know some citizens who act according to such advice, any way: The duties of life are two-fold: our duty to others and our duty to ourselves. Our duty to ourselves is to make ourselves as comfortable as possible: our duty to others is to make them assist us, to the best of their ability, in so doing. This is the plan on which all respectable persons act. Adhere strictly to truth-whenever there is no occasion for lying. Be particularly careful to conceal no one circumstance likely to redound to your credit. If it be for your interest to lie, do so, and do it boldly. No one would wear false hair who had hair of his own, but he who has none must of course wear a wig. A wig, you see, my young friend, is simply a lie with hair on it. I don't see any difference between false hair and a false assertion. In fact, I think a lie a very useful invention. It is like a coat or a pair of breeches: it serves to clothe the naked. But don't throw your falsifications away. I like a proper economy. Some silly persons would have you invariably speak the truth. Now if you were to act in this way, in what department of commerce could you succeed! How would you get on in the law, for instance? What vagabond would ever employ you to defend his cause? What practice do you think you'd be likely to pro. cure as a physician, if you were to tell every old woman who fancied herself ill that there was nothing the matter with her? Never break a promise unless bound to do so by a previous one: and promise yourself, from this time forth, never to do any thing that will put you to inconvenience. Be firm, but not obstinate. Never change your mind when the result of the alteration would be detrimental to your comfort and interests: but do not maintain an inconvenient inflexibility of purpose. Do not for example, in affairs of the heart, simply because you have declared, perhaps with an oath or two, that you will be constant till death, think it necessary to make any effort to remain so. The case stands thus: You enter into an engagement with a being whose aggregate of perfections is expressible, we will say, by 20. Now if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 194: the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing only in case of a change on the opposite side: you may very possibly become simply tired. In this case, a prior promise to yourself will absolve you from the performance of the one in question.' . . 'ATCHEE!-at-chu!' We have caught the 'Idfluedce!' That last was the sixteedth tibe we've sdeezed id five bidutes. We've been tryidg to si'g the followi'g so'g, but bade bad work edough of it:

Mutterings and Musings of an Invalid' is the designation of a new work from the press of Mr. JOHN S. TAYLOR. At first we were disposed to grumble at the title,

as not being suggestive of any very agreeable reminiscences; for of all beings, the society of a muttering invalid is least to be coveted: but on examining the Mutterings and Musings,' which form a handsome volume of nearly three hundred pages, we found much merit, many capital things well said, many beauties, and altogether a pleasant, readable book. The author leads his reader along, and keeps his attention gently excited. Although he has the modesty to conceal his name, we should judge him to be no unpractised writer; and if we have any fault to find with the book, it is with the title, which we hope, however, will deter no readers from buying it. The Belles of Tontine,' by 'T. H. C.,' is a clever piece of versification, but the iteration, in the course of some seventy lines, becomes wearisome. We judge that the annexed verses will satisfy the sentiment,' both at New-Haven and elsewhere:

.

In this city, in the palace,

Called the Tontine, kept by ALLIS,

Standing eastward of the Eden of the Green,
Dwells the Lady ELLEN-MARY,

Who is of her charms so chary

That opinions never vary

Of her beauty in Tontine;

All agreeing she is Belle of this Tontine

Cynosure of all the lesser lights that twinkle in Tontine.

But within this stately palace,

Called the Tontine, kept by ALLIS,

Standing eastward of the Eden of the Green,

Dwells another Lady MARY,

Of whose charms opinions vary,

Lovers talking quite contra-ry

Of her beauty in Tontine;

All agreeing she will do' for this Tontine,

But that Lady ELLEN-MARY is the Belle of this Tontine.

Thus within this stately palace,

Called the Tontine, kept by ALLIS,

Standing eastward of the Edea of the Green,

Dwell the two fair virgin MARIES,

Beautiful as two contra-ries

Can be, who are rival faeries

In their beauty in Tontine;

All agreeing each will 'do' for this Tontine

But that Lady ELLEN-MARY is the Belle of this Tontine.

'So, within this stately palace,

Called the Tontine, kept by ALLIS,

Standing eastward of the Eden of the Green,

Dwells the one with eyes of azure

Melting in her soul of pleasure,

Shedding love-light, without measure,

On her lovers in Tontine,

All agreeing she is Belle of this Tontine

Cynosure of all the lesser lights that twinkle in Tontine.

But within this stately palace,

Called the Tontine, kept by ALLIS,

Standing eastward of the Eden of the Green,

Shine the other's eyes all darkling,

With the love-light in them sparkling,

Darker brows above them circling

Making heaven in this Tontine;

Though they say that she will do' for this Tontine,

And that Lady ELLEN-MARY is the Belle of this Tontine.'

GOOD 'Sir Roger de Coverley!' Right glad are we to welcome, from the tasteful press of Messrs. TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS, Boston, a handsome fac-simile volume of these world-famed papers, collected and consecutively collated from 'The Spectator. That we have read them often our readers must know, for we have often quoted passages from them in this department of the KNICKERBOCKER: nor indeed can we take them up at any time, without a strong desire to renew the easy and pleasant task; so much sly humor, delicate satire, and true perception of the beau36

VOL. XXXVIII.

tiful and the good, do they contain. Even now, we must present Sir ROGER at church on Sunday:

'As Sir ROGER is Landlord to the whole Congregation, he keeps them in very good Order, and will suffer no body to sleep in it besides himself; for if by Chance he has been surprised into a short Nap at Sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees any Body else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his Servants to them. Several other of the old Knight's Particularities break out upon these Occasions: Sometimes he will be lengthening out a Verse in the Singing-Psalms, half a Minute after the rest of the Congregation have done with it; sometimes when he is pleased with the Matter of his Devotion, he pronounces Amen three or four times to the same Prayer; and sometimes stands up when every Body else is upon their Knees, to count the Congregation, or see if any of his Tenants are missing.

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old Friend, in the midst of the Service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and not disturb the Congregation. This John Matthews it seems is remarkable for being an idle Fellow, and at that time was kicking his Heels for his Diversion. This Authority of the Knight, though exerted in that odd manner which accompanies him in all Circumstances of Life, has a very good Effect upon the Parish, who are not polite enough to see any thing ridiculous in his Behaviour; besides that the general good Sense and Worthiness of his Character makes his Friends observe the-e little Singularities as Foils that rather set off than blemish his good Qualities.

As soon as the Sermon is finished, nobody presumes to stir till Sir ROGER is gone out of the Church. The Knight walks down from his Seat in the Chancel between a double Row of his Tenants, that stand bowing to him on each Side; and every now and then inquires how such an one's Wife, or Mother, or Son, or Father do, whom he does not see at Church; which is understood as a secret Reprimand to the Person that is absent.'

Sir ROGER is next contrasted with a neighboring Squire, who is always at odds with his patrons: 'In short, matters are come to such an extremity that the Squire has not said his prayers, either in public or private, this half year; and the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of the whole congregation!' WE must say a few words about The Opera. And our first remark is, that MARETZEK is a remarkable instance of the pursuit of music under difficulties. With the caprices of fashion and of public taste to deal with on the one hand, in a country where the fine arts are incidental rather than essential to society, he has contended, on the other, with the cabals, the animosities, the rivalries, and the wilfulness of a large body of artistes, some spoiled by praise, others pinched by poverty, not a few capable of the highest rôles on the European stage, and all conscious of the 'privilege of being independent' in a land where there are no gens d'armes to keep them in order, nor regal courts to sustain them. MAX,' for some years, has kept these discordant elements in a state of fusion; he has supplied the public demand for music at all seasons; his forte is to crystallize in happy union the versatile musical matériel afloat. Witness his present successful enterprise. Never, in our opinion, has there been so felicitous a combination of voices, talent and style on the Astor-place boards. There is STEFFANNONE, with her delicious notes evolved with a captivating facility; Bosio, the best cantatrice of her kind yet known on this side of the water; Pico, the only contralto that has ever satisfied the judicious; BADIALI, a baritone positively unequalled, or at least unexcelled; MARINI, an incomparable basso; BETTINI, a good tenor; with Benedetti, who is 'winning back his laurels,' and COSTINI, VIETTI, etc. To hear 'Norma,' ' Lucrezia Borgia,'' Lucia,'' La Favorita,' and other choice operas performed by such a corps well cast, and in good voice, is a musical treat seldom enjoyed abroad, and which promises for MAX' and the public a glorious season. We thought of this bit of verse the other morning, while reading in the Times' daily journal an account of a narrow-souled city doctor who declined to attend a poor woman who was in great danger, because he had 'not previously been consulted:'

'I'M called Doctor PILL, a medical quack,
But a quack of considerable standing and note;
I've clapped many a blister on many a back,

And crammed many a bolus down many a throat;
I've always stuck close, like the rest of my tribe.
And physic'd my patient as long as he'd pay:
And I say, when I'm asked to advise or prescribe,
You must wait till I'm called in a regular way

A WOULD-BE Correspondent, whose hand-writing is insufferable, wishes to write a series of papers for the KNICKERBOCKER upon The Upper Society of New-York. His manuscript was not improved by a fragment of pickle, the stain of a 'blob of brown soss,' as YELLOWPLUSH calls it, and yellow semi-circles, as from the dripping bottom of an ale-mug; but then his letter is sent from Fifth-Avenue!' Perhaps he 'keeps a door' there. If the prose is accepted, he will have a 'fine piece of poetry' for the same number. Such a literary repast as that would be like poor Power's 'leg o' nothin' and turnips' for dinner. WE understand that our friend Parson THOMAS BELL, the liveliest, wittiest and most illustrative auctioneer that ever lifted up his voice 'in the great congregation' of eager bidders in Gotham—our friend KEESE, (facile princeps) scarcely excepted-is about to embody, in his sales, a series of practical lectures upon auctioneering in general, with imitations of the more prominent metropolitan functionaries who call themselves 'salesmen.' There'll be sport! It will be worth any man's while, ay, or woman's either, who may desire to buy what 'Parson BELL' may advertise to sell, to step into his rooms at Number ten, North-William-street, and hear mock-auctioneering and PETER-FUNK-ism travestied with equal effect and good nature. . . . PART of the merit which belongs to the following ‘Complaint' is, that it is the complaint of the child-writer himself. Some credit will be awarded to him also, for the sententiousness and simplicity of his unpretending verse, not to speak of its natural pathos and feeling:

WE rather suspect that the following defence of the use without the abuse of wine will not meet the approbation of the 'total-teetotallers' of the day, but it is well enough to see what may be said on both sides of a question that has two sides. The passage is from a recent work entitled 'The Human Body, and its Connection with Man:'

IF wine is good to drink, it need not be drunk on pretexts. Men have drunk it from the beginning for that which is the best and the worst of reasons- because they like it. Wine maketh glad the heart of man;' there lies the fortress of its usage. To the wise, it is the adjunct of society; the launch of the mind from the care and hindrance of the day; the wheel of emotion; the preparator of inventive idea; the blandness of every sense obedient to the best impulses of the hours when labor is done. Its use is to deepen ease and pleasure on high-tides and at harvest-homes, when endurance is not required; for delight has important functions, and originates life, as it were, afresh from a childhood of sportive feeling, which must recur at seasons for the most of men, or motive itself would stop. A second use is to enable us to surmount seasons of physical and moral depression, and to keep up the life-mark to a constant level, influenced as little as po sible by the circumstances of the hour. Also to show to age, by occasions, that its youth lies still within it, and may be found like a spring in a dry land, with the thyrsus for a divining rod. A third use is to soften us; to make us kinder than our reason, and more admissive than our candor, and to enable us to begin larger sympathics and associations from a state in which the feelings are warm and plastic. A fourth use is to save the resources of mental excitement by a succedaneous excitement of another kind, or to balance the animation of the soul by the animation of the body, so that life may belasant as well as profitable, and the pleasure

be reckoned among the profits. A fifth use is to stimulate thoughts, and to reveal men's powers to themselves and their fellows, for in vino veritas, and intimacy is born of the blood of the grape. But is it not unworthy of us to pour joy's aid from a decanter, or to count upon circumstances' for a delight which the soul alone should furnish? Oh, no! for by God's blessing the world is a circumstance; our friends are circumstances; our wax-lights and gayeties likewise; and all these are stimuli, and touch the being within us; and where then is the limit to the application of Art and Nature to the soul? At least, however, our doctrine is dangerous; but then fire is dangerous, and love is dangerous, and life with its responsibilities is very dangerous. All strong things are perils to one whose honor's path is over hair-bredth bridges and along giddy precipices. A sixth use is to make the body more easily industrious in work-times. This is the test of temperance and the proof of the other uses. That wine is good for us which has no fumes, but which leaves us to sing over our daily labors with ruddier cheeks, purer feelings, and brighter eyes than water can bestow. The seventh use is, in this highest form of assimilation, to symbolize the highest form of communion, according to the Testament which our SAVIOUR left, and to stand on the altar as the representative of spiritual truth. All foods feed the soul, and this on the principles of a universal symbolism: this then is the highest use of bread and wine, to be taken and assimilated in the ever-new spirit of the kingdom of heaven.'

'SPEAKING of beautiful Greenwood,' writes a metropolitan friend, ‘reminds me of a scene I once witnessed in Broadway. A drunken Irishman was driving an empty hearse down that noisy gay thoroughfare: on his face was an idiotic laugh, and he leered at each person on the side-walk whose eye he could catch, while he held up his finger in true omnibus style, and cried, 'Ride down? right down! ride down?' Some met his glance with a shudder, some with a laugh, some with a frown; but they all passed on, with more serious faces, at sight of the ghastly carricature. Behind the hearse were boys running and shouting, as if they were imps in the wake of Death. He probably reached the South Ferry without a fare.' .. THERE is a sublime touch of the burlesque in the indolent Hibernian cockney's 'Lay of the Lazy! He is in love, but not quite in a marrying condition. He closes as follows:

'I've earned at times a pound a week;

Alas! I'm earning nothing now:

Chalk scarcely shames my whitened cheek!
Grief has ploughed furrows in my brow.

I only get one meal a day,

And that one meal-O GOD!-my tea: I'm wasting silently away,

But I have not forgotten thee!

'My days are drawing to their end:
I've now, alas! no end in view;

I never had a real friend;

I wear a worn-out, black surtout:
My heart is darkened o'er with woe;
My trousers whitened at the knee;
My boot forgets to hide my toe,
But I have not forgotten thee!'

Our friend PUTNAM might assist this deploring and deplorable writer by sending him that clever book, A Lift for the Lazy! The New-York Medical Times,' edited by J. G. ADAMS, M. D., is a new medical journal which promises well, to judge from the beginning. The present number is well made up, and contains original articles of interest from the pens of Drs. W. H. VAN BUREN, J. T. METCALF, GURDON BUCK, and others; hospital reports, bibliographical and editorial notices, etc. Among the latter are some very interesting Medical Gleanings from the Arctic Expedition,' by Benjamin Vreeland, M. D., United States' Navy. The Times' is · published monthly. . . . You do not often come across such gems of poetry as the following,' writes a western correspondent, the genuine productions of a Waukesha (Wisconsin) farmer. Hear his address 'To a Dew-Drop:'

"THE gentle moistening dew-drop,

So refreshing to the thirsty crop;
Gem of the opening day

Sparkling in the morning ray.'

And then he gives us what I suspect proves him a transplanted shrub from the 'Vaterland' of song and Dutchmen :

'No more to the thankless monarch I vow,

No more to the lordly my hat raises to an unreturned bow;

No more do I labor like a Russian serf,

My produce to be consumed by the lordly on earth.

By the sweat of my brow,

With the help of mine frow,

And my sinewy arm,

I cultivate my farm.