'Let me admire you, Breeches, crown'd with glory;
And though I made you, let me still adore ye;'
Who would not quick exclaim, 'The Taylor's mad?'
Yet Tyrant-adoration is as bad.'
In reading Pindar, as has been observed of some other obsolete author, you may find fault with the antique setting, but intellectual jewels of truth are there, which can never grow out of date.
'Melancholy Event!' Skip that. A laugh is worth a hundred groans, in any state of the market. Read the 'Anecdote,' if it be good, under the song, 'God save great Washington,' at your right hand, third column: 'Anecdote—Recent.—A certain newly-created Justice of the Peace, rather too much elated with the dignity of his office, riding out one day with his attendant, met a clergyman, finely mounted on a handsome gelding, richly caparisoned. When he first saw him, he desired his attendant to take notice how he would smoak the Parson. He accordingly rode up to him, and accosted him as follows: 'Sir your servant: I think, Sir, you are mounted on a very handsome horse.' 'Yes, Sir, I thank you, tolerably fleshy.' 'But what is the reason,' says the Justice, 'you do not follow the example of your worthy Master, who was humble enough to ride to Jerusalem on an Ass?' 'Why, to tell you the truth,' says the Clergyman, 'Government have made so many Asses Justices, lately, that an honest Clergyman can't find one to ride on.'
'Well said of the Dominie! There must have been more of Sterne than Sternhold about him. He evidently loved a joke, as well as old Pater Abraham à Sancta Clara.'
''Blanchard's Balloon.' An ascension, I suppose.' No; it is a political squib. Mr. Blanchard has given out, that his gas, owing to an unfortunate accident, has also 'given out,' and that on account of the great expense, he is compelled to forego a second ascension. A wag advises him, as a cheap and expeditious method of obtaining an ample supply of gas, to place his balloon over the chimney of a house in which the 'Democratic Society' are to meet, in the evening, the members of which are expected to be highly inflated with a kind of light, combustible air, which will escape into his vessel, and answer his purpose admirably!
In these days of 'wars and rumors of wars' between the whites and Florida Indians, these twin poetical epistles will be apropos. The writer says, under date of Pittsburgh, 10th June,
'Since Friday last the news we've had,
Has been, dear Sir, extremely bad:
An Indian of the Senecas,
A white who swears to all he says,
Have brought a most alarming story,
The substance I shall set before ye:
Six nations of the Indians, set on
By Satan and the imps of Britain,
Have join'd the Indians to the westward,
By which we soon shall be quite prest hard;
They now are crossing o'er the lake,
Fort Franklin to surprise and take;
That Fort will certainly be taken,
And scarce a settler save his bacon.'
Two days after, he adds the following, by way of postscript:
'The news I wrote three days ago,
This day I learn is all untrue;
The British have not gain'd their ends,
The Senecas are still our friends:
Fort Franklin is in statu quo,
Nor dreads a white or yellow foe;
For Capt. Denny finds he can go,
And I suppose is at Venango.
'Although t' extract the naked truth,
We put these traders on their oath;
Yet while they swear to what they say,
We find we're humm'd from day to day;
Hence, when I write to you again,
A second letter shall the first explain.'