Property! To General Association! To the Uni- | heart. versal confederation of peoples!" And into thy ear, fair feminine patron, whose fingers have turned over our pages each month (sometimes approvingly) with mother-of "To the Union of European Democrats!" "To the Union of the Democrats and Social-pearl, we would whisper such pleasant things ists of all countries!" as should most commend us to thy favor On Friday last, I strolled out upon the Placeable regard. Towin the guerdon of thy smiles, de la Concorde. Planks and heaps of timber we would invoke the gift of eloquence, which were scattered all over the square. Several hun- fell upon our prototype of old,-the Messenger dred workmen were busy erecting the masts, al- of the ancient mythology,-who, with flying tar, and scaffolding necessary for the Fete to be hands and feet, bore around the missives of Jugiven on Sunday, in honor of the promulgation piter. We move not, perhaps, with the celerity of the New Constitution. Thousands of idle of the god, for the talaria were more rapid than workmen and spectators occupied the space with- the U. S. Mail. We are fain to hope, however, out the lines, including the space in which the that our caduceus,—which is a steel-pen of Gillott's manufacture,-is not without its potent inpreparations were going on. But I observed fluences, though it wants, we trust, one property numerous detachments of soldiers posted near, and the gardens of the Tuileries were occupied of the twisted snakes—that of putting you quietby several battalions. 'Why this accumulation ly to sleep. of troops?" I demanded. 66 The New-Year is upon us. It awakens in all "It is to protect the workmen," was the re- thinking persons feelings similar to those occaply. "The workmen who are unemployed, have sioned by the advent of its predecessor, only come up in large numbers and insist upon the deepening them into a more impressive solemniretirement of those at work and the cessation of ty. A review of the intervening months will the work! Now they demand to be employed too and that the other be dismissed. This has been refused, but to pacify them it has been promised that they shall have the clearing away of the arrangements of the fete on Monday." Elle est belle ta Republique ! Were I a Frenchman, I should join in the cry, EDITOR'S TABLE. show us how little we have profited by the lessons we then drew from it, while the old man with the glass and the scythe is still as relentless as when his iron reign was lamented in the lyrics of the Roman poet, eighteen centuries ago. If we would take the trouble, such of us as have cast a half-hour's retrospect upon the year just gone by, to set down our individual reflections with even tolerable fidelity, we should write out a homily, worth our while to look over and ponder in coming time. Such, however, is not now our own design. It will be more to our taste (and we doubt not to your own) to look upon the season in its mirthful point of view, as Churchill has described it in a single distich, "Frore January, leader of the year, A New-Year's Tete-a-Tete with our Patrons. and to consider it in its connection with Christ mas, blest season of innocent enjoyment. Let us Most pensive public,-readers and patrons, hope then that you have all spent the holidays we claim the prerogative of the season to obtrude with temperate hilarity,-the critic forgetting his ourselves upon you in editorial plurality, for a vocation to be severe, the indulgent reader with little social converse, prefaced by the greeting of keen zest for the jokes, that "come in with the "a Happy New-Year!" To you, discerning and candles" on Christmas Eve, and our fair friend, inexorable critic, whose reluctant commendations in the very exuberance of her joyous nature, difwe have won during the past twelvemonth, we fusing around her the enchantment of mirth, and would say a word, in the comfortable atmosphere filling the old house with the incalculable music of your study, touching the present condition of of laughter, whose echoes will long linger in the periodical literature. To you, tried and fast parental halls! Let us hope that you have, one friend of our magazine for many lustrums, whose and all, been prodigiously happy, after the mankind encouragement has inspired our efforts and ner of your forefathers, in honorable observance whose name is enrolled not upon the dark list of of one of their wisest and most ancient customs. our delinquent subscribers, we have thanks to For we regard with especial favor all the cereexpress, ab imo pectore, from the bottom of our monies of the time, which they have transmitted to us, the interchange of presents among the upon with satisfaction and Geoffrey Crayon with members of the household, the Christmas Tree, envy. the bowl of egg-nogg and the kindly superstition of old Santa Claus, riding in his chariot above - It was a country Christmas, in cismontane the tops of the houses and descending the chim- Virginia, where the houses are all remarkable for ney at midnight to dispense bon-bons to all good fine names and large hospitality. There were boys and girls, who hang up their stockings to great roaring fires in the chimney-places, and receive them. We trust these rites will never arm-chairs with damask cushions in the parlors, fall into desuetude, for they find their origin in which might have stood in a Pictorial Dictionathe affections and serve to brighten the rugged ry as the symbolical definition of luxury, and the pathway of duty. By their agency, the feelings cookery was so effectively managed as to recall are rendered perennially fresh, and though we the apostrophe made by Sidney Smith, the Apiare but too painfully sensible of the flight of time, cius of the Edinburgh Review, to a dinner of as each year is consigned to the irrevocable past, the nineteenth century. The dishes were the yet in the sports of Christmas, we find a rejuve- poetry of the kitchen and they were flanked by nizing influence and we become young again for decanters of "wine, as rich in years as Horace a season. Casting the mind's eye back through sings." All these were but the accessories to the shadowy vistas of memory, we see ourselves the enjoyment of the charming society of the in the dim twilight of distance, as we were in family. But hold! we shall not commit such a the Christmas frolics of our youth, before the profanation of the Lares as to "print" our most cares of the world had environed us or one stain had fallen upon the tablets of our hearts, and we enter unreservedly into the amusements of the little children around our firesides, and speak and think and act even as before we had put away childish things! But we are interrupted here by the exclamations of our patrons, who desire to take part in our tete-a-tete. "Sir," says our critic, "your rhetoric is atrocious, and if you persist in mixing your figures, as in the last sentence, I'll have no more of it." "Go on," says our indulgent reader, “ go on!" "Good Mr. Editor," interposes the silvery voice of our fair friend, "you are talking of Christmas, without reflecting that it has gone by and there's an end of it. Consider too that the subject has been treated fully by Wilson and Irving." To the querulous objection to our rhetoric, we shall not reply. Its author is the very Iago of literature, and is "nothing if not critical." For the encouraging plaudit of our indulgent reader, we are truly grateful. kind and generous entertainers. If their eyes "He frothed his bumpers to the brim; Old year, you must not go. Alas! several years have glided by into the shadowy land, since that holiday! May all future holidays prove to us and to you, gracious readers, as pleasing and delightsome! And to you, sweet lady, we would say that your remark is not without reason, for Christmas had been most extensively "done" in the magazine line, before we assumed the calling of an But we must put an end to our Christmas phaneditor. Yet in view of this and of the indispu- tasmagoria, or the light will go out in our magictable fact that the happy day, with all its delight- lantern before we have exhibited all our appariful concomitants (gastronomical and otherwise) tions,-or, to be less figurative and more intellihas gone to return no more, we must be par-gible, we must hasten to speak of other matters, doned for dwelling upon it a little longer. For to which we have already casually alluded. we have no hesitation in saying that if we could adequately depict the delights of a certain Christ- There could be no more interesting and inmas we spent a few years since, if we did but structive volume, in the range of literary desidlay down the outlines, as Retzsch in his delinea-erata, than a history of English periodical literations of the old ballads, we should produce a do- ture, from its origin to the present time, and we mestic piece that Christopher North might look are surprised that the subject has never sugges 66 bell, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Legaré, Everett, and a host of others. And we might take a step further and assert that to a certain extent the review was not only the vehicle but the cause of the intellectual effort. If this be granted, it follows that periodicals are most useful, in the highest walk of usefulness, awakening the powers of the mind to an energy, which might not otherwise be kindled, rendering more delicate the perception of intellectual beauty, inducing “an innocent homage to the sweet idols of art," and causing to be spread around us those tranquil delights that find their source only in a refined and flourishing literature. ted itself to the consideration of authors. In years past, has been transmitted to the public connection with this, it would surely not be an through the reviews and magazines. To sustain idle task to inquire into the extent of its influence this position, we might refer to Hazlitt, Campat this day, to show what offices it subserves and to set forth the duties and responsibilities that attach to its conductors. The influence of the periodical press is undoubtedly great, commensurate, perhaps, with that of the newspaper press or the hustings. It is true that the magazine does not immediately affect the action of men, in the practical working of political institutions, as the newspaper or the popular orator. But in the political wisdom which it embodies (we speak of the periodical press in its largest sense) and in the inculcation of broad views of society and of the race, it operates on minds that move the world." It is thus, in shaping the intellect, and, to some extent, in forming the character, that its It is in this view of the case, as connected influence though unperceived, is most pow- with the growth and establishment of a wide inerful. It is at once the conservator of pub- tellectual domain among us, that we regard with lic morals, and the exponent of a new and so much interest the success of periodicals in the recognized philosophy, and may be said to sus-Southern States. We do profess to be zealous tain the same relation to the hustings, that the in behalf of Southern proficiency in all that tends Porch and the Academy in the age of Pericles, to ennoble and dignify mankind. Fourteen years bore to the rostrum, that " fulmined over Greece." has the Messenger toiled with unremitting assiIt is a curious fact, and one not very general- duity in this cause-fourteen years has it conly considered, that the periodical press of our tended with circumstances the most adverse and day, in its manifold publications, unites in itself discouraging, that through its humble instrumenmany offices that in former days have been kept tality the South might produce something of enapart. The great modern Essayist tells us that during value in the world of letters, something it was the crowning glory of Addison to have worthy of its great mental resources. "reconciled wit and virtue after a long and pain- ing over the field of the Messenger's labors, the ful separation, during which wit had been led present Editor is glad to think that its mission astray by profligacy and virtue by fanaticism." has not been altogether unregarded, and that This reconciliation was effected in those remark- he can discern, here and there, unerring signs of able sheets,—the origin of our reviews and maga- increasing attention to the cause of literature. zines,—which served up the follies of the age of The SOUTHERN QUARTERLY REVIEW, since its Queen Anne, to be discussed with the rolls upon resuscitation a few years since, has put forth pathe breakfast-tables of the metropolitans. Since pers of a most meritorious character, as in the that day, the magazine has been both the palmy days, when Charleston had grown alteacher and the toy, the prophet and the play-most Athenian in literary acumen,—our friend thing, the guide and the jester of the reading pub- and contemporary, DE Bow, contrives to cultilic. To us it is what the Coffee-House was to vate the exotics of poesy among the cotton plants the literary man of an earlier period,-a medi- of Louisiana and to mingle polite learning with um through which he may commune with the the dry statistics of a mercantile magazine,— best thinkers and choicest wits of his time. In- and within the past year, a most deserving weekstead of the Grecian and Will's, the English-ly Journal, the SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE, man has now Blackwood and the Edinburgh, has been started in Georgia, and bids fair to atand he receives the wisdom and pleasantry of tain the highest rank of excellence. Brethren of his distinguished literary countrymen through the Southern periodical press, we are co-workers their pages, as of yore the chosen few caught the in a great design,-let us put away from us all enremarks of Dryden at his accustomed evening | vyings and evil-speakings, let us bear each other's resort. But perhaps the most interesting purpose of the periodical press is discharged in developing the literary taste and eliciting the latent talent of the country. It may with safety be said that by far the most valuable and permanent portion of the literature of Europe and America, for many In look burdens, and work patiently after our purpose, and when at last the South shall take her position in the rolls of literary distinction, as one by one the stars of her galaxy appear, let us hail them, "like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken." By unity of action, we shall thus effect a splendid result, elevating the aims of the Southern intellect, allaying the agitations of party strife, and working out a high social agency by banishing from among us that bane of all improvement,— "cheap literature," "if that can be called cheap in any sense of the term, (as President Everett has so well remarked) which begins by costing a man his eyesight, and, if it have any influence, must, much of it, end in depraving his taste and subverting his morals." NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. BRIEF APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION, in a series of Exceptions to the course and action of the Methodist Epis. copal Church, from 1844 to 1848, affecting the rights and interests of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. By H. B. Bascom, A. L. P. Greece, and C. B. Parsons, Southern Commissioners for the settlement of the Property Question between the two Churches. Louisville, Ky. Published by John Early, Agent of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Morton and Griswold, Printers. 1848. People of the South! We appeal to you in behalf of your literary magazines, give them not a Such is the cumbrous title of a pamphlet of about 200 meagre and reluctant support,-they are your pages, which has been on our table for sometime past. It representatives in the great colleges of civiliza-was written, we presume, by Doctor Bascom. Who else tion,-by them ye are judged, and as they are entitled to critical regard, so your taste is rated. You are supporting by your patronage much the greater portion of Northern periodical literature; will you not yield to your own the same favorable notice? We ask not that your subscriptions should be withdrawn from Northern magazines to be bestowed upon us. Not at all. Many of our Northern contemporaries are most worthy of your favor, but while you are keeping them alive, do not refuse us the vital aura of your Five Dollars per annum ! could have written such a book? It seems to have grown out of a very spirited, not to say acrimonious controversy, which has raged with but little abatement, ever since the York; at which time, there was, by consent of parties, a General Conference of 1844, held in the City of New division of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, into two separate and independent church organizations. This division grew out of the great Slavery Question. A Plan of Separation, as it is called, was adopted by the Conference, securing equal rights and privileges to division of all the property and funds of the Church. Comeach branch of the Church, and providing for an equitable missioners were also appointed under the Plan, for both branches of the Church, who were authorized as agents of the Conference to divide the property, according to the provisions of the deed of separation. The Southern Commiswith the work assigned to them, but the Commissioners of sioners, it seems, held themselves in readiness to proceed the Northern branch of the church refused to act in the premises. The result was, four years elapsed without any Most pensive public, a word about the Messenger. It is now entering its Fifteenth Volume. Thanks to you, it is firmly established upon an enduring basis. The new and costly dress in which the present number appears is the surest evidence of the editor's confidence that he can thing having been done for the adjustment of the question maintain its reputation. He would most earnestly beg of the Messenger's friends, however, their best efforts to increase its circulation, by which means alone he can hope to make it what it should be a magazine worthy, in all respects, of the great section of the union whose name it bears, a mirror in which Southern taste and learning shall be faithfully and accurately reflected. This substantial assistance is the more urgently solicited from the consideration that the Editor has not deemed it proper to resort to the ordinary expedients of wholesale puffing and tawdry decorations to catch the popular eye, has placed the work before the public solely upon its own merits, believing that simple excellence would sooner or later be sought after for its intrinsic value. Is it asking too much, then, of those who wish well to the Messenger, to invite them to make an effort to enlarge its list of subscribers! With proper exertions on their part, the Editor would be enabled to publish such a magazine as the South might well point to with feelings of honest pride. In the pursuance of this purpose, he entreats public favor and patron- deed but rarely, if ever read such a publication. And if blood, and excites the strongest indignation. We have inage, only promising that his best energies shall the Northern branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church, be called forth for its ultimate accomplishment. does really occupy the ground, in this controversy, that is at issue between the contracting parties. At the late General Conference of the Methodist E. Church, held in the tion adopted in 1844, was, by a formal act of the Confercity of Pittsburgh, in May last, the whole Plan of Separaence declared a "nullity," because of the alleged failure of the Annual Conferences to recommend, by a three-fourths majority, the division of the funds vested in the New York Book Concern, amounting to six hundred thousand dollars. of abrogation, and the great property question seems to have The Northern Commissioners were disbanded by this act been given a sort of diplomatic go-by, so far as any action of the Conference was concerned. The course of the General Conference touching the matter, seems to have been regarded by the Southern portion of the church, as a reckbut less violation of good faith, and moral principle, in the intice be dissolved but by the mutual consent of the original fringement of a compact which could not in honor and juscontracting parties. The action of the Conference was wholy exparte, there being no delegation from the South in the General Conference. In this view of the subject the Southern Commissioners feel aggrieved; and abandoning all hope of justice at the hands of their Northern brethren, they raise a series of Exceptions to their course, and appeal to public opinion in support of the equity of their claims; and in the pamphlet before us, these Exceptions are sustained by the fullest and clearest documentary evidence, and the appeal made in a language that stirs one's charged upon it here, then there is indeed something | agreeable of his compositions. His Practical Introducto justify such language as the following, in application to Law Studies," published some years since, we retion to it, which we find scattered pretty freely through this gard as the very best volume of the kind that has ever falpamphlet "The firmness, consistency, moderation and len under our observation, and we have an excellent Londignity of strong moral conviction-of fixed religious prin- don edition of it upon our shelves, with which we are acciple-are no where to be found among them; all is agita- customed to fill up the intervals of our legal reading. The tion, caprice, passion and resentment." Again,-" We re- present work is an appropriate companion for it, and is joice that we sustain to the Methodist Episcopal Church marked by all the felicities of manner and gems of illustra (North) the relation we do, that of perfect independence; tration, with which Mr. Warren knows so well how to because we regard the entire conduct of the Northern to-brighten the abstruse study of the law. We trust that a wards the Southern Church as essentially faithless and dis- copy of it may find its way into the library of every praehonorable; and we are most happy not to be found in such titioner in the United States. The basis of the volume is company." And again-" We show by their own witness- a series of lectures delivered before the "Incorporated es that they (the Northern Church) have added deception Law Society of the United Kingdom," during Trinity and duplicity to the denial of right; that they have denied Term, 1848, and Mr. Warren was induced to undertake their own language, statements, pledges and acts; that it their publication by a highly complimentary resolution of has been done where misconception appears impossible, the Council of this Society. We quite agree in the opinand will, we are inclined to think, be generally so regarded." ion therein expressed that "the Lectures are well calcuAll this moral dereliction of duty on the part of the lated to maintain the station and character of the profesNorthern Church, is ascribed to the influence of abolition- sion, and especially to stimulate and benefit its younger ism. Speaking of Northern interference with the subject members, by aiding and directing their study of the Law, of slavery, the writer holds this language in relation to the and promoting honorable practice." Northern Methodist Church. "It has become a pander to political agitation. It is an Abolition Church. It is arrayed against the laws and rights of twelve or thirteen sovereign states, which their creed, as well as civil obligation, binds them to respect, and defer to. It avows the purpose of seeking to destroy institutions and interests over which ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. By Edwin P. Whipple. In two they have no control, human or divine. They denounce Volumes. New-York. D. Appleton & Co. 1848. as utterly devilish-of purely infernal origin-what God This is a fair and handsome publication in a collected himself approved in the patriarchal, expressly authorized in form, of some of the best articles of the North American the Jewish, and has seen proper to regulate, without any Review, for several years past. We remember to have intimation of moral obliquity, in the Christian Church. read the greater part of them, at the time of their original They have no fixed principles or settled views. They are appearance, with a keen curiosity excited as to their pa the victims of a mania, constantly involving them in con- ternity. We are glad to meet with them again, in their tradiction and inconsistency." Once more, upon this sub-present worthy style, and to recognize in the author Mr. ject, the writer says, "The light and darkness of heaven Whipple, one of the raciest and most brilliant essayists of and hell are scarcely in more unyielding contrast than the the day. The first thing that suggests itself to the reader, conduct of the Northern Methodist Church and that of as he progresses with these reviews, is that Mr. Whipple's Christ and his apostles, in their action on the subject of literary appetite is almost insatiable; he seems to have slavery." These are but specimens from the work before been an omnivorous reader, and to have masticated every us. The language may be too strong. And yet the con- thing in the whole larder of letters, from the palatable morduct of the Northern branch of the Church towards the ceaux of the classics to the last crudities of the American Southern, seems to have been so illiberal and unprincipled press. Nor does he seem merely to have swallowed them, that we can scarcely censure the severity of the language with greediness and gluttony," but to have digested all his employed in this pamphlet. reading, to the clearer understanding of every subject that he sits down to discuss. A suit at law has been instituted by the Southern Commissioners for the recovery of the portion of property equitably belonging to the Southern portion of the Church. Doctor Bascom wrote a pamphlet just after the adjourn ment of the General Conference of 1844, on the subject of Slavery, in defence of the South, which was spoken of by the Hon. Henry Clay, and the Hon. John C. Calhoun as one of the ablest works that this country had produced on that subject. The fact that these publications are connected with a Church controversy, which gives them a sort of denominational cast, may limit their circulation to some extent; but any one who wishes to see a full defence of the course pursued by the Southern Methodist Church in their separation from the North, and a most triumphant vindication of the institution of slavery as it exists among us, would do well to read these productions. Both may be had at the new Methodist Book Concern in this city. THE MORAL, SOCIAL, AND PROFESSIONAL DUTIES OF AT- Mr. Warren is a charming and deservedly popular writer, and, what is remarkable, his law-books are among the most The price of the work is without a precedent for cheapness in the history of legal book-making and such as to place it within the reach of all students and attorneys. It may be obtained of Drinker & Morris. Mr. Putnam bas now reached Vol. 6 of his new edition of Irving's Complete Works. We are sure we need say nothing in praise of "Bracebridge Hall," the book which made Geoffrey Crayon a household word at the firesides of two nations. It is sufficient to remind the old admirers of our great countryman, that it contains "The Student of Salamanca" and to say that its typography is quite equal to the sumptuous text of the foregoing volumes of the series. To be had at the Book-Store of Nash and Woodhouse. Many notices of new books are unavoidably deferred. Our publishing friends must bear with us, until our next number. |