public. We suggested, not long since, that a simplification of the nomenclature of the law would not be amiss; and we ventured to offer a few arguments in support of that position. We are quite of the opinion that a similar simplification of Medical Nomenclature would prove of service to the masses. We have sometimes seen the necessity of this very ludicrously illustrated. Very much confounded was our friend Doctor DOANE, a few years since, by a remark of one of his patients. The day previous, the Doctor had prescribed that safe and palatable remedy, the syrup of birch-thorn,' and had left his prescription duly written in the usual cabalistic characters: Syr. Rham. Cath.' On inquiring if the patient had taken the medicine, a thunder-cloud darkened her face; lightning flashed from her eyes; and she roared out: 'No! I can read your doctor-writing- and I aint a-goin to take the Syrup of Ram-Cats for any body under GoD's heaven!' 'Hence we view the great necessity there is' of a material change in our medical nomenclature. THERE is a small class of 'entertainers,' if such they may be called, who have a very mistaken idea of what constitutes true hospitality. We have heard of some 'hospitable' tables in this town where it is made a sine qua non that a guest on his initiation shall be 'drank under the table;' and no man who is not carried home on a shutter is entitled to a subsequent place at the board of his host. We are struck with an illustration of the true nature of such enforced 'hospitality,' which we find in a review of the Life of MARION:''He was not present when the city surrendered. He had marched in from Dorchester when his services were needed, but an accident removed him and preserved him for greater achievements. Dining with some friends in Tadd-street, the host, through a blind hospitality, turned the key upon his guests, that they might not escape until gorged with wine. MARION was a temperate man, and resolutely raised the window and let himself out upon the pavement. The fall, from the second story, cost him a broken ankle. The injury was severe, and disabled him for many months. He left the city in a litter, according to the orders of LINCOLN, for the departure of 'all officers unfit for duty.' He retired to his residence in St. John's parish. His mental and bodily sufferings while thus confined can be imagined.'. MOST persons have heard perhaps of the direction given by a gawk to a traveller: You go down this road, till you come to Squire JONES' house, which always stands by a little yaller dog.' An amusing continental traveller-who was so 'indifferent' to natural scenery that he rode around the lake of Geneva in a char-à-banc, with his back to the lake - adopts a similar transposition. He tells us that the German universities are always placed at the seats of celebrated beer!' The French traveller in Scotland, who reported that at every village they kept relays of dogs to bark the feeble coach-horses on toward the next one, did not awaken more ludicrous associations. The continental gentleman might as well have assumed, from a little circumstance of which he makes mention, that there prevails in Italy a universal taste for wine with a fly in it; for he tells us that they never put corks into their wine-bottles; and that consequently the neck of the bottle for several inches becomes quite full of flies. When I poured out some wine into my glass, perhaps a hundred drowned flies came out with a small quantity of liquor, like currant-sauce for roast pig.'. . It was a sad thing for the early admirers of STERNE'S 'Sentimental Journey' to be obliged to revise their opinion of its author. They were unwilling to believe that while he was writing so feelingly upon an imprisoned bird, and sympathizing so warmly with a dead ass, he could have been in the habit of grossly ill-treating his wife and family at home. Some such feeling came over us, while reading WORDSWORTH'S remonstrance, in a late London journal, against the construction of a rail-road through the beautiful lake-district of England. The love of his kind, the interest which he feels for the PETER BELLS around him, seems to be something more than questionable, when we find him contending that no good is to be obtained by transferring uneducated persons in large bodies' to see the lake scenery of England. They cannot have acquired the proper educated habit' of observing and studying such scenes. The tempting of artisans, laborers, and the humbler classes of shop-keepers, to ramble to a distance,' to look upon Nature in her loveliest forms and moods,' it seems a thing not to be thought of.

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Such is the difference between preaching and practice. The London Spectator' weekly journal, adverting to this evidence of WORDSWORTH's real character, remarks, that it raises unpleasant notions, and will form unwelcome materials for the immortal bard's future biographer.' It is a little amusing to see the earnestness with which some of the London journalists go about to fortify the argument' that the lower orders' are really capable of feeling and enjoying the beauties of nature and of art. A crowd of people, we are gravely informed, although,'as is pointedly mentioned, 'poor and humble in exterior,' while examining The Mourners,' a group of statues exhibited at Westminster-Hall, were affected to such a degree, that tears coursed down their rough and care-worn cheeks!' Indeed! Who would have thought it possible! . . . We have already encountered one or two parodies upon Mr. POE's Raven,' but have seen nothing so faithful to the original, nor so well executed in all respects, as one which has been sent us, entitled The Black Cat.' The lines purport to have 'slipped from the hat of a wild-looking young man, as he rushed from the door of a respectable house in one of our inland towns. It only serves to show the effect upon country minds of so large an amount of pokerishness' as was contained in the poem alluded to.' We subjoin a few stanzas:

WHEN at midnight gently dozing, on my humble couch reposing,
Now and theu my eyelids closing, in unconscious dreamy thought,
All at once I heard a scratching, as of something lightly catching
At the casement's fastened latching, as if it an entrance sought:
Scratching, catching at the latching, as if it an entrance sought.
'Is it aught or is it naught?

Then said I, with whispered wonder, 'What in thunder! what in thunder!
Is this something, whose faint scratches I have thus distinctly caught!
But I was n't much enlightened, and growing somewhat frightened,
And my fears becoming heightened, as against my fears I fought,

I determined to determine, while against my fears I fought,

Whether it was aught or naught.

Then I felt a little better, and my fears dropped like a fetter
From my spirit, upon which they thus so potently had wrought;
But I waited half a second, for in truth I rather reckoned
That the ghost of CARLO beckoned, and his ancient quarters sought,
CARLO, gentle CARLO beckoned, and his cushioned cover sought,
CARLO, ne'er by me forgot.

'Soon, with trembling limbs uprising, in excitement past disguising,
I proceeded to the window, and the casement wildly caught;
But there was no need of raising, for I saw my CARLO gazing
From the dog-star that was blazing, in its high and holy spot;
Meekly gazing down upon me from that high and holy spot-
Other object there was not.

'From the casement I retreated, but again was hardly seated,
Ere the summons was repeated, and almost to frenzy wrought,
I uprose, while loudly pawing, came a harsh, incessant clawing,
Mingled with a dismal gnawing, and then rose the dreadful thought
That most likely I was sent for! but I could n't go. I thought;
After all, perhaps 't is naught.'

"Then I turned me, half despairing, with a kind of desperate daring,
Little fearing little caring what should prove to be my lot;
Raised the courage that was needed, and unto the door proceeded,
Lifted up the latch as He did, he whom I such tricks had taught,
He, the fond and faithful creature, whom I once such tricks had taught,
He who was but now is not.'

Hence it was not 'CARLO,' but a huge Black Cat, with tail aspiring gifted, and bristling back uplifted,' between whom' and the writer there ensues a colloquy, which is quite like the conversation carried on between Mr. PoE and The Raven.' 'MERE

stupidity,' says a clever modern essayist, 'accompanied by a certain degree of fluency, is no inconsiderable power. It enables its possessor to protract a contest long after he is

beaten, because he neither understands his own case, nor the arguments which have been triumphantly used against him.' This remark came to our mind recently, while perusing in a northern journal a long and labored reply to our brief strictures upon the undigested odds-and-ends that go to make up a slip-shodical book, facetiously termed 'BOYD's Rhetoric' by the compiler thereof. The writer of the article in question, beyond all doubt our author himself, says: 'I had myself formed a very favorable opinion of Mr. Boyd's work.' 'Altogether likely;' but in common with several of our contemporaries, we had formed quite another opinion of the book, from the book itself, knowing nothing and caring less about the compiler-author. Mr. BOYD, by a pleasant PECKSNIFFIAN method of reasoning, makes the village where he resides a theme of defence against our aspersions!' Rather 'a weak invention,' but characteristic enough. The bump of esteem' for mere pen-andink book-makers, adepts at nothing save verbosity and scissors, is very faintly propelled on our cranium; and when in the exercise of professional duty we manifest this deficiency,' we must expect to take the consequences; for

'WHO e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law?'

6

The rhetorican's defence of his book is a very weak one; indeed, except the book itself, we remember nothing more contemptible. But we trifle time.' Good morning, Mr. BOYD! WE came across the following the other day; and so forcibly, so vividly does it portray the thoughts which have a hundred times passed through our own minds, when surveying similar scenes, that it seemed more a remembrance than any new thing:' We often pause beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to ourself the gloomy and mournful scenes that are passing within. The sudden movement of a taper, as its feeble ray shoots from window after window, until its light gradually disappears, as if it were carried farther back into the room, to the bed-side of some suffering patient, is enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections; the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps, which, when all other habitations are wrapped in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing with pain, or wasting with disease, is sufficient to check the most boisterous merriment. Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the sick man hears, is the disjointed wanderings of some feverish slumberer near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten prayer of a dying man? Who but those who have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness and desolation which must be the portion of those who in the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by strangers; for what hands, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child?' THAT was strong presumptive evidence' of personal cleanliness, which was conveyed by the reply of a lad to a gentleman who asked him why it was that his father came to have such dirty hands: "'Cause,' said he, he is always wiping them on his face. The old gentleman usually illustrated a small distance, as for example, threefourths of an inch, by saying, 'It was as broad as the black of my nail.' Every body has heard of the man who said, in reply to a remark touching an awful pause' in a company, that he guess'd they'd have awful paws too, if they performed as much labor as he did.' The following, however, is the most amusing application of the word that we remember ever to have seen: At an election dinner at Cambridge, the mayor sat at one end of the table, and Sir PETER PAWSEY, a gentleman of good estate, at the other. Sir PETER's son, a raw, long-legged lad from Harrow, was also at table. After dinner, the general buzz that frequently occurs in a large mixed party was succeeded by a momentary silence. 'Here is one of those awkward pauses that one sometimes meets with at table,' observed the mayor to a doctor of civil laws on his right. Well, the conversation went on, and in about ten minutes a cessation of talk suddenly took place. Here is another of those awkward pauses at table,' repeated the mayor to the doctor. Not half so awkward as a Cambridge mayor!' bellowed Sir PETER PAWSEY, casting a furious glance at the astonished

...

6

chief magistrate. The fact is, the baronet had pocketed the first supposed personal affront, which he had taken to himself; but the second, glancing as it seemed to do upon his darling and only son, was too much for his endurance.' . . . Sunday in a Country Village' has been somewhat anticipated by a paper included in the 'Sketches of the Country,' by our friend N. S. D.,' entitled 'Sunday in New-England.' The present sketch is well written, especially that portion of it which depicts the Paul-Pryhood of a small village on the Sabbath. As the poet says:'

ON Sunday is the time, of course,
When Gossip's congregated force
Pours from the central chapel:
Then hints and anecdotes increase,
And in the mansion-house of Peace
Dark Discord drops her apple.

Open a shutter, turn a lock,

The whole row feels the electric shock,
Springs tilt their blinds up-throwing;
And every ear and every eye
Darts to one centre, to descry
Who's coming or who's going.

WE have dropped in on two or three occasions to hear Mr. HUDSON discuss the merits of that very clever writer, Mr. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, of whom most persons had 'by parcels something heard,' before Mr. HUDSON, like' PETER CRAM at Tinnecum,' had 'cal'lated to lectur' among us. We were not a little disappointed the first time we heard him. Notwithstanding the Boston prestige which preceded his advent, we had not listened to him for ten minutes, before we said, mentally:

'HE is one of the tribe who subsist by their wits,
Remembered by starts and forgotten by fits;'

and it will go nigh to be thought so, shortly.' But, however natural the inference, this proved not to be altogether a 'righteous judgment.' His gestures, his manner, his intonations, were we desire to use a mild term- - ridiculous. ST. VITUS and the Rev. Mr. MAWWORM seemed contending for the mastery in the composition of his style. And what was worse than all, the fact could not be disguised that his manner was assumed that it was not natural. Affectation of any kind is sufficiently contemptible; but affectation of uncouthness strikes us as the height of vulgarity. That his manner was affected, could not, as we have said, be disguised; and moreover it was proved by the fact that the speaker found it necessary, in his subsequent lectures, greatly to subdue and modify his ludicrous defects. They were found not to do,' exactly, in this meridian. Mr. HUDSON is a striking lecturer. He has been a diligent student of SHAKSPEARE, but a still more faithful com piler of the opinions of his commentators; some of whom he condemned in no measured terms, while he was actually serving out their own criticisms upon the Great Bard, after an antithetical method of his own, which to those not conversant with HAZLITT, SCHLEGEL, COLERIDGE, and other writers upon the characters of SHAKSPEARE, doubtless seemed as original in matter as in manner. We recognized many an old friend in his transposed and inverted thoughts; just as CARLYLE would have recognized himself in the lecturer's de scription of BURNS in the society of Edinburgh, on his first visit to the Northern Metropolis. Mr. HUDSON possesses earnestness of manner; he has fortified himself for his task by some reading and much remembering; he has occasional feeling, underneath all the semblances of uncouthness which he no doubt finds to stand him in good stead, in one point of view; and these are his principal attractions. But, with our contemporary, the Albion' weekly journal, we decline to receive as a capable expounder of SHAKSPEARE one who holds such absurd opinions touching the character of POLONIUS, and who denies to Lady MACBETH the possession of mind... OUR story of the negro who hear'n sumfin drop' when he fell from the top of a tree, has recalled to the mind of a friend in the country the following circumstance: ‘A young gentlemau, a member of our college, was expelled for the crime of drawing young ladies up to his room at night, and letting them down in the morning by means of a rope and basket arranged from his window. Of course a great deal of gossiping conversation was the consequence. The following colloquy occurred between two young ladies: 'JANE, do you really believe that students draw girls up to their rooms?' Certainly, my dear; more than that, I know they do.' 'How?' Well, I was going by the colleges one morn

ing; it was just before light; 't was very early in the morning; and I heard a noise in the direction of one of the college-buildings. I looked that way, and as plain as I see you now, I saw a girl in a basket, about half-way from a three-story window to the ground; and just Not down I came! Very improper, JANE - very!.. then the rope broke, and on the Battle-Field' is the striking title of a noble poem from the pen of Reverend JOHN PIERPONT, of Boston, contributed to a recent number of The Peace Advocate.' It has this motto from The Neighbors: To fall on the battle-field fighting for my country, that would not be hard.' The poet expresses a different aspiration; although it is not in conformity exactly with the sentiments of a former poem of his, in which these lines occur: 'IN the GOD of Battles trust; Die we may, and die we must, And oh where can 'dust to dust' Be consigned so well?'

as- where, do you suppose, reader? lowing is otherwise considered:

'O NO, no-let me lie

Not on a field of battle, when I die!

Let not the iron tread

Why, on the battle-field! But n'importe: the fol

Of the mad war-horse crush my helmed head:
Nor let the reeking knife,

That I have drawn against a brother's life,
Be in my hand when death
Thunders along, and tramples me beneath
His heavy squadron's heels,
Or gory felloes of his cannon's wheels.

'From such a dying bed,

Though o'er it float the stripes of white and red,
And the bald eagle brings

The clustered stars upon his wide-spread wings,
To sparkle in my sight,

O, never let my spirit take her flight!

'I know that beauty's eye

Is all the brighter where gay pennants fly,
And brazen helmets dance,

And sunshine flashes on the lifted lance:
I know that bards have sung,
And people shouted till the welkin rung
In honor of the brave

Who on the battle-field have found a grave.

'Such honors grace the bed,

I know, whereon the warrior lays his head
And hears, as life ebbs out,

The conquered flying, and the conqueror's shout.

But, as his eye grows dim,

What is a column or a mound to him?
'What, to the parting soul,

The mellow note of bugles? What the roll
Of drums? No: let me die

Where the blue heaven bends o'er me lovingly,
And the soft summer air,

As it goes by me, stirs my thin white hair,
And from my forehead dries

The death-damp as it gathers, and the skies
Seem waiting to receive

My soul to their clear depths! Or let me leave
The world, when round my bed
Wife, children, weeping friends are gathered;
And the calm voice of prayer

And holy hymning shall my soul prepare
To go and be at rest

With kindred spirits-spirits who have blessed
The human brotherhood

By labors, cares, and counsels for their good.

'And in my dying hour,
When riches, fame and honor have no power
To bear the spirit up,

Or from my lips to turn aside the cup
That all must drink at last,

O, let me draw refreshment from the past!
Then let my soul run back,

With peace and joy, along my earthly track,
And see that all the seeds

That I have scattered there in virtuous deeds,
Have sprung up, and have given,
Already, fruits of which to taste in heaven!'

There is a something which seems to us prosaic in the construction of the lines we have omitted; the familiar names, perhaps, of the towns and monuments that bear record of American valor; and the mere remark,' Some of these piles I've seen,' with which they are introduced. But the ensuing, as a picture, is perfect, and 'sweetly musical:'

'THY tomb,' THEMISTOCLES,

That looks out yet upon the Grecian seas,
And which the waters kiss

That issue from the gulf of Salamis:

And thine, too, have I seen,

Thy mound of earth, PATROCLUS, robed in green,

That, like a natural knoll,

Sheep climb and nibble over, as they stroll,

Watched by some turbaned boy,

Upon the margin of the plain of Troy.'

A profound essay upon The Spirit of the Age,' in a late English Magazine, contains many hopeful auguries of the general peace of the world in all future time. Instead of