We gave on one occasion an extract from one of the 'Short Patent Sermons' of 'Dow, Jr.,' illustrating the endless extent of for ever. The same sublimity of conception is apparent in the subjoined glance at the magnitude of the planets, and the unsocial 'distance' they keep up between one another: 'If a person were sufficiently long-legged to step from star to star, and were to go at a decent dog-trot, he might as soon think of travelling from everlasting to everlasting and back again in a day, as to undertake to find an end to the planets which roll round their respective suns, as far beyond this insignificant solar system of ours as the farthest flight of imagination is beyond the jump of a ham-stringed grasshopper!' By the by, 'speaking of Dow,' here is a capital anecdote of the veritable Lorenzo, which is worthy of record. 'It appears' that Dow, in one of his odd, quaint sermons, declared that he 'had known sinners so very wicked that they actually bu'st!' This statement threw an old, ignorant, and fat impenitent present into a state of alarm and perspiration; and home he waddled, in mortal terror. At night, in the horror of his anticipated explosion, he rolled about until he could no longer bear it. He fancied he was already swelling. He rose and attempted to dress himself, in order to go out 'al fresco.' Who can paint his consternation, when he found he could but just strain the garments over his limbs, and even then they would not meet! He was suffering a rapid sin-dropsy; his iniquities were coming to light! He screamed in the agony of his fear; and a lamp being brought in, he found that in his haste he had put on his brother's clothes. 'The impression, however, says our informant, a clergyman of the Church of England, 'was a salutary one, for he became a pious man.' * * * The 'Knickerbocker'-Steamer, that floating palace of the Hudson, must not pass unnoticed by 'the editor hereof.' To describe her, however, and her superb 'belongings,' her Dutch paintings and quaint adornments, is quite another thing. We have no space for an essay in this department of Maga. It shall suffice to say, therefore, that this truly magnificent vessel is in all respects worthy the honored name she bears. Could we say more? Appropos of this: It was not until the first volume of the Knickerbocker appeared, (this is our TWENTY-SECOND, reader; and, non-reader, an excellent opportunity for you to commence your subscription,) that one met our noble potronymic 'about town.' How is it now? Let the Knickerbocker steamers, bathing-houses, omnibii, restaurants, clubs—aquatic, literary, social, military, scientific, and artistic—and eke the Temperance-halls and root-beer perambulatories, make answer! Their reply is triumphant; and yet 'our' children play with the neighbor's children, just the same as if these were not 'parlous facts!' This, however, is one of the tendencies of that republican form of government under which it is our happiness to reside! * * * Are not these lines of Motherwell very beautiful? Such thoughts have we had a thousand times; and we desire to thank the writer for expressing them for us so well:
'Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver;
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Flow softly down, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet, then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder-tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.
A hundred suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever!'
Small game, Mein Herr, of Albany—small game! A 'two-penny dip' would be wasted on it. Our correspondent's critique reminds us of the tailor in Laputa, who being employed in making a suit for the facetious Gulliver, disdained the vulgar measures of his profession, and took that gentleman's altitude by the help of a quadrant! We can pounce upon fair game, but we cannot 'like French falcons, fly at any thing we see.' Beside, if the satire was 'caviare to the General' of the 'New-Mirror,' how should it find a place in these pages? Our friend 'the Brigadier' is a fastidious and a prudent person. Did he not alter a quotation from Byron, in one of our friend Graham's 'Sketches by a Briefless Lawyer,' wherein 'waistcoat-pocket' was substituted for that startling indelicacy, 'breeches-pocket?' Verily, he did! * * * The following reflections upon the death of friends, and the memories of the departed, which we transcribe from a private letter to the Editor, are too beautiful and true to be confined to one or two readers only: 'I have read the exhortations of Plutarch, and Seneca, and Jeremy Taylor, and others, all hinging upon the idea that pain and bereavement are natural, necessary, inevitable, in this world of successive bloom and desolation. But pain is to me none the less painful because natural, nor separation less overwhelming for its necessity; nor yet is the blasting of cherished hopes less withering to my heart because the same blight has fallen on the verdure of other hearts, and kindred tears are falling from a world of mourners in a wide companionship of grief. 'The head may reason, but the heart will feel.' Time, however, is a great and effectual healer. Though a tree be lopped to the very root, the maimed giant will send up a new creation of vegetable strength. So the human soul, like some evergreen creeper, if you cut off or tear away its branches of affection with the object round which they entwined themselves, will send forth other tendrils, and wind its clinging arms around some other idol, embalming it with fragrance and clothing it in verdure. The sweet lines of Wordsworth are most practical and true, as well as poetical:
'There is a comfort in the strength of love:
'T will make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset tire brain, or break the heart.'
'And while there is one, and more than one, whose redemption from their iron sleep I would gladly purchase by a subtraction from the remnant of my own dismembered life, and principally that visible gushing tears, and the test of so great a sacrifice, might be some atonement for causeless misconceptions, and some proof of warm love beneath the outward shows of an inflexible hardness; yet I know that Time in his weary revolutions will soon bring us all together in a world of infinite knowledge, and liberal forgiveness, and uncircumscribed affection; a world where we shall 'see face to face,' and feel heart to heart; 'where no grief makes the heart heavy and the eye-lids red.' * * * Standing with a friend the other day by the river-side, to take in the noble coup d'œil of the new steamer Knickerbocker, we overheard a little anecdote connected with water-craft, which made our companion merry all the way home; which we shall here transcribe; 'and which it is hoped may please.' 'It seems there was' (nay, we know not seems, there was) a verdant youth from the interior of Connecticut, for the first time on board a steam-boat. His curiosity was unbounded. He examined here, and he scrutinized there; he wormed from the engineer a compulsory lecture on the steam-engine and mechanics in general, and from the fireman an essay on the power of white heat, and the 'average consumption of pine cord-'ood.' At length his inquiring mind was checked in its investigations, and 'the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties' made at once apparent. He had mounted to the wheel-house, and was asking the pilot: 'What you doin' that for, Mister?—what good does't do?' when he was observed by the captain, who said, in a gruff voice: 'Go away from there! Don't you see the sign, 'No talkin' to the man at the hellum? Go 'way!' 'Oh! certing—yäes; I only wanted to know ——' 'Well you do know now that you can't talk to him; so go 'way!' With unwilling willingness, the verdant youth came down; and, as it was soon dark, he presently went below; but four or five times before he 'turned in,' he was on deck, and near the wheel-house, eyeing it with a thoughtful curiosity; but with the captain's public rebuff still in his ears, venturing to ask no questions. In the first gray of the dawn, he was up, and on deck; and after some hesitation, perceiving nobody near but the pilot, who was turning the wheel, as when he had last seen him, he preferred his 'suppressed question' in the oblique style peculiar to his region: 'Wal, goin' it yit ha?—been at it all night?—screëwin on her up?—eh?' What vague conjectures must have bothered the poor querist's brain, during the night, may be partly inferred from the absurd but 'settled conviction' to which he had at length arrived! * * * What a mingling of the dead Past with the busy, bustling Present pervades the mind of the thoughtful observer, as he looks down from the rising tower of the New Trinity Church upon tens of thousands of the dead whose bones crowd the grave-yard below; bones, and dust and ashes, over which are thrown in wild confusion huge blocks from the quarry, and piles of uprooted grave-stones, and slabs and urns of marble! As you have marked an elaborately-carved stone sink slowly from its ponderous 'drop' to its place in an edifice which is to stand for ages, did you never scan closely its grained streaks, its delicate chissellings, with the thought that when you were senseless clay, that very stone might arrest the eye of another, gazing upon it with sensations like your own? So at least have we thought, concerning those who have gone before us, as we have looked at the ornamental marbles of our older public buildings, erected in another age. But from the countless Dead, who slumber below, how solemnly comes up toward this rising tower the voice of warning and monition! Each 'storied urn' takes the form of the Departed whom it commemorates, and seems to say: