Kindling rich woods, whereon the etherial bow
Sleeps lovingly awhile.’
‘Now what I thought beside, while looking over my proof, was this: that a ‘circulating medium,’ through which so many minds communicated their thoughts, produced and clothed with befitting language in solitary labor; smoothed, strengthened, or harmonized by revision, and rendered impressive by those helps and researches of which every readable writer must avail himself; such a medium, I say, merits the esteem and respect of all. It deserves not to be taken up for judgment, at a momentary glance, by the undiscerning eye of careless inquiry. It should be read impartially, and spoken of, in all worthy points, with praise; in faulty ones, with tenderness. Our literature, I take it, is not yet a sufficiently flowery pursuit, to enable any of its votaries to sow its walks with brambles. By its influence, the country is to be mentally illustrated; the clanking shackles of transatlantic humbug are to be thrown off; and the establishment of wholesome feelings, and reliance upon our own intellectual resources, firmly effected. I love to see the general press engaged now and then in cheering onward the laborers in the more unfrequented and toilsome avenues of our literary vineyard. It sends a God-speed to the bosoms of those whose travails are more for their country than themselves; and who are content, in anonymous pride, to believe, that it heralds that bright day of mental refinement which will ere long, among the freest and noblest confederacy of nations on earth, irradiate the utmost borders of that holy circumference,
‘Our Native Land!’
A thrust with a two-edged Weapon.—We rather incline to the opinion that the ‘complainant below’ is infringing the law which forbids the use of concealed weapons; that are not the less to be guarded against, certainly, when as in the present case they cut both ways. But our readers shall judge: Dear Editor: The country, strange as it may appear, has peculiar and permanent inhabitants; neither dressing in skins, nor wearing their own feathers, but habited after the glimpses of fashion which reach them through their trees. As we have never yet met with a man who was so fortunate as to have no relations, we take it for granted that all city-zens, yourself among the rest, have country-cousins. Think of the countless multitudes that turn their longing eyes in the direction of a metropolis like this, yearning for a visit, and sending off by frequent Opportunities, never by mail, those remarkable epistolary compounds of hopes and wants which no other race of beings can compose in perfection: ‘Hope John is well, and Betsey will come and see us next summer; and want’—Lawson and Stewart! what do they not want? Every thing; from twenty yards of silk down to a penny’s-worth of tape. The letters run somewhat in this guise, though less poetically:
‘Cousin John, please to send down to-morrow,
At eight, by the Scarborough mail,
‘Claudine, or the Victim of Sorrow,’
Don Juan, two mops and a pail;
Six ounces of Bohea from Twining’s,