.’ The ‘fashionable circles’ par excellence, whose breeding and bearing he impugns, are of the Beauvoir school; persons who ‘are of your gens de cotorie; your people of the real ‘caste’ and ‘tone;’ that is, your people who singly would be set down as nought in society, but who, as a ‘set,’ have managed to make their joint-stock impudence imposing.’ Our correspondent, we suspect, has one important lesson to learn in his intercourse with such persons; and it is a lesson which has been felicitously set forth by a late English essayist. There is a recipe in some old book, he says, ‘How to avoid being tossed by a bull;’ and the instruction is, ‘Toss him.’ Try the experiment upon the first coxcomb who fancies that you are his inferior; charge first, and give him to understand at once that he is yours. Be coldly supercilious with all ‘important’ catiffs, and most punctual be your attention to any matter in debate; but let no temptation prevail with you to touch on any earthly point beyond it. In the case alluded to, a pompous old baronet comes down stairs loaded to the very muzzle to repress ‘familiarity’ on the part of a young man, who from an estate of dependence has recently mounted by inheritance to a princely fortune; but the cool, quiet young gentleman finds the old baronet guilty of ‘familiarity’ himself, and makes him bear the penalty of it, before six sentences are exchanged between them. The secret of the whole thing was, a quiet look directly in the eye, and the preservation of a deliberate silence; the true way to dissolve your pompous gentleman or affected ‘fashionable’ lady. The baronet’s long pauses the young heir did not move to interrupt. His mere listening drew the old aristocrat gradually out; his auditor replied monosyllabically, and made him pull him all the way. It was pitiful to see the old buzzard, who thought himself high and mighty, compelled to communicate with one who would have no notion of any body’s being high and mighty at all; getting gradually out of patience at the obstinate formality he was compelled to encounter, which he was sure any direct overture toward intimacy on his part would remove; and at last, in the midst of his doubts whether he should be familiar with the young man, being struck with a stronger doubt whether such familiarity would be reciprocated; it was a rich scene altogether, and worthy of being remembered by our correspondent. ••• The May issue of the ‘Cultivator’ agricultural Magazine, which under the supervision of the late Willis Gaylord reached a circulation of between forty and fifty thousand copies, contains an elaborate notice of its lamented editor, in which we find (in a letter from H. S. Randall, Esq.,) the following passage:
‘His reading was literally boundless. He was as familiar with the natural sciences, history, poetry, and belles-letters, as with agriculture, and nearly if not quite as well qualified to discuss them. It was difficult to start any literary topic which you did not at once perceive had been examined by him with the eye of a scholar and critic. In one of my letters, half sportively, yet in a serious tone, I asked him ‘what he thought of the German Philosophy?’ In his answer, Kant and Fichte, and I think Schelling and Jacobi, were discussed with as much familiarity as most scholars would find themselves qualified to make use of in speaking of Locke, or Stewart, or Brown. In commenting on the report of mine, (on Common School Libraries,) alluded to by him in the last Cultivator, he betrays an extensive knowledge of the literature of nearly every nation in Europe. As a writer, the public have long been acquainted with Mr. Gaylord. He wrote on nearly every class of topics connected with human improvement; in papers, magazines, and not unfrequently in books. But it is as an agricultural writer that he is best known. Here, taken all in all, he stands unrivalled. There are many agricultural writers in our country who are as well or better qualified to discuss a single topic, than he was. But I deem it not disrespectful to say, that for acquaintance with and ability to discuss clearly and correctly every department of agricultural science, he has not, he never has had, an equal in this State. He was every way fitted for an editor. Placable and forgiving in his temper; modest, disinterested, unprejudiced; never evincing a foolish credulity; above deception, despising quackery; with an honesty of motive that was never suspected.’
No one who knew intimately our lamented relative and friend, but will confirm the justice of this encomium. We trust that a collection of Willis Gaylord’s writings, literary, scientific, and agricultural, will be made by some competent hand. They are demanded, we perceive, by various public journals throughout the country. ••• Professor Gouraud’s extraordinary exposition of Phreno-Mnemotechny seems to be winning him ‘fame and fortune’ wherever he goes. He was in Philadelphia at the last advices, where his success was to the full as signal as in this city. It is obvious, we think, that the advantages of this great system will hereafter be chiefly enjoyed by the rising generation, who will thus be enabled to attain in six months an amount of information which in the ordinary way could scarcely be mastered in as many years. Still, the science has already been studied by hundreds of highly-endowed men, persons eminent in their own peculiar walks, who have cheerfully yielded their tributes of admiration to its vast resources. Several excellent articles upon this theme have from time to time appeared in the columns of the ‘New World’ weekly journal, from the pen of Mr. Mackay, one of the editors; who, being himself a pupil of Mr. Gouraud, writes from personal experience of the matter in question. ‘A thousand dollars,’ he avers, ‘would not be a fair equivalent for the great advantages obtainable by Phreno-Mnemotechny;’ and in this opinion there is a general concurrence of Professor Gouraud’s pupils in this city. ••• What a power there is in much of the occasional music one hears, to stir the heart! Perhaps you never heard Brough, to the ‘instrumentation’ of that fine composer and most facile performer, ‘Frank Brown,’ sing Barry Cornwall’s ‘King Death,’ or ‘The Admiral and the Shark?’ No? Then never let the opportunity to do so slip, if you should ever be so fortunate as to enjoy it. Listen to the words of the first-named:
I.
King Death was a rare old fellow,