these 'gentlemen of the old school' are the perfection of form and ceremony 'B,' said our friend Governor SEWARD one morning, in our hearing, at the Executive Chamber in Albany, 'where is ? Isn't he coming up?' 'Yes,

I think he will be in before long: I left him making a bow as I came out of the room!' The Governor took his segar out of his mouth, and much 'lafture' ensued 'at the time,' we remember. Ir is nineteen years since the following was sent us, in a distinguished cacography, by 'I. C. F.,' of Kensington, near Philadelphia. It was mislaid among some filed letters, and it now emerges for the first time from its pigeon-hole of the past. The writer says: 'I met with the fol lowing poem in an old number of the Analectic Magazine, sometime published in Philadelphia, by Master MOSES THOMAS. The first part is said to be an old composition, by an unknown hand. The second part was written by Mr. RALPH ERSKINE, a celebrated Dissenting minister of Dunfermline -a man of piety, learning, and genius. I make no doubt, their quaintness and originality will amuse many of your readers, to most of whom, I presume they are strangers.' We remember, as a boy, reading the 'First Part' of the poem, but we have never before encountered the second. Snatches of the first, 'poor POWER' used to sing, with touching effect, in his own play of 'St. PATRICK'S Eve,' in a scene which ,ccurs the night before his anticipated execution, by command of FREDERICK the treat, Old FRITZ:'

Smoking Spiritualized.

If the friend be extant to whom we were indebted for this ingenious and quaint production, he will please accept our late yet hearty thanks for his 'esteemed favor,' so long delayed. 'AN inveterate reader of the KNICKERBOCKER' writes from Fort Vancouver, (W.T.,) under date of March 27, as follows: 'In these dim and distant solitudes, your 'EDITOR'S Table' is always more welcome than 'flowers in May.' Much do I admire the jottings and etchings of the 'Little People,' given by our dear 'Old KNICK.' Some years ago I happened, by invitation, to be at the hospitable residence of 'Col. JACK H—,' on the Colorado River, in Texas, some distance below Austin, the capital of that State. The Colonel once was the best lawyer and 'whole-souldest' gentleman to be found in all that region; but not particularly 'given' to piety. His wife, on the contrary, was a very religious and admirable lady, and strove successfully to impress upon the minds of her children those holy teachings, which are so hard to forget in after-years. Among their little group of 'wingless angels,' was a 'Four-year Old,' who at the time of which I am writing, passed all his days in efforts to capture one of the myriads of sand-hill cranes, which at that season of the year very much 'congregate' in a large field in the ‘Colorado bottom,' immediately in front of the Colonel's residence. So repeated and pertinacious had been his efforts to this end, that the cranes became used to it; and he could do every thing except catch one. One evening about sundown, he came home, weary and soiled, from another day of unsuccess. When his clothes had been changed and his face washed, he clambered upon the Colonel's knee, (we were sitting on the piazza, enjoying the fresh 'south wind,' that came 'stealing' up the Colorado, from the Mexican Sea, and watching just such a sunset as no one ever saw elsewhere than in Texas,) and asked him if what his mother had told him about good boys going to heaven was true? The Colonel, surprised and somewhat moved at the serious expression of the child's countenance, told him it was, and that every thing his mother told him was the truth. Then, pa,' said he, 'do n't they turn to angels?' 'Yes,' replied the Colonel. 'Then they have wings?' 'Of course,' said the Colonel; 'if your mother told you so, yes.' 'Then I will be a good boy,' said our hero, with that indescribable look of solemnity which you sometimes see on the faces of the young; 'and I will die, and go to heaven, and be an angel, and have wings.' 'Why, why?' asked the father, now positively affected by the deportment of the infantine little fellow. 'Because,' said he, if I had wings, I could catch a crane!' I wish you to understand this is an actual, unvarnished fact.' 'ALEXANDER MCPHERSON,' writes a Penn Yan, Yates County correspondent, was a man of talent, but 'slightually' addicted to things spiritual; and he became at the last fearfully regardless of his toilet. He had worn for a long time a 'shocking bad hat;' and upon entering ELLSWORTH'S Store, in Penn Yan, one day, the proprietor proposed 'donating' to him a new one, provided he would extemporize in verse a few lines upon 'the hat aforesaid.' He immediately 'made right out of his head' the following:

'My old hat

Well, what of that?

It's as good as the rest of my raiment :
If I should buy a better,

You'd set me down debtor,

And send me to jail for the payment.'

A 'swart sombrero, or glossy four-and-nine, to storm impermeable,' manufactured in the rural districts, was surely earned upon the occasion, by this muddled village bard. Let us hope, for the honor of the 'proprietor' aforesaid, that it was as surely paid:

'MR. ALEXANDER MCPHERSON,
A most extraordinary person,'

evidently, in his neighborhood, we trust appears daily in the thoroughfares thatched with his renovated beaver- the 'reward of Genus.' Apropos of the name of 'Penn Yan,' the town whence this anecdote comes. The village was first started by an equal number of Pennsylvanians and Yankees. The latter wanted a Yankee name, the former a Pennsylvania one. After much dispute, and many severe tempests in agitated tea-pots, the disputants agreed to 'split the difference,' and come to a compromise. They adopted, by an unanimous vote, the first syllable in each proposed derivation: 'Penn Yan;' and 'Penn Yan' it remains, even unto this day. And how much better this is, than the ridiculous classical names given by SurveyorGeneral DE WITT to many of the towns in Central New-York: we could stand, upon a clear day, on the top of the 'house where we were born,' and with a good glass, look into Pompey, Tully, Homer, Dryden, Fabius, Marcellus, Camillus, Manlius, and Syracuse; while Cato, Scipio, Sempronius, Lysander, and three or four other 'mighty an-cient' folk, were near neighbors! How much better would have been the musical Indian names ! 'I THINK with you, Mr. EDITOR,' writes

a Michigan correspondent, that amidst the grotesqueness of the quoted passage from the eccentric Dr. RICHARDSON's Bayard Taylor Comet, there is, in one verse at least, a certain sort of celestial 'grandeur.' The

is very JOB-ish: and this questioning of the Comet, as to his 'experiences' while on his travels, 'when you come to think of it,' has much more in it, than meets the eye, upon a skimming perusal :

'WHAT hast thou seen, old BLazing Star,
While rushing on thy flaming way?
Have SUNS expired beneath thy gaze,
And smitten Sparks blazed into Day!'

Taken out of their 'disjointed connection,' there are very many striking things in the verses of poor MCDONALD CLARKE, one of the most gentle, harmless, confiding of men. Every body remembers his simile of the 'curtain of the night rolled up and pinned with a star: ' and let your readers at 'Old Newport' (how different now from the Newport of old!) be assured that the two lines which follow were, ' in my day' on the Narragansett, exactly descriptive of the place:

"'Tis an old town, fenced by the Surge,
And left alone for a hundred years?'

At that time, as was once forcibly remarked by a Massachusetts Yankee, they 'built all old houses in Newport:' almost a fact; for one month after 'bathing' in the salt sea-air of the old town of Newport, a new-built house underwent as complete a metamorphose in color as a New-York belle now does, in visiting it 'in the season,''

Vol. LIV.

AUGUST, 1859.

No. 2.

To

point,' good reader, we beg to call your attention to the wee bit map which forms the

tail of our frontispiece. This

map we have taken from actual survey of the performance of competent topographers. It represents the fag-end of the renowned

State of New-Jersey - that extreme southern point, at which the waters of the great Delaware Bay and of the greater Atlantic shake their briny hands. Now, taking into consideration the very patent fact that New-Jersey is not in proverbial estimation the latitude of all others to which a well-posted guide might be expected to direct his tourist, it may be a matter of surprise that we should not only bid him to the very region, but even to the littlest end thereof. We do so bid him, and we do it boldly, like General Jackson 'taking the responsibility,' in our firm conviction that the result will prove us to know exactly what we are about. This question we consider, indeed, to be at once settled, with the bare intimation that the neighborhood of which we are speaking is none other than that most charming of ocean summer resorts and watering-places, that famous refuge from the heat and dust of the weary city-the beach at Cape May.

The country here is, we admit at the start, as flat as any flounder in the sea, and as destitute of all attraction of changing hill and dale and forest glade as a low, sandy coast is apt to be; but it has yet most marvellous natural beauties of its own, in the possession of which, other characteristics may, for a change at least, well be spared.

Once upon a time, when waiting upon a forlorn mountain-top for the