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WE have a

and families, and solicit your votes and interest at the forthcoming election." He was 'carried' triumphantly. FRANCIS,' who sends us the 'Sandusky (Ohio) Clarion,' containing a piece of patch-work entitled Mnemonics,' and signed NEMO,' may not be aware of the fact, but the article to which he calls our attention is a silly plagiarism from, or a very poor imitation of, 'OLLAPOD'S' Victim of a Proof-Reader,' and another kindred ' literary experiment' recorded in the pages of his 'OLLAPODIANA.' distant legal friend in our eye, a man of 'fair round belly, with good capon lined,' who will wipe a pair of laughing eyes under another pair, in the shape of gold spectacles, when he has perused the following anecdote: An attorney, about to furnish a bill of costs, was requested by his client, a baker, to make it as light as possible.' Ah!' replied the attorney, that's what you may say to your foreman, but it's not the way I make my bread.' THERE is in the last number of FRAZER'S London Magazine an excellent paper upon Decorative Painting' in private dwellings. The value of a pure taste in this regard is well set forth and enforced. In this country, as in England, interior decoration is becoming more and more appreciated every day. The emulation of the opulent has something to do with it, no doubt; but an increasing taste has more. Our town readers who may have had an opportunity of examining the rich and exquisitely-tasteful decorarations of Mr. GEORGE PLATT, (our chief metropolitan artist in this kind,) which are to be met with in the best and most recherché mansions of our own and sister cities, will recognize at once the social influence of a refined taste in our dwellings. Attention to graceful forms; to the harmonious relations of colors to each other, in hue, tint and shade; the avoidance of incongruous associations, that may offend the eye; the preservation of that bland consistency which is so agreeable to contemplate, and which fills the mind with such pleasurable sensations; these are apparent in all that we have seen from the competent hand of our accomplished artist. Who can enter a house in which chaste coloring is appropri ately distributed; 'warm, rich, and substantial for the dining apartment, light and cheerful for bed-rooms, cool and simple for the lobby and vestibule, grave for the library,' etc., without feeling that all this has scarcely less to do with the completeness of a dwelling than the grace and keeping of the rare architectural ornaments and devices themselves? And who can doubt the effect of the whole upon the taste, we had almost said the heart, of the possessor of such a mansion? We rejoice that an improved taste on the part of the public is producing an increased demand for the talent and skill of those who have been preeminently conspicuous in eliciting and enhancing it. ... WOULD it not be as well for some of our confectioners to change their poets? The 'mottoes' which one encounters now-a-nights are certainly not of the highest order of poetical composition.' To say that

'A pleasant sight it is to view

The ladies fair of our York-New,'

or to establish a self-evident proposition with

"There is nothing better a young man's credit for to save,

Than a sweet female companion throughout life for to ha-ave,'

WE

is a reflection upon the poetical genius of our great and mighty republic.' heartily and fully endorse the following remarks of a most competent contemporary critic. Mr. KNEELAND is one of the best sculptors in America: 'HORACE KNEELAND, the sculptor, has in his studio in the Granite Building, corner of Chambers-street and Broadway, two remarkably fine busts, which for integrity of expression are equal to any that we have seen by POWERS. They are of Professor MAPES and Captain ERICSSON: the first is in marble. Mr. KNEELAND only requires to be more extensively known, to be more fully employed. He should go to Rome, for the name of it; for his countrymen cannot bring themselves to believe that an American can attain to any thing like respectability in art without breathing the atmosphere of Italy.' .・・・ We have twice sat down with one of C. C. WRIGHT AND COMPANY'S matchless KNICKERBOCKER pens,' (unmatched at least save by their MINERVA's, which can't be beat,') to remonstrate with our Alabama cor

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respondent, on account of his non-fulfilment of a promise touching a certain critique which he had intended for our pages.' Send it on at once, unless otherwise appropriated. 'Don't let us speak to you twice!' WE welcome to the present number three or four additions to our unequalled corps of contributors, whose writings would reflect honor upon the pages of any magazine in christendom. The productions of ALBERT Pike, Esq. will find as grateful and ready admission to the KNICKERBOCKER as they have heretofore found to BLACKWOOD's Magazine; and they will win from our readers praise as cordial as that bestowed upon the writer's previous efforts by CHRISTOPHER NORTH. The Sketches of the Great West' will be found to compose a series of very attractive papers. They are from the 'pen of a ready writer,' familiar from boyhood with the scenes he describes. His 'paternal progenitor,' an author of no little reputation, is the gentleman who has known the Mississippi river ever since it was a small creek!' NED BUNTLINE's spirited Race on the Bahama Banks' will escape the attention of none who have read his previous sketches, Running the Blockade,' The Masked Ball,' etc. We shall always be gratified, as we are sure our readers will be, to hear from the author of The Ranger's Adventure.' The Walking Gentleman' opens well; and we can assure the reader that he will fulfil the promise of his spring.' Those who remember (and who does not?) The Young Englishman,' will need no incentive to peruse The St. Leger Papers,' which are in fact but a continuation of the same admirable series. The character and interest of the tale are foreshadowed in the chapters of the present number. Our town-readers will remember the Indian lovers, who were married at the American Museum some three or four years ago, and especially the handsome and affectionate bride, who now sleeps in the Greenwood Cemetery. Observe their counterparts, in the story of The Lost Fawn,' so simply and effectively told in preceding pages. It is a plain narrative of facts, from the pen of one who records, exactly as they occurred, events which took place as it were under his own eye. We shall hear often from the writer hereafter. Owing, as we infer, to severe weather at sea, the fifth number of the Letters from Cuba' has not yet been received by us. It will doubtless arrive in season for an early place in our April number. THERE is

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a capital paper in GRAHAM' for the present month, upon Egolism, and especially the egotism of authors. It is written in a free yet terse and sententious style, and sparkles with a felicitous collocation of words and sentences. We annex a single passage:

'As the monkey thinks its own offspring the most beautiful of created beings, so thinks the poorest bard of those sickly and ugly children of his brain, on whose miserable faces he has stamped his intellectual image. As far as the individual is concerned, a poor bard is as happy in his self-deceptive consciousness of fame, as those who possess it in reality. He wraps himself up very complacently in the cloak of his conceit, and hes down to pleasant dreams. Very delightful likewise is it, to see the sympathy which exists among small authors for each other, notwithstanding the many jealousies which tend to divide contemporaries in common-place. For the mediocre authors of the past, there is always a chosen clan of ink-wasters in the present to hold them in remembrance, however nameless they may be to the rest of the world. Thus we often observe the trite and mole-eyed antiquarian hunting among the dead and damned authors of remote periods, to gather precious morsels of mediocrity, which Time has mercifully rendered scarce, and then attempting to bully his ten readers into the conceit that they are priceless pearls. And we often see small reviewers standing like so many critical CANUTES, to roll back with their fiat the waters of Lethe, as they come rushing in to wash away all traces of authors whom the world is very willing to let die; or sending their voices into past time, to bid mouldering reputations burst their cerements, and revisit the glimpses of the moon. As deep crieth unto deep, so shallowness crieth unto shallowness, in all ages. If such be the strength of that love which knits common-place to common-place, how strong must be the parental love which links the common place writer to his own soul's progeny!'

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One of the most striking examples of lofty egotism is recorded of a Portuguese monarch, who said one summer's day, as he quietly enjoyed his siesta, and the disjointed images of things floated lazily through his little brain, that if the ALMIGHTY had consulted him in the creation of the world, he would have spared him some absurdities!' The NewYork American' afternoon journal has been united with the Morning Courier and Enquirer, the largest and most profitable daily newspaper on this continent. With such a corps of experienced editors as Messrs. WEBB, KING, DANIELS and RAYMOND, abundant capital, and indomitable enterprise, the Courier' will indeed become the Times' of Ame

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rica.' The Tribune' has arisen like a phoenix from its ashes, (we think this comparison has been used before, but are not certain!) and in new and handsome type at once resumes its place of honor among the daily journals, none of which exceed it in directness, vigor, variety, and other characteristics of a well-conducted and influential gazette. The 'New World,' under the direction of its new editor, Mr. CHARLES EAMES, meets with very general praise. It appears on new types, in the large quarto form, and contains every week an illustrated article, the engravings of which are truly admirable. We wish our contemporary that success which he labors so well to deserve.. THE few bright days of 'stormy March,' which seem stolen from summer, will be found abundantly prolific of kites; which, as usual every spring, will break out all over the metropolis, with a very alarming type,' and in every variety of color, shape, and size. Our old correspondent 'HARRY FRANCO' must not forget his promise to illustrate the advent of these wingéd couriers of the air' for our pages. We shall remember and reciprocate... THACKERAY, immortal

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as 'YELLOWPLUSH,' is PUNCH's travelling contributor in the East. He has already written from Greece, Turkey, and Egypt; and we shall doubtless next hear from him in Palestine. There were associations connected with Greece, which rendered it displeasing to the traveller. He always had his doubts, he says, about the classics, on account of the brutal manner in which they were beaten into him; and when he came to Athens, and found it a humbug, he hailed the fact with a sort of gloomy joy; and as he stood in the royal square, he cursed the country which had made so many thousands of little boys miserable. He was not very much struck with the Temple of THESEUS: When I say, quoting MURRAY'S guide-book, that it is a peripteral hexastyle, with a pronaos, a posticum, and two columns between the ante,' the commonest capacity can perfectly imagine the place. It is built of Pentelic marble, of the exact color and mouldiness of a ripe Stilton cheese, and stands upon an irregular ground of copper-colored herbage, with black goats feeding on it, and the sound of perpetual donkeys braying round about.' As for the modern buildings, the best of them, the royal palace, resembles Newgate white-washed, and stands on a mangy desert. His first impressions' of the Pyramids of Egypt are very Napoleonesque. After an exordium, in which he says he used the longest words he could find, because the occasion was great, and demanded the finest phrases the dictionary could supply, he explains the reason of his ornamental eloquence: On the nineteenth day of October, 1844, I pasted the great placard of Punch on the Pyramid of Cheops! I did it! If I die, it could not be undone. If I perish, I have not lived in vain.' He crossed the Nile two or three times on the shoulders of abominable Arabs, who take a pleasure in slipping, and in making believe to plunge you in the stream. When in the midst of it, the brutes stop and demand money of you; you are alarmed; the savages may drop you if you do not give; you promise that you will do so. The half-naked ruffians who conduct you up the pyramid, when they have got you panting to the most steep, dangerous and lonely stone, make the same demand, pointing downward while they beg, as if they would fling you in that direction on refusal. As soon as you have breath, you promise more money; it is the best way: you are a fool if you give it, though, when you come down.' THE wizzard tale of Dark ELLSPETH' will be concluded in our next. It is replete with varied incident, and is written in a style of rich 'poetical prose' which finds numerous admirers. The following papers, among others, are filed for immediate insertion: The Study of Natural History,' by the author of Europe in the Beginning of Eighteen Hundred Forty-Two,' an article in our May issue, for 1843, which will not have been forgotten by our readers; The ScalpHunter;' France,' by ALBERT PIKE, Esq.; Mater Dolorosa,' by 'J. F. C.'; 'Turkish Sketches,' 'The Holy Month Ramazan,' by our correspondent at Constantinople; ‘Seventh Ode of the Fourth Book of HORACE;' The Solitude of the Soul;'A Night's Adventure in Cuba' and a 'Chapter on Middies,' by NED BUNTLINE; Gossip of a Player,' and 'Stanzas on the Death of a Dear Child.' Several other communications in prose and verse are either filed for insertion, or await adequate examination. New Publications received after the fifteenth of the month, will be noticed in our next.

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LITERARY RECORD.- The Southern and Western Magazine and Review' is the title of a new monthly periodical, the first number of which was recently issued from the Charleston (South-Carolina) press of Messrs. BURGESS AND JAMES. 'Doctor SIMMS,' as a late contemporary magazine, the 'Orion,' terms the voluminous Southern writer, is to superintend its editorial department. The present subscription-list of the work we take to be made up from those of the 'Magnolia' and 'The Orion,' both of which publications are now among the things that were;' the editor of the 'last survivor' announcing, upon the cover of the new magazine, that his 'journal has met the fate of all Southern periodicals; his hopes have been disappointed, and plans ardently cherished and arduously prosecuted, utterly defeated;' a fact we regret to see recorded, for our friend RICHARDS' sake, whom we know to have been indefatigable in his endeavors to deserve well of his Southern readers. Having found leisure only to glance through the first paper of the Review,' we are not prepared to pronounce upon the merits of the new candidate for public approbation, farther than to say, that its neat appearance is much in its favor. Our contemporary, 'HARRY FRANCO,' who has had an opportunity of perusing the work more attentively, says of it in his journal: 'It professes to be a Southern and Western Review, and the first article in it is called Americanism in Literature,' which is chiefly remarkable for containing nothing in relation to that subject. Mr. SIMMS complains of the great amount of money which the South expends for Northern productions in art and literature, and of the small amount which the North pays for Southern works of a like class, probably not without good reason; and if he were earnest in his desire to produce a Southern magazine, he should, in his initial number at least, have filled his columns with the productions of Southern peus. The best things in the present number come from the North.' This latter charge should not be permitted hereafter to lie against our Southern contemporary. The Western Literary Journal,' (edited by our esteemed correspondent, E. Z. C. JUDSON, Esq., in connection with his able partner, Mr. HINE,) of which we have already spoken in terms of deserved praise, and which we hear is acquiring a wide circulation, we are glad to perceive is admirably sustained, as it should be, by the contributions of western writers. But to return to the Charleston magazine: We confess that we ourselves regard the editorial annotations of the first paper as exceptionable in point of style; being, to our eye, so diffuse and wordy as almost to cover up the argument of the writer. Mr. WASHINGTON IRVING, in one of his Crayon Papers' in the KNICKERBOCKER, speaking of the patriotic home influences of scenery, observes, that grand and noble natural objects ally themselves forever to the heart of childhood; they grow up with the soul, and unite themselves to it,' etc. Mr. SIMMS expresses a kindred thought much more magniloquently: His (the American boy's) whole soul must be imbued with sympathies caught from surrounding aspects within his infant horizon. The heart must be moulded to an intense appreciation of our woods and streams, our dense forests and deep swamps, our vast immeasurable mountains, our voluminous and tumbling waters. It must receive its higher moral tone from the exigencies of society, its traditions and its histories. Lessoned (?) at the knee of the grand-dame, the boy must grasp, as subjects of familiar and frequent consideration, the broken chronicles of senility, and shape them, as he grows older, into coherence and effect.' It will be contended by few persons, we may presume, that a style such as this is either forceful or felicitous. The general purpose, however, which is indicated by the editor, and adequately presented by the true-hearted American writer whom he reviews, and justly commends, is, as we have often contended, worthy of grave national consideration. There is an error of fact in the subjoined sentence: We take it for granted that we are not, in the scornful language of the European press, a mere 'nation of shop-keepers;' that we have qualities of soul and genius, which if not yet developed in our moral constitution, are yet struggling to make themselves heard and felt.' The editor builds much upon this alleged remark of the European press;' but the memorable compliment, to which reference is had, was passed between France and England, and was never di-rected to this country; or if so, when, and where? We wish our Southern contemporary entire success; and trust that the enterprising publishers will not appeal in vain to the South for that patronage which at least one periodical should command from a vast, fertile, and we have no doubt intellectual region. . THE HARPERs have issued a new edition, upon fine linen paper, with excellent engravings, of PRESCOTT'S FERDINAND and ISABELLA,' a work the reputation of which has long been thoroughly established. DICKENS' 'Chimes,' from the same house, have been ringing, since our last, all over the United States. This production has much of its writer's peculiar manner of description, whether of scene or individual character; yet it lacks the spirit and interest of that matchless performance, in its kind, the 'Christmas Carol.' Its lesson, however, is a wholesome one, and its biting satire well bestowed. How many Aldermen CUTES and Sir JOSEPH BOWLEYS could we count upon our fingers; men who can give, when their names as donors are to appear in printed

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reports; who can be ostentatiously officious of their services in reforming and charitable societies, where the fact is to be known and commented upon; and yet, who would refuse the most trifling temporary aid to a friend, or the smallest boon to a poor neighbor, which might fall short of the necessary blazon to the world. They are very 'prompt,' like Mr. BowLEY; their 'cash-books,' like that worthy functionary's, are always ready for service, either for entries or excuses; but like his, their hearts beat sluggishly beneath a frozen crust of transparent selfishness. How true is the remark of a benevolent modern essayist: The humble current of little kindness, which though but a creeping streamlet, incessantly flows; although it glides in sileut secrecy along the walks of private life, and makes neither noise nor appearance in the world; pours, in the end, a more bountiful tribute into the store of human comfort and felicity than any sudden and transient flood of detached bounty, however ample, that may rush into it with a mighty sound.' The HARPERS have also in press a complete edition of HALLECK's poems, beautifully executed, which has been long waited for, and which will speedily make way for a second edition. Mr. HALLECK's popularity has never for one moment abated. 'Number Forty-five of HARPERS' Library of Select Novels' contains The Regent's Daughter,' translated from DUMAS by C. H. TOWN. Esq. We hear the work spoken of in terms of high praise, but have not as yet found time and opportunity to read a line of it. That it is well rendered, the translator's name is a sufficient guaranty. . . . Ir is very rarely that we meet with a better number of a monthly publication than the last issue of the Yale Literary Magazine.' The papers upon Agriculture,' 'Moral Outlines of History,' and the 'Ramblings in Italy,' would do credit to works of far higher pretensions than one conducted by mere college-students. The number contains a view of a proposed Gothic-ish edifice for a college-library, a very effective colored wood-engraving of Yale College and Chapel in 1786.'... MESSRS. APPLETON AND COMPANY have published, in a large and well-printed volume, TAYLOR'S Manual of Ancient and Modern Hstory; revised, with an additional chapter on the United States, by Prof. C. S. HENRY, of the New-York University;' a luminous compend of the political characteristics, the exterior relations, and the internal condition of the world in all ages. ... THE second number of The American Review and Whig Journal,' devoted to politics, science, literature and art, has made its appearance. The very best thing in its pages is an unique, singularly imaginative, and most musical effusion, entitled The Raven.' We have never before, to our knowledge, met the author, Mr. EDGAR A. POE, as a poet; but if the poem to which we allude be a specimen of his powers in this kind, we shall always be glad to welcome him in his new department. We skipped the elaborate Result of the Election,' the fifty-four columns on 'ALISON'S History of Europe,' (a work which has been subject to treatment' for several months in foreign and native reviews and magazines,) and the long story of 'Jack Long,' which we had read under another title in the 'Democratic Review,' where it appears, by an unforeseen circumstance; but we did peruse the paper on Words,' and that on 'GOETHE'S Egmont,' with unusual pleasure. We hope that the article on 'Post-Office Reform,' notwithstanding its length, may find numerous readers; for it treats of a subject which deserves both special and general consideration. Six editorial pages are devoted to brief Critical Notices and a record of Foreign Literary Miscellany.' The 'Review' looks well, and promises to be well sustained, as indeed it should be, by the great political party to whose interests it is devoted. We wish our young contemporary all success. Macte Virtute! . . WE have received from Messrs. WILEY AND PUTNAM A Course of English Reading, adapted to every Taste and Capacity, with Anecdotes of Men of Genius;' by Rev. JAMES PYCROFT, of Trinity College, Oxford; with American additions, from the competent hand of J. G. COGSWELL, Esq.; and Rome, as seen by a New-Yorker,' a clear and most attractive picture of the Eternal City, and its numerous objects of interest.... WE write this without having seen S. MARGARET FULLER'S new work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century ;' but as the different 'forms' of the volume, were passing through the press of the printer of this Magazine, we heard enough of it read, in the proof-sheets, to be enabled to pronounce it a well-reasoned and well-written treatise. . . . A MR. ROCHIETTI, an Italian, has been making himself very ridiculous by writing and publishing a work upon this country in the English language. With fifty errors on every page of his own book, he complains elaborately of one or two alleged mistakes in HEADLEY's well-written and very entertaining volume, 'Italy and the Italians.' A pleasant sort of critic, certainly!... We have received from Mr. OLIVER DITSON, Boston, 'The Death of WARREN,' a national song, the music by DEMPSTER, which he sings with great sweetness and feeling. A very fine vignette, representing the well-known scene from TRUMBULL'S picture, appeals to the eye, as the music does to the heart. Sweet Home of my Childhood,' another of DEMPSTER's popular ballads, the music by his old friend and instructor, Mr. JOHN DANIEL, a gentleman to whose merits we recently adverted, and who needed only to be known, to be highly appreciated, has been sent us by the publisher, Mr. DUBOIS, Broadway.

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