Let us add here a beautiful sonnet, on this great theme, which we derive from an esteemed friend and contributor, who has been kind enough to copy it for us from the writer's manuscript:
JESUS.
By Rev. Theodore Parker.
Jesus, there is no dearer name than thine,
Which Time has blazoned on his ample scroll:
No wreaths nor garlands ever did entwine
So fair a Temple or so vast a Soul.
Ay, every Angel set his comely seal
Upon thy brow, and gave each human grace,
In a sweet copy Heaven to reveal,
And stamp Perfection on a mortal face.
Once on the earth, before dull mortal eyes,
Which could not half thy sacred radiance see,
(E'en as the emmet cannot read the skies,)
For our weak orbs reach not Immensity,
Once on the earth wast Thou a living shrine,
Where shone the Good, the Lovely, the Divine.
The 'Plebeian' daily journal of Gotham is down upon the Yanokies or Yankees, with a weapon swung round like a flail; and like another valiant defender of the Knickerbockers before him, he has raised such a buzzing about his unlucky head, that he will need the tough hide of an Achilles or an Orlando Furioso, to protect him from their stings. We do not like the nucleus of the ball which our sturdy democrat has set in motion—the glorious battle of Bunker-Hill; but for the rest, we should do dishonor to the spirit of our great historian and sire, if we did not applaud the prowess which is displayed in this warfare upon a set of 'dieven, schobbejaken, dengenieten, twist-zoëkeren, loozenschalken, blaes-kaken, kakken-bedden;' a squalling, bundling, guessing, questioning, swapping, pumpkin-eating, molasses-daubing, shingle-splitting, cider-watering, horse-jockeying, notion-peddling crew! Let the 'Defender of the Faithful' continue to ply his trenchant quill: thousands of crowded and jostled Knickerbockers are heart and soul in the contest; and the spirit of William the Testy, who was translated to the firmament, and now forms a very fiery little star somewhere on the left claw of 'the Crab,' looks approvingly down upon the warfare! We confess that we find it in our hearts greatly to rejoice that the descendants of Habbakuk Nutter, Return Strong, Zerubbabel Fisk, and Determined Cock, those losel scouts who overreached Stoffel Brinkerhoff, are to be taught that the 'sins of the fathers may be visited upon the children,' by a right valiant son of New-Amsterdam. When we bethink us how these Yankee varlets penetrated into the New-Netherland settlements, and bored our taciturn progenitors with their volubility and intolerable inquisitiveness; bringing the honest burghers to a stand on the highway, and torturing them with questions and guesses; 'and which is more,' seducing the light affections of the simple damsels from their ponderous Dutch gallants, and introducing among them the ancient practice of bundling; when we call to mind how that long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race received the proclamations of the sage Governor of New-Amsterdam, treating them with contempt, and applying them to an unseemly purpose, and foully dishonoring the valorous Van Curlet, who bore them; when we remember these things, and also how that the tribe has been spreading wider and wider, and growing more impertinent every day; we cannot find it in our heart to regret that a doughty champion has come out against them, to expose their braggadocia and annihilate their pretensions. By the beard of Mahomet! do they think that wisdom and patriotism lived alone and is to die with them? Because they are virtuous, are there to be no more cakes and ale? Is their aspiring metropolis, climbing upon its little hills to look down upon itself, to eclipse the great capital of the Manhaddoes? Is imperial Rome, in comparison, to be voted a rat-hole, 'Nineveh,' a nook, Babylon a baby-house, and Pekin the paltriest pile of the pigmies?' Unanimously, in this meridian, the Knickerbockers 'reckon not!' * * * We place the following passages from recent letters of two excellent friends in juxtaposition, for an especial reason. The epistles are not dated far apart; and in the second, the writer, who dwelleth near 'Mason and Dixon,' descants upon the awful climate hereabout in the summer months. Infatuated person! Observe what he of Tinnecum, living scarcely eight miles away, saith: 'I have watched a fair opportunity to invite you to this 'verum et secretum μουσειοι.' The woods are gloriously animated; the fields deliciously green; the west winds overburdened with clover; the sea-shore breezes are life-inspiring; and to quote Greek again from one of the noble bursts of the chorus, I love to sit upon a piazza, with my picturesque head of hair ensnarled in the breeze, and sing out:
Αυρα, ποντιας αυρα,
Αυρα, ποντιας αυρα.
'The strawberries (an old writer has remarked that doubtless God might have made a better berry, but he never did) are as deliriously ripe as if they had been smiled on by Venus, and dear goddess! she had imbued them with the sweetness of her own lips: 'Quinta parte sui nectaris imbuit.' They are charming! To see them piled up in little heaps, like the fruits of an early harvest, not to be stored away for a winter of discontent, but to cheer the immediate moment, to be refreshed every now and then by the anticipation of their sweet breath as it comes up, not obtrusively, gushing into your face, and causing you to throw back your head with a smile, as if all the senses were lulled into a dear security! To see them lying in so many wanton attitudes, as rubicund as if they were intoxicated with sun-beams, in all their variety of shapes; some preciously diminutive, others of an incredible, jovial plumpness; variegated, luxurious, shaped like some pyramids I know of, with their great circumference overshadowing the narrow base; conveying by their very size a provoking, insulting challenge, that they are too big to be swallowed up—by Phœbus! it is a treat to merge expectation in fruition; and if there is any danger in swallowing them up, then I say again with Horace: 'Dulce est periclum'—the danger is sweet. 'These delights if thou canst give——' Indeed can I; and you shall have others beside—Και πλεον εξεις—as Venus said, when she advertised her missing boy. There is a pleasure in sitting by the window, to be lulled by a variety of murmurs, or to listen to them in the solemn groves; whether it be the sound of the sea, or the winds undulating among the tree-tops, or the swarming of bees, I can hardly tell, they are so like; and if the heart beats at regular intervals not too much in a hurry or with an inconsiderate knocking, being kept from agitation by a good conscience, as may without vanity be claimed both by you and me, we shall be captivated by a music more sweet than Bellini. Come out here right off!' Thus far the favored occupant of this delectable region. Give ear now to that other scholar and gentleman, 'hereinbeforementioned:' 'It is truly a blistering day, and the breath from the mouth of the approaching Dog is enough to stifle a Christian. I keep continually thinking of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, and repeat, with more fervor than I could wish, 'Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron shades!' etc. But 'Oh! Jimmy Thompson, Jimmy Thompson, oh!' never in Green England did you experience such an atmosphere as this! Pah! it goes down my throat like the spirit of melted lead. Oh! for some water-sprite to bear me under his dripping wings to the summit of Dawalageri; there among the notched rocks to sit sipping of iced sherry, and with pine-apples pendant to my very mouth, to whiff the cool Havana and read Dante's Purgatorio! There might some 'swift-winged courier of the clouds' bring me the July number of the Knick.; and after laughing at the wit and melting with the pathos of American talent, might some prophetic angel unscale my eyes, and show me in the future the Chinese wall blown up by a match of opium, and the wheels of the Juggernaut carrying a train of burden-cars and a crowd of travellers from Calcutta to Delhi! What an unimaginable world lies behind the vale of that same wonder-pregnant Future! Oh! that one might raise that veil and see all that is to be, save the destinies of himself and his own beloved land! The sight, however, might be far from pleasing to the philanthropist. Freedom may fly again to her hereditary mountains; Knowledge may burn her lonely lamp in conventual cloisters; the 'march of mind' may make a retrograde advancement; another Caliph may fire the Royal Library of Paris; and posterity may be sufficiently unfortunate to have lost all trace and all memorial of you and me! God forbid!' * * * Repining reader, bethink you in your moments of despondency, or even gloom, of the mind that traced, in the 'enduring dark' of his lonely apartment, these touching lines:
'Oh, who on earth would love to live,
Unless he lived to love!'
'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone bewail my outcast fate,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope;
Featured like him; like him with friends possessed;
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope;
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my happy state with kings!'
The following, which we derive from a Boston friend, who assures us that it is a 'statement of a veritable occurrence,' we can very readily believe. Indeed, we have never been able to doubt any thing which a bird might say, since we heard Uncle Bezonnet's 'Poor Mino' in Nassau-street, laugh, and sing, and exclaim 'Good morning!' 'What's your name?' 'Uncle John! Uncle John! somebody's in the store;' and then, changing his tone, remark, what nobody could deny, 'What an extraordinary bird!' But to his 'Boston contemporary:' 'I came across a pious parrot the other day, while strolling down toward the wharves. It was the first of the class I had ever seen. I was just passing by a sailor boarding-house, when I heard, several times repeated, the words, 'The Lord ha' massy on Poor Poll, a sinner! Lord ha' massy! Amen!' Turning round, I perceived they were uttered by a parrot in a cage, who with one claw drawn up on her breast, head bent reverently down, and eye cocked solemnly upward, was now following her ejaculations by the most piteous moans. Talking parrots are generally sad creatures, and seldom very choice in their language. 'But here,' thought I, 'is an exception; and surely, a race which has in it even one individual capable of attaining to a knowledge of its utterly depraved condition, cannot be altogether lost.' What seemed to me to be the more remarkable, was the fact that such knowledge should have been attainable in a sailor boarding-house, in one of the most vicious streets of the city. While these thoughts were passing through my mind, the parrot had been eyeing me with an eager, sidelong glance, as if she were quite ready for a chat, and waited only for me to begin it. 'Pretty, pretty Poll:' said I, stroking her head gently with the end of my cane; 'Polly have a biscuit?' 'Yes, G—d d—n you! hand over!' was the sharp, quick reply.' * * * Few and far between, now, are the scenes recorded below by a Southern correspondent. The last of the old hearts-of-oak will soon fall to the ground: 'Since I last 'drove pen,' I have sat by the death-bed, watched by the corpse, and shovelled earth upon the coffin, of an old revolutionary soldier. He served four years in Washington's own division of the army; and doubtless, although he attained no high official rank, his blood was as freely offered, and his services should be as gratefully appreciated, as those of any general of them all. He was a forgotten unit in that subaltern rank, on whose individual merits the titled built their edifice of fame. His offering was like 'the widow's mite,' an offering as dear to him as any the costliest oblation made unto his country's treasury of glory. Requieseat!' * * * 'You will find,' says a friend writing from London, by the last steamer, 'that your portrait has been extensively circulated about Great-Britain and her dominions, in the last number of 'Chuzzlewit.' The artist who draws the illustrations, has given, in the person of young Martin, who is reading one of your flash newspapers, in presence of the editor and his war correspondent, a very faithful transcript of the lineaments of the Editor of the Knickerbocker, as we remember them.' We cannot say how far our correspondent is correct in his impressions; although they were corroborated by a score or more of American friends, before we had seen the engraving in question; but this we know, that if any of our readers desire to see a portrait, as life-like as if he had sat for it, of the late lamented Willis Gaylord Clark, they may find it in the person of young Martin Chuzzlewit, in the English edition of Mr. Dickens's last issue of the work of that name. The outline, the air, the manner, are perfect. * * * It may be thought remarkable, that while to the mass the illusions of the theatre possess unwonted interest, those who know the most of its secrets affect it the least. Theodore Hook, we are told by his reviewer, had a fixed and rooted aversion to the stage, and a consummate contempt for the player's profession, as a school of character and manners; an absolute physical loathing, as it were, for every thing connected with the green-room, from the mouthing art of managers, to the melancholy pirouettes of the 'poor plastered things with fringes to their stays, which they call petticoats.' Fanny Kemble herself, overcoming so many proud and glorious associations, did not sicken of it more heartily. Doesn't this militate against the argument of 'C.'? Rather, we think. * * * If the reader does not discover something sparkling, quaint, and decidedly original in 'No'th-East by East,' in preceding pages, we shall inevitably have thrown away and sacrificed 'our guess.' There is a touch of Dana, a dash of Coleridge, and the 'slightest possible taste in the world' of Halleck, yet withal no imitation, in that amphibious poem. Some lines seem somewhat amendable; 'As lightning had sprung sudden then,' is one, for example. Lightning is rather 'sudden,' we believe, in most cases. We scarcely remember ever to have seen a very slow flash; yet the line could hardly be bettered, and there is good precedent for the apparently adscititious word. A few 'common substantives' in the poem may require elucidation for the uninitiated. The 'Graves' are rocks in Boston harbor, near the outer light, or 'big bright Eye.' Near this light, and past George's island, by 'Nix's Mate,' is the main channel, through which ships must make a 'procession' in coming up toward Boston. The 'pinkie' is a schooner-rigged craft, sharp at both ends, a short peak running up aft, and designed for a chasing sea. The annexed lines were written to follow the passage wherein the courier-star says 'The sun is coming up this way,' etc., but they came too late for insertion: