distinctive characters of our own exalted race; so that we know not whether the man exists, against whom we could decree a punishment so severe, as to waste the efforts of a well-earned appetite upon the unsatisfactory carcass of one of your old Bulls ! Even the liver of the old monster, that glory of the youth of his own sex, fades before the ordeal of the stew-pan, and may be known at a glance, by its shrivelled and unattractive aspect in the dish, however cherished through culinary art into a delusive and momentary freshness, by the joys of claret and the revivifying force of sherry!

To the world then, at large, to the hunter, and especially to the cook, we would emphatically say, in this assembled presence, whom we here dismiss, AVOID BULL TERRAPINS!

And this brings us to the quiet consideration of the next remark that we have to make upon the work before us; that its learned author has omitted to instruct the uninitiated admirer of these precious offerings of nature, in what manner, or by what rule, he is to distinguish this old and worse than valueless encumberer of the soil and of the markets, from the individuals who can charm his board and fascinate his guests.

In the first place, then, it should be known, that by oft-repeated hybernation, by burrowing in the marshes year after year, and by incidental collision and friction, the concentric striæ of the shell of the old villain become gradually less and less well-defined, until the lines are at last comparatively smooth, and almost entirely effaced. Again, whether it be from the natural cares and anxieties of life, or from some other cause, the back becomes in age more and more convex and spherical about the shoulders; and he looks, in short, like one of those old courbé Frenchmen who never die; that are occasionally seen emerging from a Cul de Sac, in a coat of the lightest imaginable blue, with silver buckles in their shoes, their toes turned out, that can now never again turn in, and playing the beau at eighty-four. There are also a rigidity and a dryness in the coating that covers the legs, at the same time that it hangs in a flaccid state about them, 'a world too wide for these shrunk shanks;' and various other indications, that need not here be particularized, but by means of which, although the unpractised eye of the young house-keeper may be deceived, old fellows know each other all the world over. We have nothing but praise to offer to the author in other respects. The work is well got up, and the style of the plates must have gratified even his own expectation and taste; and we look forward with pleasure to the time, when, in noticing some subsequent edition, in which the Doctor shall portray our favorite with something of the gusto with which WALTON, for example, makes us in love with his unworthy chubb, it will belong to us, if it should be omitted in the work, to furnish a recipe for the cookery of a dish of terrapins, that shall set all Paris at defiance, and the world itself at fault.

HEADS OF THE PEOPLE, OR PORTRAITS OF THE ENGLISH.
New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

London: ROBERT TYAS.

NUMBER FIVE of this very clever publication reached us by the last steam-packet. Its spirit, literary and pictorial, is maintained unflaggingly. The illustrations of the number are, the 'Poor Curate,' the 'Bum-boat Woman,' the 'Pawnbroker,' and the 'Quack Doctor.' The last-mentioned sketch is capital, and the letter-press illustration even better still. Such 'physicians' as this illustrious subject, with his quackery and hypocritical cant, are the men whom SwIFT contends should withhold their judgments of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not permitted to be jurors upon life and death. The high-sounding, no-meaning style of Dr. DIDDAM's pill advertisement would do honor to the author of 'A Tribute to the Memory of FITZHUGH SMITH.' He informs the reader, that 'universal correspondence to the characteristics of veracity is the only sure mark of truth; hence a trial of the pills is earnestly solicited from all those who are laboring under any of those diversified ailments which obnubilate the chequered path of existence!' The 'position and corollary under notice' are scarcely of equal clearness.

FRANCE, ITS KING, COURT, AND GOVERNMENT. BY AN AMERICAN. One vol., pp. 191. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

THIS work, as is now indeed well known, is from the pen of our minister to the court of France, Governor Cass. Of the author's qualities as a writer, our readers have heretofore had occasion to judge, in the pages of this Magazine. They will not therefore be surprised to learn, that the style of the volume under notice is easy, simple, and perspicuous, and that the contents are imbued with interest, 'from title-page to colophon.' The work is devoted to a minute narrative of the history of the present King of France, especially of his travels and adventures, many years ago, while simply 'Duc de Chartres,' in this country; sketches of French society, and particularly of those public occasions which include the observance of forms connected with the official relations of foreign functionaries; pictures in little, but evidently faithful, of the different members of the royal family; together with numerous episodes, suggested by American, French, and English contrasts of character, manners, or customs; with not a few capital anecdotes, colloquially exhibited, and as fresh and racy as if heard at one's own table, from the lips of the writer himself. Governor Cass, although surrounded by the fascinations of French society, and evidently a great 'favorite at court,' is continually recurring to his experience of American life in the western wildernesses; and we cannot help thinking, such is his reminiscential gusto, that he looks back with a lingering, preeminent affection upon scenes and adventures among the

'Piled leaves of the west, His own green forest land.'

We observe, with a gratification which would have been enhanced were the game better worth the candle, that our author has seen proper, in an appropriate vein of satirical pleasantry, to turn the tables upon a class of English travellers, who have made our country the theatre of their excursions, and the subject of their books. The list of what the writer has seen, heard, and read' of the kingly usages, domestic manners, and other 'spectacles' of the mother people, may be taken as an ample set-off against the worst perversions of the worst travelling book-makers that England has yet spawned upon our shores. There is something irresistibly ludicrous, to a republican observer, in many of the facts here set down. Alluding to a remark of BURKE, that it was 'not proper that great noblemen should be keepers of dogs, even though they were the Queen's dogs,' Governor Cass mentions, that a peer of England, a hereditary legislator and judge, is a keeper of her majesty's hounds; another nobleman is a turnspit in her kitchen; a third personage is a leather-breeches maker to the queen; a sta tion, adds our author, 'which it is hoped may prove a sinecure!' And the writer might have added, that the noble 'Controller of Her Majesty's Tape office, and Custos of the Sealing-Wax Department,' has but little reason to look down upon his fellow officeholders, the 'Purveyor of Asses' Milk to the Royal Family,' and the 'Bed-bug Destroyer to Her Majesty! But what will our parvenu imitators of every thing that is said to be 'an English custom,' or a 'French custom' - who would sooner go without their meat, than use a knife in conveying it to their mouths say, when they are informed, on the authority of one so likely to be familiar with the usage du monde as the American minister at Paris, that 'the knife is used in the best company in Europe?' And now that tooth-picks, in defiance of the anathemas of CHESTERFIELD, the arbiter elegantiarum of his day, are as regularly placed beside the plate of each English guest as the knife, fork, and spoon, and as regularly used, we shall look to see a deluge of these useful instruments from abroad, or an enhanced liveliness in the American quill market. Seriously, however, we inay hope that the plain good sense of an American gentleman, like Governor Cass, possessing the very best opportunities of observance and judgment, will not be without its effect, in such trivial matters, upon the less national and self-respectful of his countrymen.

EDITORS' TABLE.

'CARLYLE-ISM.' Our anonymous correspondent, 'C. F.,' in a private note to the Editor, complaining of the return of his communication entitled as above, assumes erroneous premises, and thus destroys his own argument. With a single exception, every quotation he makes, in justification of his wholesale condemnation of 'CARLYE'S style,' is from the pens of that gentleman's imitators in this country; writers who ape the faults only of their original, and greatly exaggerate even these; who clothe common-place thoughts in a strange garb, which is nevertheless not sufficiently grotesque to divert the reader's attention from the intellectual penury it fain would cover; writers, in short, who seem wholly to forget that

From such literary 'friends' and imitators, the author of 'Sartor Resartus' may well implore to be saved. We repeat, there are many things in CARLYLE's style that a plain reader would desire to see amended; yet it may be questioned whether - such is now his Germanized intellect any material change would not lose us much that we should be reluctant to part with. There are some things in the 'French Revolution,' and not a few in the 'Miscellanies' of our author, which we are in doubt whether to call very good or very bad, though we are sure they are one or the other. As wit is nearly allied to madness, so there is but a very narrow boundary between the utmost excursions of wit, and the first sallies of frenzy. When MILTON talks of 'visible darkness,' of 'prodigies produced by nature,' of 'death that lives,' and 'life that dies,' one feels that he has reached the last verge of propriety, and is apt to doubt whether or no he has not passed it. So when POPE supposes NEWTON to be shown by angels, as a monkey is by men, one's taste is as much in doubt about his propriety, as his judgment is about that of MILTON. Yet these and a few kindred blemishes are not enough, we may believe, even in the eyes of 'C. F.,' to justify the 'extirpation from our literature' of such writers as MILTON and POPE. A new work from Mr. CARLYLE's pen, now lying before us, and a few notes upon the English edition of his 'French Revolution,' made some months since, will afford the nucleus for a brief exposition of 'CARLYLE-ISM,' which it is hoped may have an interest for the general reader, as well as for our dissenting correspondent.

A small volume entitled 'CHARTISM,' of an hundred pages and upward, by Mr. CARLYLE, has recently been issued from the press of Messrs. LITTLE AND BROWN, Boston. It bears the significant motto, 'It never smokes, but there is a fire,' and its tendency is to show that there are causes at work among the over-wrought population of Great Britain, that must result in some substantial relief to the lower orders of society; to men struggling for a man-like place and relation, in a world where they see themselves One chapter is especially devoted to the 'finest peasantry in the world;'

men.

to machines, as they have been termed, 'for turning potatoes into human nature;' to the seven millions, in other words, of warm-hearted, blundering Irish:

'Crowds of miserable Irish darken all our towns. The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery and mockery, salute you on all bighways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back; for wages that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment; he lodges to his mind in any pighutch or doghutch, roosts in outhouses; and wears a suit of tatters, the getting off and on of which is said to be a difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of the calendar.'

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. Burns expresses feelingly what thoughts it gave him: a poor man seeking work; seeking leave to toil, that he might be fed and sheltered! That he might but be put on a level with the four footed workers of the planet which is his! There is not a horse willing to work, but can get food and shelter in requital; a thing this two-footed worker has to seek for, to solicit occasionally in vain. He is nobody's two-footed worker; he is not even anybody's slave. And yet he is a two footed worker; it is currently reported there is an immortal soul in him, sent down out of heaven into the earth; and one beholds him seeking for this! Nay, what will a wise legislature say, if it turn out that he cannot find it?'

A government and guidance of white European men, which has issued in perennial hunger of potatoes to the third man extant, ought to drop a veil over its face, and walk out of court under conduct of proper officers; saying no word; expecting now of a surety sentence either to change or die. All men, we must repeat, were made by God, and have immortal souls in them. The Sanspotatoe is of the self-same stuff as the superfinest lord lieutenant. Not an individual Sanspotatoe human scarescrow but had a life given him out of heaven, with eternities depending on it; for once and no second time. With immensities in him, over him, and around him; with feelings which a Shakspeare's speech would not utter; with desires illimitable as the Autocrat's of all the Russias! Him various thrice-honored persons, things and institutions have long been teaching, long been guiding, governing; and it is to perpetual scarcity of third-rate potatoes, and to what depends thereon, that he has been taught and guided. Figure thyself, O high-minded, clear-headed, cleanburnished reader, clapt by enchantment into the torn coat and waste hunger-lair of that same rootdevouring brother man!'

In some satirical remarks upon the new Poor Law, and its practical effect upon the millions who grind at the wheel of skilless labor; the menial hewers of wood and drawers of water; we find the following:

'English commerce stretches its fibres over the whole earth; sensitive literally, nay, quivering in convulsion, to the farthest influences of the earth. The huge demon of Mechanism smokes and thunders, panting at his great task, in all sections of English land; changing his shape like a very Proteus; and infallibly at every change of shape, oversetting whole multitudes of workmen, and as if with the waving of his shadow from afar, hurling them asunder, this way and that, in their crowded march and course of work or traffic; so that the wisest no longer knows his whereabout. With an Ireland pouring daily in on us, in these circumstances; deluging us down to its own waste confusion, outward and inward, it seems a cruel mockery to tell poor drudges that their condition is improving. The master of horses, when the summer labor is done, has to feed his horses through the winter. If he said to his horses: Quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you, but work exists abundantly over the world; are you ignorant (or must I read you political economy lectures) that the steam-engine always in the long run creates additional work? Railways are forming in one quarter of this earth, canals in another, much cartage is wanted; somewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa or America, doubt it not, ye will find cartage: go and seek cartage, and good go with you! They, with protrusive upper lip, snort dubious; signifying that Europe, Asia, Africa and America, lie somewhat out of their beat; that what cartage may be wanted there is not too well known to them. They can find no cartage. They gallop distracted along highways, all fenced in to the right and to the left; finally, under pains of hunger, they take to leaping fences; eating foreign property, and we know the rest, Ah, it is not a joyful mirth, it is sadder than tears, the laugh humanity is forced to, at laissez-faire applied to poor peasants, in a world like our Europe of the year 1839!'

This striking passage will remind the reader of SIDNEY SMITH'S exposition, in the Edinburgh Review, of the wisdom of the pauper system, which furnished to the destitute the pleasant alternative of grinding corn by tread-mill power, or going without food. 'You are free as air,' says the superintendent of the Poor-House; 'only it is my duty to inform you, as you have no money of your own, that the disposition to eat and drink, which you have allowed you sometimes feel, and upon which I do not mean to cast any degree of censure, cannot possibly be gratified, save by employing your abundant leisure upon this ingenious machine. It has its inconveniences, I must admit; but balance these against the total want of meat and drink, and decide for yourself. You are at perfect liberty to make your choice, and I by no means wish to influence your judgment !' 'Give every man what is his,' says our author, 'the accurate price of what he has done and been, and no man shall any more complain, neither shall the earth suffer any more.' He would have the people educated; he would impart the gift of thinking to those who

cannot think, and yet who could, in that case, think. 'Were it not a cruel thing,' he exclaims, to see, in any province of an empire, the inhabitants living all mutilated in their limbs, each strong man with his right arm palsied? How much crueller to find the strong soul with its eyes still sealed; its eyes extinct, so that it sees not! Light has come into the world, but to this poor peasant it has come in vain. Heavier wrong is not done under the sun. It lasts from year to year, from century to century; the blinded sire slaves himself out, and leaves a blinded son; and men made in the image of GoD continue as two-legged beasts of labor.'

To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissible manner made away with, and swept out of sight, is not an amiable faith. That the arrangements of good and ill success in this perplexed scramble of a world, which a blind goddess was always thought to preside over, are in fact the work of a seeing goddess or god, and require only not to be meddled with: what stretch of heroic faculty or inspiration of genius was needed to teach one that? To button your pockets and stand still, is no complex recipe. Laissez faire, laissez passer! Whatever goes on, ought it not to go on; the widow picking nettles for her children's dinner, and the perfumed seigneur delicately lounging in the Œil-du-Bœuf, who has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, and name it rent and law?' What is written and enacted, has it not black-on-white to show for itself? Ours is a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble along, thou insane scramble of a world, with thy pope's tiaras, king's mantles, and beggar's gabardines, chivalry-ribbons and plebeian gallows-ropes, where a Paul shall die on the gibbet, and a Nero sit fiddling as imperial Cæsar; thou art all right, and shalt scramble even so; and whoever in the press is trodden down, has only to lie there and be trampled broad. Such at bottom seems to be the chief social principle.'

Mr. CARLYLE upholds the dignity of labor, and gives us, as in 'Sartor Resartus,' foreible contrasts between the producer and consumer. The princes of this world,' says he, were shooting partridges; noisily in Parliament and elsewhere solving the question, 'Head or tail?' while WATT, of the steam-engine, with blackened fingers and grim brow, was searching out, in his work-shop, the Fire-secret; or having found it, was painfully wending to and fro, in quest of a 'monied man,' as indispensable man-midwife of the same.' The following characteristic passages will strike the reader as destitute neither of force nor beauty:

"The Staffordshire coal-stratum, and coal-strata, lay side by side with iron-strata, quiet since the creation of the world. Water flowed in Lancashire and Lanarksnire; bituminous fire lay bedded in rocks there too - over which how many fighting Stanleys, black Douglasses, and other the like contentious persons, had fought out their bickerings and broils, not without result, we will hope! But God said, Let the iron missionaries be; and they were. Coal and iron, so long close unregardful neighbors, are wedded together; Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and the hundrea Stygian forges, with their fire-throats and never resting sledge-hammers, rose into day. Wet Manconium stretched out her hand toward Carolina and the torrid zone, and plucked cotton there; who could forbid her, her that had the skill to weave it? Fish fled thereupon from the Mersey River, vexed with innumerable keels. England, I say, dug out her bitumen-fire, and bade it work: towns rose, and steeple chimneys.' .. Hast thou heard, with sound ears, the awakening of a 'Manchester, on Monday morning, at half-past five by the clock; the rushing off of its thousand mills, like the boom of an Atlantic tide, ten thousand times ten thousand spools and spindles all set humming there-it is perhaps, if thou knew it well, sublime as a Niagara, or more so. Cotton-spinning is the clothing of the naked in its result; the triumph of man over matter in its means.'

Our author treats with most successful satire the Malthusian remedy for the tide of over-population which swells too high on a 'certain western rim of Europe;' and dwells felicitously upon the recent theory of an 'agitating' Chartist, to diminish the supply of laborers, by 'painless extinction,' with charcoal-vapor, or other methods! The proposition of this writer, who it seems is not in jest, but 'grim earnest,' reminds us of SWIFT's sportive remedy for over-population in Ireland; namely, that every second child should be killed and eaten for food; and we remember that he enlarges with true epicurean gusto upon the tenderness of child-flesh, pronouncing it superior to young veal or mutton. But Mr. CARLYLE offers another plan:

If paupers are made miserable, paupers will needs decline in multitude. It is a secret known to all rat-catchers; stop up the granary crevices, afflict with continual mewing, alarm, and going off of traps, and your chargeable laborers' disappear, and cease from the establishment. A still briefer method is that of arsenic; perhaps even a milder, where otherwise permissible. Rats and paupers can be abolished.'

Violent, rebellious Lynch-law Chartism has been suppressed, as it should be, in England; but the spirit of resistance to oppression is still strong in the hearts of the inferior masses. The great social inequality, the magnificence of the privileged orders,