"They first change your name, and then put a fib in your mouth.'-FREE TRANS.

'And if we cannot alter things,

At least we'll change their names, Sir.'

'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.-SHAKES.'

ADAMS, J. Q., IN VERS. DOGG. CON. JEFF,

name;'
fame.'

POTE DIVERSICULI: PASSIM.

'The cause of all charges of inaccuracy in this work, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, is attributable to a want of a knowledge of the correct spelling of the word sought for. You must know how to spell the name, else censure not the publisher, but yourself, if you do not find it. Mind this.' LONGWORTH'S DIRECTORY: ED. 1839.

Ir is a sad thing to be without a name! Beggar as I am, I am poor even in this cheapest of all cheap commodities; a thing not only to be had for the asking, but which, in nine cases out of ten is forced upon one, whether he will have it or no. The foundling picked up by the way-side, or left, wrapped in clean linen, at the door of a gentleman's mansion, has the whole fatherhood of the city to stand as his sponsors in baptism. And his god-fathers are generous. They give him a name that has a local habitation connected with it; that of a street or square; or mayhap, in consideration of his infantile promise, they invest him with the flowing dignity of a river, or the territorial consequence of an island. They are not checked and swayed by family interests and influences; the parents of half the unfortunate appellations imposed upon babes and sucklings. No wealthy bachelor uncle, Aminadab, Peleg, or Jehosaphat, nor spinster aunt, Grizzle, Abishag, or Patience, are at hand, to be coaxed out of their gold, by adopting their names, and transmitting them to posterity; consenting to take the bad burden, in consideration of divers stocks, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, thereby becoming rich and ridiculous for life. Nor are they confounded with the immense and indistinctive family of the John Smiths, and James Browns, and William Johnsons, many of whom, in their peculiar vocations of burglars, pirates, and murderers, have brought disgrace upon such of their respectable connexions as have neither been hanged, nor died in the state's prison. These are names which, as the vulgar phrase runs, are no names at all.'

Peter Schlemil had as good a shadow as any man living, but Peter lost it. What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!' was the mournfully poetical remark of Burke, who, in common with the rest of us, had the advantage, in shadow, of Peter Schlemil. Peter roamed about, like the Wandering Jew, in search of that which other folks affect to despise; proving thereby, that life without its shadows is as unnatural and poverty-stricken a state as life without its lights. "A pretty thing to run after!' says the grave moralist. Tell us, thou man of sanctity, are there no shadows in thine own philosophy? Is it the material world alone with which thou holdest converse? Are not our aspirations, hopes, yearnings, after brighter and better things,

shadows all? Hast no intellectual bantlings, no dream-children, born of thine own brain, that thou lovest to cherish? What future can there be to thee what great hereafter? Is there no gleam on the pathway of far-stretching years? -no bow of promise in the skies, arched and tinted by thine own mental handy work? What are shadows, but the soul's messengers, sent forth on errands of love and hope? Examine thine own heart, proud preacher! Even while thou art propounding lessons of wisdom, and virtue, and goodness, thy selfish breast is consoling itself with the reflection, that the world will quote thy words, long after thy lips are mute. Even now, thy heart is careering far and wide, over the infinite future, in a wildgoose chase after ten thousand shadows. Thou art a very wise man, and a virtuous, Sir Sage, but thou mayest learn a lesson even from an unlettered pupil. Beware of cant, and talk not of matters which it hath not been given thee to understand.

But Peter Schlemil's shadow was a shadow of a different kind; a material shadow, if the critics so please. If the heart grows to the most common things that it daily meets, is it strange that a man should contract a strong affection for his own shadow; an emanation from his own person; the constant companion of his daily walks; that sticketh to him closer than a brother, and is shut out from communion with him only by the earth that hides his coffin? The majestic sun, when throned in state at high noon, indeed stares it out of countenance, yet it is but for a moment. With this slight exception, it is ever at his side. It is with him in the busy mart. It runs with him over the hill-side, and stretches out in the slant rays of the declining sun, as if a Titan were stalking over the land. No wonder poor Peter searched for years for his lost companion.

Had Peter Schlemil never enjoyed the companionship of a shadow, he would have been comparatively a happy man. Had the unfortunate being who pens these lines, passed through his early years anonymously, he would neither have suffered sore tribulation, nor have written this article. Humble and unambitious, he would have travelled through life incog., and that too without desiring to imitate the example of many illustrious strangers, lords and lacquies, peers and prison-birds, ladies of the ton and the town, whose shrinking modesty, and unaffected desire of avoiding the gaze and applause of the public, have lead them to foreswear the acts of their god-fathers and god-mothers. The only consolation-if such it be- is, that we were not always nameless :

'Come what may, we have been blest!'

We once had a name, and we can prove it.

Alas! vain was the presence of the white-stoled priest, vain the attendance of generous friends, who were not ashamed of me, as, God wot, I am of every specimen of new-born baby humanity. And here let me say, by way of digression, that it puzzles me vastly to understand what there is about these helpless intruders into this breathing world, that people make such a fuss about them. To me, a puppy-dog of a month old is an infinitely more interesting object than a child of the same age. His first half-bold, half-fearful attempts

at a bark, are to me far more musical than the infant's shrill cry of pain; for a baby can't raise a laugh at that time of life. And then his playfulness, his frolic and waggery; his infinite love of mischief; his coaxing invitations to engage you to play with him; toddling to man as his first, best friend, and seeking to gain his confidence and protection by a thousand winning graces; his half-in-fun, half-inearnest experiments of the qualities of his teeth upon your person; his excess of good-nature, for puppies are always good-natured, which is by no means always the case with babies; who can resist them? May the hand raised to strike him, miss its aim, and encounter an object that will scrape its knuckles to the bone! May the foot raised to kick him, overreach its mark, and each particular toe be stubbed for its pains! And what is an infant at the time of life when puppyhood is most interesting? The personification of helplessness; a lactiverous animalcule;' an incarnate nonentity; a wonder that, in its utter weakness, it lives on from day to day. To conceive that such a little lump of helplessness will expand in bodily and mental strength, till it reaches the full stature and the wonderful powers of mature manhood; that it will send forth thoughts that will be the parents of new thoughts, quickening the action of other minds, sinking deep into the world's heart, winning its admiration, or forcing it into subjection to its mighty will, affecting for weal or wo the destiny of thousands, requires a reach of imagination to which the mind could not attain, were it not for the lessons of daily experience, which prove that such things have been, and will be. And then each stranger is welcomed with as much fuss and parade as if a new arrival of that character were a thing that happens but once in a century. For my own part, I have long since ceased to regard these things as novelties. But I have gone too far. I am uttering horrid heresies. Every fond papa and mamma in the land already regard me as dead to all the kind and gentle affections and sympathies. The anathemas of nurses, rising above the shrill squalling of babes and sucklings, pierce my ears. I confess my guilt. Mea culpa, mea culpa! Pity and pardon for the crime, or at least grant me the benefit of clergy! A poor, harmless, solitary bachelor am I. All my bantlings consist of a few brain-children, some of them dead to the world by this time; others stolen and disfigured by the gipsies of literature, and then claimed as their own; and others yet alive, but in rather a sickly state, (they all have a tendency to consumption, and I begin to think it is constitutional with them,) but none of them a charge upon the town, nor the inmates of any literary asylum- unless, mayhap, a few of the verse-boys may have got into the madhouse. Even as regards these, I indulge the fond hope that if they are crazy, they are harmless.

But as I said before, my friends were not ashamed of me upon that solemn occasion. (There is one advantage at least, in being an infant. You have friends then, sincere, heart-whole, generous friends.) Every formulary at the ritual was attended to; not a ceremony was omitted. I was fairly, honorably, legally, ecclesiastically, endowed with a name. The business of life commenced, and I had good endorsers, who chose to take upon themselves the burden of my infant sins; honest book-keepers, who engaged to write up my

accounts; ledger, day-book, blotter, and all; until I should arrive at man's estate, dissolve the partnership, and start in life, to traffic on my own account. As to the books they kept, that is their business. Alas for the dog-leaved, blotted, erased state of mine own, the originals from which copies are made into the book of fate, where there is no expunging, save when soft-eyed Mercy weeps out a black entry! Was there one of that group of friends who took me by my tiny hand, and bade me welcome by my new name, that could have imagined, for a moment, that the grave ceremony at which he was assisting, was no better than a solemn mummery; a thing done in play, like a child's christening a doll! Such of them whose names are still among the living, assure me, that there was no farce about the matter, but that it was an occasion of uncommon solemnity, interrupted only by a little light vocal music of my own, perhaps intended by way of interlude, and to relieve the otherwise sombre character of the ceremonies; and they are graciously pleased to say, that if my volunteer performances on that occasion did partake of levity, they kindly pardoned the ill-timed mirth, in consideration of my tender years, and my ignorance of the usages of society. But they regarded the christening as complete in all its moods and tenses, and they departed under the comfortable conviction that they had done a kind act to a weak brother, in giving him a good name, and helping him to a fair start in the world.

'But, Sir, look to the legislature, where names are bestowed under the highest authority in the land.' 'The courts are open to all,' said some one to Horne Tooke. 'So is the London Tavern open to all,' answered the shrewd agitator; but he who stops there, must pay.' Must I exhaust my small means in lobbying, and log-rolling, and making legislative bargains, to secure me that which is mine own? Must I so far exceed my power of face, as to look wise, shrug my shoulders, give out that I am in favor of a charter, with banking privileges, to encourage the last new invention; insinuate that I know what 's what,' have friends at court, and should there happen to be a vacancy in the office of fence-viewer, dog-inspector, or a sly mission to the Flat-head Indians, to induce them to emigrate beyond the Rocky Mountains, there's no telling whether some of these legislative dignitaries may not be placed in the way of promotion to these high honors? My soul revolts at it! Beside, should I not bow, and scrape, and promise in vain, how am I the gainer? If the legislature grants me all I ask, and publishes its high mandate to the world, what doth it profit me? My name is taken away by another man's adopting it. Can I make him cast it off? Will the chancellor enjoin him against using it? I charge not him with the crime, except perhaps as the receiver of pilfered goods. His god-fathers and godmothers were the nomenclatorial larceners, and he may well enough plead that he was no party to the first offence. He took the name in good faith, and that is a good plea against any usurious or fraudulent transaction on the part of unscrupulous principals. Beside, I could not prove that the principals stole my name. It is so common, that it can be picked up at every corner of the street.

'But change your name; the legislature can do that.' Hear me. As the first fond kiss of blest maternity over the first-born pledge of

trust and love; as the first prayer of the pilgrim Islamite at the prophet's tomb; as the star to the moth, the sun to the earth, the water-brook to the panting hart, the fountain to the river, the river to the sea; the first mint-julep of the season to a thirsty Virginian; the first fat office to a hungry politician; as each yearns for and clings to each, so cling I to my name. It is the immediate jewel of my soul,' and call it diamond, or paste, I've won it honestly, and I'll wear it through life.

Having been despoiled of my first name, I began to doubt whether I had any legitimate title to my second; in fact, whether there was, in reality, any good downright Saxon family, such as I supposed mine to be. I have the proud satisfaction to state, that on that score I am properly authenticated. We are all in the Doomsday Book, a baker's dozen of us. We held lands (great people we, in our day,) in Hautesc, and Benos, and Somerset, and Devensc, and Oxenfordsc, and Scrippsc, and divers other places ending with a c, and were it not that the Saxon pot-hooks, which describe the extent of our vast possessions, are to us untranslateable, (our education in that branch of dialectics having been somewhat neglected,) we might enlighten the anxious public as to the details of our tenure, the wonderful privileges we enjoyed, and other matters of general interest and importance.' We probably did good service as stout retainers to some baron bold, wet-nursing his pet quarrels, fighting when commanded, without troubling ourselves about the justness of the cause; paying round rents for the protection which he boasted he gave us, but which we in fact gave him, and occasionally amusing ourselves with a little free-booting, by way of variety, and to keep our hands in practice. Our name and pedigree are therefore as respectable as name and pedigree need be, especially in a republican country, where the respectability of the progenitors of a race-horse is considered of far higher importance than that of any ancestry merely human, though traced back to the dark ages. On that score we regard, and rightly too, all the past as one dark age, and look to each man as the Rodolph of his own house, the founder of his own name, and even that for himself alone.

An acquaintance, long in the same plight with ourselves, and who bore the manifold inconveniences and sufferings to which his unfortunate and undistinguishable name subjected him, with a sort of humorous resignation, suffered sore tribulation when his intimate friends gave him the wrong address. We take the liberty of copying one of his lamentations. It shows a ludicrous sadness, a painful trifling with a matter which half pestered his life out of him. There was one supernumerary letter, which nine out of ten of those who addressed him, would blunderingly add to his name, thus confounding it with that of others, pushing it into the common crowd, and depriving it of every thing like personal identity. Here it is:

SIR: Did you ever become intimately acquainted with a person, and after associating with him for a long time, astonish him by asking him to have the goodness to tell you his name? This has been the case with me several times; but I have such a wretched memory for names, that I sometimes forget my own. As to the spelling of it, I am becoming more and more perplexed every day. As I have not

VOL. XV.

62