[I HAVE observed, reader (bene- or male- | siderate those eyes of Aristarchus, "whose volent, as it may happen), that it is cus- looks were as a breeching to a boy." tomary to append to the second editions of Then do I perceive, with vain regret books, and to the second works of authors, of wasted opportunities, the advantage short sentences commendatory of the first, of a pancratic or pantechnic education, under the title of Notices of the Press. since he is most reverenced by my little These, I have been given to understand, subjects who can throw the cleanest sumare procurable at certain established rates, merset or walk most securely upon the The story of the Pied payment being made either in money or revolving cask. advertising patronage by the publisher, or Piper becomes for the first time credible by an adequate outlay of servility on the to me (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners Considering these dating their legal instruments from the part of the author. things with myself, and also that such period of his exit), as I behold how those notices are neither intended, nor generally strains, without pretence of magical pobelieved, to convey any real opinions, be- tency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor ing a purely ceremonial accompaniment of leave to the pedagogic an entire self-conliterature, and resembling certificates to the trol. For these reasons, lest my kingly virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, I prerogative should suffer diminution, I conceived that it would be not only more prorogue my restless commons, whom I After economical to prepare a sufficient number follow into the street, chiefly lest some of such myself, but also more immediately mischief may chance befall them. subservient to the end in view to prefix the manner of such a band, I send forward them to this our primary edition rather the following notices of domestic manufacthan await the contingency of a second, ture, to make brazen proclamation, not when they would seem to be of small util- unconscious of the advantage which will ity. To delay attaching the bobs until the accrue, if our little craft, cymbula sutilis, second attempt at flying the kite would shall seem to leave port with a clipping indicate but a slender experience in that breeze, and to carry, in nautical phrase, a Nevertheless, I have useful art. Neither has it escaped my bone in her mouth. notice, nor failed to afford me matter of chosen, as being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently objurgatory, reflection, that, when a circus or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial step that readers of every taste may find a dish to their palate. I have modelled them is to send forward large and highly ornamented bills of performance to be hung in upon actually existing specimens, prethe bar-room and the post-office. These served in my own cabinet of natural curioshaving been sufficiently gazed at, and be- ities. One, in particular, I had copied with ginning to lose their attractiveness except tolerable exactness from a notice of one for the flies, and, truly, the boys also (in of my own discourses, which, from its suwhom I find it impossible to repress, even perior tone and appearance of vast experiduring school-hours, certain oral and tele-ence, I concluded to have been written by graphic communications concerning the expected show), upon some fine morning the band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and with noisy advertisement, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, makes the circuit of our startled Then, as the exciting village streets. sounds draw nearer and nearer, do I de

a man at least three hundred years of age, though I recollected no existing instance of such antediluvian longevity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author to be a young gentleman preparing for the ministry under the direction of one of my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom I had once instinctively corrected in a

Latin quantity. But this I have been forced to omit, from its too great length. -H. W.]

We hail the

From the Dekay Bulwark.

We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such an opportunity as is presented to us by "The Biglow Papers" to pass by without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas! too common) at demoralizUnder a wretched ing the public sentiment. mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless

From the Universal Littery Universe. Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader. Under a rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to the memory and engraven on the heart of every moral and social being. We consider this a unique performance. We hope to see it soon introduced into our common schools. Mr. Wilbar has performed his duties as editor with excellent taste and judg-ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is ment..... This is a vein which we hope to time that the respectable and religious portion see successfully prosecuted. of our community should be aroused to the appearance of this work as a long stride toward alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansthe formation of a purely aboriginal, indige- culottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof nous, native, and American literature. We reof the wide-spread nature of this contagion, joice to meet with an author national enough that these secret stabs at religion and virtue to break away from the slavish deference, too are given from under the eloak (credite, posteri !) common among us, to English grammar and of a clergyman. It is a mournful spectacle inorthography. Where all is so good, we deed to the patriot and Christian to see liberare at a loss how to make extracts. On ality and new ideas (falsely so called, they the whole, we may call it a volume which no are as old as Eden) invading the sacred prelibrary, pretending to entire completeness, cincts of the pulpit. On the whole, we should fail to place upon its shelves. consider this volume as one of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the late French "Revolution" (!).

From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle.

A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve them !) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves of Vallumbrozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the combined heads of author and editor. The work is wretchedly got up. We should like to know how much British gold was pocketed by this libeller of our country and her purest patriots.

From the Oldfogrumville Mentor.

We have not had time to do more than glance through this handsomely printed volume, but the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty for the worth of its contents. The paper is white, the type clear, and the volume

In

of a convenient and attractive size.
reading this elegantly executed work, it has
seemed to us that a passage or two might have
been retrenched with advantage, and that the
general style of diction was susceptible of a
higher polish. . On the whole, we may
safely leave the ungrateful task of criticism to
the reader. We will barely suggest, that in
volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration
of a provincial dialect and turns of expression,
a dash of humor or satire might be thrown in
with advantage.
The work is admirably
got up.....
This work will form an appro-
priate ornament to the centre-table. It is
beautifully printed, on paper of an excellent
quality

Full

From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive
Tocsin (a try-weakly family journal).
Altogether an admirable work.
of humor, boisterous, but delicate, of wit
withering and scorching, yet combined with a
pathos cool as morning dew,-of satire pon-
derous as the mace of Richard, yet keen as the
scymitar of Saladin.. . . A work full of
mountain-mirth," mischievous as Puck, and
lightsome as Ariel... We know not whether
to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive
concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy,
weird imagination, and compass of style, at
once both objective and subjective.

We

might indulge in some criticisms, but, were the
author other than he is, he would be a different
being. As it is, he has a wonderful pose, which
flits from flower to flower, and bears the reader
irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Gany-
mede) to the "highest heaven of invention."
We love a book so purely objective.
Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an
extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity.
. In fine, we consider this as one of the
most extraordinary volumes of this or any age.
We know of no English author who could have
written it. It is a work to which the proud
genius of our country, standing with one foot
on the Aroostook and the other on the Rio
Grande, and holding up the star-spangled ban-
ner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of
worlds, may point with bewildering scorn of the
punier efforts of enslaved Europe. .
We
hope soon to encounter our author among those
higher walks of literature in which he is evi-
dently capable of achieving enduring fame.
Already we should be inclined to assign him a
high position in the bright galaxy of our Ainer

ican bards.

From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom.

A volume in bad grammar and worse taste. While the pieces here collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the corners of obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must expect the lash he so richly Contemptible slanders. Vilest Billingsgate.. Has raked all the The most pure, gutters of our language. upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant venom. General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies. The Reverend Homer Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth.

merits..

From the World-Harmonic-Eolian-Attachment.

legeretous elderly gentleman, with infinite fac ulty of sermonizing, muscularized by long practice, and excellent digestive apparatus, and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own. To him, there, "Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam," our Hosea presents himself as a quite inexplicable Sphinxriddle. A rich poverty of Latin and Greek,so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic through horn-lensed editorial spectacles, -but naught farther? O purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are things in him incommunicable by stroke of birch! Did it ever enter that old bewildered head of thine that there was the Possibility of the Infinite in him? To thee, quite wingless (and even featherless) biped, has not so much even as a dream of wings ever come? "Talented young parishioner "? Among the Arts whereof thou art Magister, does that of Speech is silver silence is golden. No ut- seeing happen to be one? Unhappy Artium terance more Orphic than this. While, therefore, as highest author, we reverence him whose Magister! Somehow a Nemean lion, fulvous, torrid-eyed, dry-nursed in broad-howling sandworks continue heroically unwritten, we have wildernesses of a sufficiently rare spirit-Libya also our hopeful word for those who with pen (it may be supposed) has got whelped among (from wing of goose loud-cackling, or seraph the sheep. Already he stands wild-glaring, with God-commissioned) record the thing that is refeet clutching the ground as with oak-roots, vealed. Under mask of quaintest irony, gathering for a Remus-spring over the walls of we detect here the deep, storm-tost (nigh ship- thy little fold. In Heaven's name, go not near wracked) soul, thunder-scarred, semi-articu-him with that flybite crook of thine! In good late, but ever climbing hopefully toward the time, thou painful preacher, thou wilt go to the peaceful summits of an Infinite Sorrow. Yes, thou poor, forlorn Hosea, with Hebrew appointed place of departed Artillery-Election Sermons, Right-Hands of Fellowship, and Refire-flaming soul in thee, for thee also this life sults of Councils, gathered to thy spiritual of ours has not been without its aspects of fathers with much Latin of the Epitaphial sort; heavenliest pity and laughingest mirth. Conceivable enough! Through coarse Thersites- thou, too, shalt have thy reward; but on him the Eumenides have looked, not Xantippes of cloak, we have revelation of the heart, wild- the pit, snake-tressed, finger-threatening, but glowing, world-clasping, that is in him. Brave- radiantly calm as on antique gems; for him ly he grapples with the life-problem as it sents itself to him, uncombed, shaggy, careless paws impatient the winged courser of the gods, of the "nicer proprieties," inexpert of elegant champing unwelcome bit; him the starry deeps, diction," yet with voice audible enough to the empyrean glooms, and far-flashing splenwhoso hath ears, up there on the gravelly sidehills, or down on the splashy, indiarubber-like salt-marshes of native Jaalam. To this soul also the Necessity of Creating somewhat has unveiled its awful front. If not dipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine Comedies, if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay all; for what truly is this which we name All, but that which we do not possess? Glimpses also are given us of an old father Ezekiel, not without paternal pride, as is the wont of such. A brown, parchmenthided old man of the geoponic or bucolic species, gray-eyed, we fancy, queued perhaps, with much weather-cunning and plentiful September-gale memories, bidding fair in good time to become the Oldest Inhabitant. After such hasty apparition, he vanishes and is seen no Of "Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M., Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam," we have small care to speak here. Spare touch in him of his Melesigenes namesake, save, haply, the -blindness! A tolerably caliginose, nephe

more..

pre

dors await.

From the Onion Grove Phonix.

A talented young townsman of ours, recently returned from a Continental tour, and who is already favorably known to our readers by his sprightly letters from abroad which have graced our columns, called at our office yesterday. We learn from him, that, having enjoyed the distinguished privilege, while in Germany, of an introduction to the celebrated Von Humbug, he took the opportunity to present that eminent man with a copy of the "Biglow Papers." The next morning he received the following note, which he has kindly furnished us for publication. We prefer to print it verbatim, knowing that our readers will readily forgive the few errors into which the illustrious writer has fallen, through ignorance of our language.

"HIGH-WORTHY MISTER!

"I shall also now especially happy starve, because I have more or less a work one those aboriginal Red-Men seen in which have I so deaf an interest ever taken full-worthy on the self shelf with our Gottsched to be upset. "Pardon my in the English-speech un-prac. "VON HUMBUG."

tice!

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