EDITORS' TABLE.

A LITTLE GOSSIP WITH OUR READERS.

- 'I hold it to be a good thing,' says the everentertaining DEFOE, 'to sit down, as it were, and converse with my reader, as though he were by my side, and his eye glancing ever and anon into mine. Of this kind of imaginary companionship, is begotten that ease and naturalness, so indespensable to true literary enjoyment.' We must ask a reduction of the force of this observation to the humble and unpremeditated matters which follow; wherein, if any thing that may seem to savor of reflected vainglory be encountered, it is desired that it may be placed to the account of a distinguished modern philosopher, who says that 'the world meets nobody half way.'

In asking attention to the 'Lay Sermon' of an exemplary and high-minded correspondent, in preceding pages, we must beg leave to say, that his defence of well-conducted theatres might have included a more severe reprehension of those which are rendered 'ministers of evil,' by reason of the abuses which are tolerated within their walls. That which is the receptacle of open vice, can scarcely be considered subservient to the cause of virtue. An antagonistic correspondent, under the signature of 'JOHNSON,' whom we must arraign for great illiberality of spirit, in certain of his positions, is yet on tenable ground, when he inquires, in one part of his communication: 'Can that be deemed a 'school of morality,' which is the notorious gathering-place of the depraved and the vile? It may be argued, that things good in themselves are sometimes perverted to the worst purposes; that establishments founded on just and moral principles, are not always to be estimated by the consequences they produce; that the abuse of a privilege is no argument against its intrinsic excellence. All this is granted: but when original purposes become frustrate, by the permission of measures contrary to their spirit and purity; when bad habits have obtained an ascendency over good manners; in short, when the most abandoned females are suffered to take their nightly station in a theatre, to insult the modest part of the audience by their presence and their actions; what is such a theatre but a licensed house of assignation? While these things last, it is idle to talk of the 'morality of the stage.' We may write in its defence, we may declaim in its favor; but we are defending a nonentity, we are using a falsehood. Let us beware of sophisms. We cannot incite to virtue, and encourage vice, at the same time.' We may have men of genius to write for the stage, and able critics to point out the moral; but is not all this nugatory, if PROSTITUTION be written, in large and legible characters, upon the walls?' The force and justice of these remarks can neither be gainsayed nor denied. We cannot agree, however, with our correspondent in his sweeping remarks upon the example and influence of actors, as a class. It is true, indeed, that from those few members of the theatrical profession who may have sought to retrieve and obtain in this country the character and reputation which they have lost, or never possessed, in their own, little can be anticipated that is not baneful in its influence upon society, and especially upon the young and the thoughtless, who ape not only their thin varnish of external politeness, and their broad caricature of the true gentleman, but the vices which are inherent in their old habitudes and associations. Yet such members of the profession

soon lose their power of evil example. They are scarcely tolerated, we have often observed, by the better class of their brethren. Among these latter, in the various branches of dramatic art, we count many warm friends, whose hearts are generous, whose principles are honorable, and whose characters are in all respects beyond reproach; and we have reason to believe, nay we know, that the only repugnance many of them ever feel to their occupation, arises from their temporary association with such persons as 'JOHNSON' describes. Doubtless this aversion, too, led SHAKSPEARE to leave behind him that memorable passage, in which he records his detestation of a theatrical life. He evidently did not so much grieve that his avocations compelled him to

but the rather, that he was thus thrown into contact with the ignoble and the vile. But we are getting toward the end of our tether; having present space but to add, that in our judgment, a theatre properly conducted, and with proper actors, may be made a place where one may be humanized without suffering; become acquainted with the manners of nations; acquire a polish without travelling; and without the trouble of study, imbibe lessons the most pleasing and useful.

It has ever been the fortune of historians, including the most conscientious and trustworthy, that their veritable records have come at last to be distrusted by an incredulous few, among their posterity. Even the narrative of SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE himself, the most veracious of chroniclers, has been considered fabulous, by divers narrow minded commentators, prone to believe in nothing which their eyes have not seen, or their ears heard. Coming down to our own era, we have seen certain tales and legends, the truth of which has been considered as firmly established, questioned by pragmatical unbelievers, and that in the very teeth of the strongest testimony. To this day, we make bold to assert, many unimaginative readers find it difficult to believe, that the 'Sleepy Hollow' of our own GEOFFREY CRAYON was once actually bewitched by a high German doctor, and that it has ever since continued under the sway of a mysterious power, that holds a spell over the minds of the people who inhabit it, causing them to see marvellous sights, and to hear strange sounds. We ourselves have heard the fact questioned, within the short space of ten years. And yet nothing can be more true, than that there exists such a spell, which, as our historian well observes, is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may be, before they enter that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative; to dream dreams, and to see apparitions. We have just received from an estimable friend and correspondent at Tarrytown, a private confirmation of the 'sober truth of history,' which is too remarkable to be lost to the world; and which, we hope without a breach of friendly or social trust, we may venture to lay before our readers. 'We have nothing new in these parts, excepting that there has been the deuce to pay of late in Sleepy Hollow; a circumstance, by the by, with which you of NewYork have some concern, as it is connected with your Croton aqueduct. This work traverses a thick wood, about the lower part of the Hollow, not far from the old Dutch haunted church; and in the heart of the wood, an immense culvert, or stone arch, is thrown across the wizard stream of the Pocantico, to support the aqueduct. As the work is unfinished, a colony of Patlanders have been encamped about this place all winter, forming a kind of Patsylvania, in the midst of a 'wiltherness.' Now whether. it is that they ever heard the old traditionary stories about the Hollow, which, all fanciful fabling and idle scribbling apart, is really one of the most haunted places in this part of the country, or whether the goblins of the Hollow, accustomed only to tolerate the neighborhood of the old Dutch families, have resented this intrusion into their solitudes,

by strangers of an unknown tongue, certain it is, that the poor paddies have been most grievously harried, for some time past, by all kinds of apparitions. A wagon-road, cut through the woods, and leading from their encampment, past the haunted church, and so on to certain whiskey establishments, has been especially beset by foul fiends; and the worthy Patlanders, on their way home at night, beheld misshapen monsters whisking about their paths, sometimes resembling men, sometimes bulls, sometimes horses, but invariably without heads; which shows that they must be lineal descendants from the old goblin of the Hollow. These imps of darkness have grown more and more vexatious in their pranks; occasionally tripping up, or knocking down, the unlucky object of their hostility. In a word, the whole wood has become such a scene of spuking and diablerie, that the paddies will not any longer venture out of their shanties at night; and a whiskey-shop, in a neighboring village, where they used to hold their evening gatherings, has been obliged to shut up, for want of custom. This is a true story, and you may account for it as you please. The corporation of your city should look to it, for if this harrying continues, I should not be surprised if the Patlanders, tired of being cut off from their whiskey, should entirely abandon the goblin region of Sleepy Hollow, and the completion of the Croton water-works be seriously retarded.'

THERE is a vein of sly satire running through the 'leaves' of the 'Georgia Lawyer,' in preceding pages, which we would not have escape the uninitiated reader. A desire to flog a watchman, is in cities a well-defined symptom of the disease called drunkenness; and we suspect that this part of our correspondent's sketch must have been founded upon critical observation, gained, doubtless, by being mayor of a large metropolis, and holding a daily police court. Every lawyer will appreciate the faithfulness of the picture of the 'female witness;' and as to 'homicidal insanity,' it is the great stumbling-block of the criminal writers and judges of the present day. Indeed it is amazing to see the extent to which men, intelligent in other respects, carry this absurd doctrine. By and by we shall arrive at the conclusion, that if a man kills another, it is prima facie evidence of insanity; ergo, he ought, as a proof of insanity, to be immediately discharged. Our correspondent enacts the legal CURTIUS, throwing himself manfully into the breach which threatens to swallow up the criminal justice of the country. Drunkenness, too, is latterly scarcely less abused than insanity, being often practically regarded as an apology for crime. The charge of the Georgia judge, with its very relevent phrenological digression, reminds us of a similar lucid effort, of which we have somewhere heard, that was intended to define the crime of murder to a Wolverine jury: 'Murder, gentlemen,' said the western SOLON, 'is where a man is murderously killed. The killer, in such a case, is a murderer. Now murder by poison, is as much murder, as murder with a gun. It is the murdering that constitutes murder, in the eye of the law. You will bear in mind that murder is one thing, and manslaughter another: therefore, if it is not manslaughter, it must be murder; and if it be not murder, it must be manslaughter. Self-murder has nothing to do in this case: one man cannot commit felo de se on another that is clearly my view. Gentlemen, I think you can have no difficulty. Murder, I say, is murder. The murder of a brother is called fratricide; but it is not fratricide if a man murders his mother. You will make up your minds. You know what murder is, and I need not tell what it is not. I repeat, murder is murder. You can retire upon it, if you like!'

THE reader will need no incitement to a perusal of the history of that remarkable delusion, the 'Mississippi Bubble,' by Mr. IRVING, in the present issue. The diligent research which it has evidently cost the author, it will be conceded, is amply repaid by the almost romantic interest of the narrative, and the useful lessons with which it is replete. From a note, which should have accompanied the text, we learn, that in the preparation of the article, the following authentic works were consulted, most of them in the originals: MACPHERSON'S 'Annals of Commerce:' Biographie Universelle; SAINT

SIMON'S Memoires; Correspondence of the Duchess d'Orleans; DUCLOS' Memoires; DULAURE'S History of Paris; VILLAR'S Memoires; VOLTAIRE'S History of Parliament: and LACRETELLE'S History of France. The story of COUNT VAN HORN, in our last number, was but 'an episode in this veritable history. It was of the shares of Law's famous bank, it will be remembered, that the Count and his companions robbed the Jewish broker. Large quantities of this stock were borne about the persons of more than two-thirds of the citizens of Paris; and the thirst for gain which this spurious wealth engendered, undermined the morals of half the community. The picture of the late high-exalted financier, pale and trembling in his hiding place, through fear of the 'tempestuous populace' of Paris, is sufficiently striking; but to appreciate it fully, one should bear in mind the peculiar character of the excited multitude, of whom the less mercurial Scotchman was so justly in awe. A little incident, which we derive from a friend who had it from the eloquent lips of the poet ROGERS, will effectually 'define the position' of the deposed banker. Before the French revolution, the abbes were privileged persons in the fashionable world; a kind of general gossips in politics, literature, and court scandal. At the tables of the principal noblemen, there would always be a vacant place left for any abbé who might drop in, and the first that arrived took it. About dinner time, the abbés might be seen, neatly dressed, picking their way from one dry stone to another, along the dirty streets of Paris, ringing or rapping at the great port-cochéres of the lordly hotels, and inquiring of the porters, 'Is there a place at table? If answered in the negative, away they would tittup, in hopes of better luck at the next place of call. An abbé of this sponging order was seated one day, in the bloody time of the revolution, at the table of a nobleman, where there was a large company. In the midst of the repast, a cart drove by, carrying a number of persons to the guillotine. All the company ran to the windows, to see if they had any friends among the victims. The abbé, being a short man, tried, by standing on tip-toe, to peep over the shoulders of those before him, but in vain; so he ran down to the port-cochére. As the cart went by, one of the prisoners, who knew the abbé, bowed to him. The abbé returned the salutation. 'What!' cried some of the mob, 'you are his friend! You are of the same way of thinking! Here, citizens, here is another traitor! Away with him!' The poor abbé was hoisted into the cart, in spite of his protestations, and hurried off to the guillotine. In the mean time, the noble company up stairs, having satisfied their curiosity, resumed their seats at table. One chair, however, remained vacant; and after a while, the question began to be asked: 'Where is Monsieur the abbé? What has become of the abbé ?? Alas! by this time, the poor abbé was headless!

WE would invite the attention of such of our readers, of both sexes, as have been, are, or hope to be, in love, to a guide-book to true lovers, in the 'JOURNAL OF LOVE,' elsewhere in the present number. We are aware that we are appealing to a very large class; for what says (and very beautifully) that cerulean Beatrix, Miss MARTINEAU: "The lover, where is he not? Wherever parents look upon their children, there he has been; wherever children are at play together, there he soon will be; wherever there are roofs under which men dwell, wherever there is an atmosphere vibrating with human voices, there is the lover, and there is his lofty worship going on; unspeakable, but revealed in the brightness of the eye, the majesty of the presence, and the high temper of the discourse. True love continues, and will continue, to send up its homage, amid the meditations of every even-tide, and the busy hum of noon, and the 'song of the morning stars.' The 'Journal of Love' is fruitful in lessons of good, to maiden lovers, and lovely maidens. Its teachings, so simple and natural, will embolden the timid on the one hand, and subdue the haughty on the other. The individual to whom the poem relates, and who had suffered severely all the pains and penalties which arise from the want of those personal charms, so much admired by him in others, gave to the author, as he informs us, many years since, some fragments of a 46

VOL. XV.

journal, kept by himself in his early days, in which he had bared his heart, and put down all his thoughts and feelings. This prose journal, writes 'FLACCUS, 'has here been transplanted into the richer soil of verse; where, although it has become more enlarged in its dimensions, and more showy in its coloring, there is much doubt whether it may not have lost some of the wild fragrance and touching simplicity that distinguished it in its original and uncultivated condition.' Be this as it may, our modest correspondent may rest assured that even his version is not without its fair proportion of the attributes he enumerates. We read it the other evening to a susceptible friend, in whom the hey-day of the blood is tame, and waits upon the judgment;' yet did it so move him, that he went back, through a long vista of years, to the days of his boyhood, and related his first 'course of true love;' dwelling with much fervor and enthusiasm upon a tale of passion, told for a long time in sighs and glances between two young hearts, until at length, one balmy eventide in summer, it was confirmed by repeated kisses, in which their fluttering souls met at their meeting lips. The story was a rich one, and its skeleton is in our 'Note-book,' to be 'clothed upon' hereafter, should leisure and memory serve. In the mean time, we must commend our 'Lover's Journal' to all shrinking, sensitive mortals, who, although 'head and ears in love,' seem utterly incapable of appreciating BYRON's undeniable argument, that 'brisk confidence the best with woman copes;' but rather, as Mr. YELLOWPLUSH observes, 'lay the flattering function to their souls' that she is to be won by whining and sighs. By the mass, not so!

Nor more grateful to his well-educated palate was the Black-fish, which, on a fine summer morning, he devoured with memorable gusto, between the rocks by the water's side, than are the intellectual entremets of the gentle 'JOHN WATERS' to our familiar taste! How skilfully he moves a horror, and produces affrightments, let the reader judge, who shall peruse the authentic story of The Iron Foot-step,' elsewhere in the present issue. Yet is not this a fair example of the writer's power. Does he place before you, with a few touches of his pencil, a portrait of a departed friend? How faithful and striking the delineation! Does he transcribe heart-records, or depict the affections? What a quantity of kindred thought and feeling he conveys to the reader! Does he dally with the Nine? What a tender regard they manifest for him, what time he traces his graceful fancies! No cumbrous and misplaced description; no disproportioned and injudicious ornament, mar the beauty of his poetry, or the clearness of his prose. He will ever be thrice welcome to these pages, which, judging from the past-and we have been one of his most attentive and eager readers- he can never fail to adorn. And here, in justification of our enthusiastic laud, let us introduce to the reader a brief passage from a defence by Mr. WATERS of a social practice, which, in the gradual desuetude of old observances, and since the introduction of foreign airs and graces among us, has begun to decline, with the ultra fashionables. Premising that our correspondent has been contending, with his accustomed skill, against the new practice of servants' carving at the side-board-fellows that cannot even tell the Pope's eye from Queen Elizabeth's bone, in a leg of mutton and handing round the mangled meats to the guests; while the host, solemn it may chance as a Herculaneum man, and in a lamentable state of worry, twirls his fingers beneath the table-premising, as we said, all this, let us pass to a burst of eloquent indignation, and a portrait of a sometime friend, whose fame, as a benevolent and tasteful operator, the world will not willingly let die:

Is it come to this, my masters! Is it to be imagined that guests are to be treated like capons? filled with undistinguishable food? The very corporate system altered and distended, without any participant exercise of the ethereal spirit? Is there to be henceforth no luxury of choice? No view of the chosen viand in its unity of form? No witness of partition? No allotment of the parts? No nice preparatory movement of the gustatory organs? No descent from the brain unto the palate? No appreciation? No apprehension? No analysis? No interchange of sympathy between two insolvable principles that ally man to the spiritual and the natural worlds, upon an occasion so vitally important to both? When writers and speakers now-a days would call the attention particularly to their subject, 'Here,' say they, is a matter which comes home to the business and bosom of every man who hears me:' but here, Mr. Editor, is a matter which lies

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