'It's best to rise gradually with your hearers; and, if you can have a private understanding with one of the waiters, to fix a chair conveniently, a wooden-bottomed Windsor, mind, and none of your rushers; for it's decidedly funny and destroys the effect, to hear a gentleman declaiming about a sinking fund, or a penal code, or the abolition of imprisonment for debt, up to his belly in a broken chair-frame. As the passion grows upon you, plant your right leg on one of the rounds, then on the bottom, and finally, when you feel yourself at red-heat, spring into the chair, waive your hat, and call upon the audience to die for their country, their families and their firesides; or any other convenient reason. As Hobbleshank advanced in his discourse, he had illustrated its various topics by actual accompaniments; mounting first on his legs, then the bench, and ended by leaping upon the table, where he stood brandishing his broken hat, and shouting vociferously for more oysters.'

There are other suggestions; such as having 'immense telescopes constructed, and planted where they could command the interior of every domicil in the ward, and tell what was in every man's pot for dinner six days in a week;' together with a 'great ledger, with leaves to open like doors, on which should be a full-length likeness of each voter, drawn and colored to the life,' even 'down to his vest-buttons, and a mote in his eye!' Who shall say that this isn't 'genuine humor?' Here too is 'a touch of nature,' such as Mr. Mathews delights in. An electioneerer or 'scourer' of the wards visits a theatrical 'lightning-maker,' (a highly probable character,) at his laboratory, where the following witty dialogue ensues:

'This profession of yours,' said Puffer—he dared not call it a trade, although the poor workman was up to his eyes in vile yellow paste and charcoal-dust—'this profession, Sir, must give you many patriotic feelings of a high cast, Sir.'

'It does, Sir,' answered the lightning-maker, slightly mistaking his meaning; 'I've told the manager more than fifty times that lightning such as mine is worth ninepence a bottle, but he never would pay more than fourpence ha'penny: except in volcanoes; them's always two-quarters.'

'I mean, Sir,' continued the scourer, 'that when you see the vivid fires blazing on Lake Erie; when Perry's working his ship about like a velocipede, and the guns are bursting off, and the enemy paddling away like ducks; is not your soul then stirred, Sir? Do you not feel impelled to achieve some great, some glorious act? What do you do, what can you do, in such a moment of intense, overwhelming excitement?'

'I generally,' answered the lightning-maker with an emphasis upon the personal pronoun, as if some difference of practice might possibly prevail, 'I generally takes a glass of beer, with the froth on.'

'But, Sir, when you see the dwelling-house roof, kindled by your bomb-shells, all a-blaze with the midnight conflagration: the rafters melting away, I may say, with the intense heat, and the engines working their pumps in vain; don't you think then, Sir, of some peaceful family, living in some secluded valley, broken in upon by the heartless incendiary with his demon-matches, and burning down their cottage with all its outhouses?'

'In such cases,' answered the lightning-maker, 'I thinks of my two babies at home, with their poor lame mother; and I makes it a point, if my feelings is very much wrought up, as the prompter says, to run home between the acts to see that all's safe, and put a bucket of water by the hearth. Isn't that the thing?'

'I think it is; and I'm glad to hear you talk so feelingly,' answered Puffer Hopkins; 'our next mayor's a very domestic-minded man; just such a man as you are; only I don't believe he'd be so prudent and active about the bucket on the hearth.'

'At this, the lightning-maker smiled pleasantly to himself, and unconsciously thrust a large roll of brimstone in his cheek.'

Oh, for modern schepen, to laugh himself to death at this fine 'burst' of nature and of wit! Holding both his sides, how would he guffaw at that brimstone mistake! 'How can you make me laugh so, when I am so sick?' Well, well; it is funny, certainly; but wait until you read this fragment of 'burning satire' upon the political press:

'An 'Extra Puncheon,' pretending to give late news from the Capitol, but containing, in reality, Flabby's long-expected reply. 'Capital! capital!' cried Mr. Fishblaat, as he hurried on; 'Flabby called Busts a drunken vagabond, in the Puncheon of Wednesday week; Busts called Flabby a hoary reprobate, in Monday's Bladder, and now Flabby calls Busts a keg of Geneva bitters; says the bung's knocked out and the staves well coopered. Capital! This alludes to a threshing, in front of the Exchange in which Busts had his eye blacked and a couple of ribs beaten in.'

But we must draw our notice of Mr. Mathews's 'writings' to a close. We cannot do so, however, without again inviting the attention of our readers to the 'works' themselves, if they are desirous to partake in a yet larger degree of the kindling effect of his unique wit and humor, and to render full justice to 'the American Boz!'

The Poets of Connecticut; with Biographical Sketches. Edited by Rev. Charles W. Everest. In one volume, pp. 468. Hartford: Case, Tiffany, and Burnham. New-York: Knickerbocker Publication Office.

Honor to Connecticut for the 'bright names in song' to which she has given birth; and honor to Mr. Everest for the faithfulness and good judgment with which he has discharged his editorial function, in the large and exceedingly beautiful volume before us. Few of our readers can be aware of the number and high character of the poets of America who first drew breath in the 'Land of Steady Habits.' The catalogue 'deflours us of our chiefest treasures' in poetry; numbering as it does, Halleck, Brainard, Percival, Pierpont, Prentice, Hillhouse, Hill, Sigourney, Rockwell, and others scarcely less known to fame, and whose effusions are endenizen'd in the national heart. The volume presents a brief historical account of the poetical literature of Connecticut, from its commencement to the present period. The writers are arranged in the order of birth, as being less invidious, and as better comporting with the design of the editor. In the department of biography, the sketches have been made as complete as possible, in the case of deceased writers, while in those of the living, the principal facts of personal history are carefully preserved. The editor has judiciously confined his critical duties to the mere pointing out of a few characteristic traits of each author's verse, refraining from especial eulogy or censure. The volume is in all respects a valuable contribution to our national literature, and deserves, what we cannot doubt it will receive, a circulation commensurate with its merits. It is beautifully printed, upon large, clear types, and embellished with a fine vignette-engraving of the city of Hartford and Connecticut river.

Abbottsford Edition of the Waverley Novels. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell. London: Houlston and Stoneman. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.