PORTUGUESE JOE.

Caleb Van Dyke.MENS CONSCIA RECTI.

'And what is it for?' asked Caleb, trying in vain to interpret the cabalistic words.

'It is intended, Mr. Van Dyke, to surmount your front door, to notify the public that you are a good cobbler and an honest man; that's all.'

'Do you mean to say, Sir, that you expect Caleb Van Dyke, after living fifty years without any such bauble, to stick such a timber as that over his door, to be laughed at for his pains? Why, what would Karl Keiser say?—that old Caleb is turning Yankee in his old age. Why, Sir, the town would burst its sides with laughter, and the boys would throw all kinds of rocks and brickbats at it, and the windows too. No, Sir!'

'Will youtryit, my good friend,' said Nicholas, 'if it is but for a single week? And if it does not increase your business, you may set me down for a Yankee tinker, beside expecting me to do all the fighting necessary to sustain the dignity of the establishment.'

And the result was, after a long and animated discussion, that Caleb consented that Nicholas might nail up the board that very night, that the town might be surprised the next morning with the suddenness of the apparition; for such it would be considered, as it was the only specimen of a sign-board in the village, if we except the yellow sky and blue stars of Karl Keiser. Caleb then retired to rest to be visited by curious dreams about sign-boards in general; and Nicholas could scarcely sleep at all, for the busy scenes which he imagined were already advancing in the cobbler's shop, the legitimate result of this invention of his skill.

Early next morning Caleb protruded his uncombed head from the window, and, lo! all Idleberg seemed to be gathered at his door. His first thought was that a mob of his fellow-citizens had assembled there for some nefarious purpose, but he was speedily reässured at seeing Nicholas Pelt standing in the midst of the crowd, and expounding the mysteries of the sign-board to the great delight of his astonished audience. Men, women, and children had gathered there from all parts of the town, with as much intensity of curiosity as if Caleb had caught a live elephant, and was exhibiting itgratis. There were men without their hats, and women without their bonnets, and children with little else than bountiful nature had given them. The shop-keeper was there with his yard-stick, and the smith with his sledge-hammer; and the little French tailor was there with his Sacre Dieu's and his red-hot goose, which he flourished to the infinite terror of the by-standers. But the principal figure in this motley group was no less a personage than Jonas Jones, the rival cobbler. Mr. Jones had of late grown too large for his trowsers. His prosperity had been too great for his little soul. He had cut the bench in person, leaving the drudgery of the business to the Company. By the aid of the village tailor he had become quite an exquisite, wore white kid gloves, and occasionally sported a Spanish cigar. There he was promenading before the door, with an ivory-headed cane, and an ogling-glass lifted to his eye; and every few seconds he condescended to inform the crowd that 'he was from Bosting, and the people were a set of demd fules to be making such a racket about a cobbler's sign.'

While curiosity was at the highest pitch, the uproar was increased by the sudden appearance of Hans Keiser, who came swaggering and blustering into the group, elbowing his way along until he reached the vicinity of the school-master. He who had been so diffident in the presence of the gentler sex, was now as bold as any lion need be among men. Smarting with the recollection of his recent discomfiture, he commenced addressing the assembly in a very rude, uncouth style, denouncing the sign as a Yankee contrivance, insinuating that the inventor was no better than he should be, and exhorting the good citizens of Idleberg to tear down the bauble as the only means of securing their lives and property from the occult witchcraft which he professed to believe lay at the bottom of it.

Caleb Van Dyke listened to this harangue with great attention, for it presented the subject in a new light by appealing to his hereditary superstitions; and it is not improbable that he would have suffered Hans to proceed in his meditated outrage, but for the intervention of Nicholas Pelt. Already had the sturdy young Dutchman climbed to the board and made an effort to wrench it away, when he was arrested by the stern voice of Nicholas, commanding him, as he valued his life, to desist.

Hans threw at him a look of defiance, and informed him that if he had the requisite physical strength, he might remove him; otherwise, he should remain where he was until he had torn away the board, or chose to come down of his own free will and accord. This announcement was received by the crowd with loud bravos, which however were immediately silenced when the school-master deliberately approached Hans, and grasping his leg, hurled him to the ground. Amid the flight of women and children and Mr. Jonas Jones, who declared that in consequence of being near-sighted he could see better from a distance, Hans scrambled to his feet, and aimed a blow at Nicholas that might have felled a stouter man, but for the skill with which he parried and returned it with interest. With the generous aid of the by-standers, who were ripe for a frolic, and expressed their anxiety on the subject by cries of 'Bravo!' 'Go it, Red-jacket!' 'Hurrah for Old Nick!' the combatants were on the point of getting into a regular pitched battle, with the usual adornments of bruised eyes and bleeding noses, when Caleb Van Dyke, who had just succeeded in putting on his ten breeches, rushed between them, and commanded them to desist. Another pacificator, whose presence operated equally on both parties, was the fair Ellen, who, having caught a glimpse of the fray from her window, and entertaining an indefinite idea in the general confusion that her father was on the point of being carried away by a press-gang, rushed into the street before completing her toilet, and ran to her father's side in all the beauty of her blooming cheeks and flowing ringlets, to the admiration of the company in general, and particularly of Mr. Jonas Jones, who, perched in safety on a barrel hard by, reviewed the subsiding conflict, lifted his ogling-glass, and beating his breast violently with his right hand in the region of his stomach, exclaimed, 'My heart! my eyes! what a demd foine ge-irl!'

Mean time another conspicuous object hove into sight, in the portly person of Karl Keiser, who came ambling and waddling along, supported by a gigantic hickory stick, to ascertain the occasion of the unusual hubbub before the door of his friend the cobbler. The first reply to his many inquiries revealed to him the active part his son had taken in the fray. 'What, Hans!myHans!' exclaimed the choleric old Dutchman; 'where is the dirty dog? Let me at him!' And brandishing his club, he made his way through the retreating crowd, when reaching his recreant son, he belabored him lustily over the shoulders, and pointing significantly toward home, bade him be gone. Crouching and howling with pain, the lusty Hans obeyed; and it may be added in parenthesis, that hearing a vague rumor during the day that he was in request by the worshipful corporation of the town, to answer to certain grave charges preferred against him, by authority of the statutes against riots, routs, and unlawful assemblies, he decamped from Idleberg, and ere long was enjoying the long-desired luxury of going down the river on a flat-boat.

The pacific parties had at length triumphed over the belligerent. The fair Ellen, suddenly conscious of her generous and imprudent haste in rushing to her father's side, made a precipitate retreat into the house, not, however, without having first ascertained that Nicholas was unharmed by the fray; and in a few minutes the scene of such recent commotion was nearly deserted, save by an occasional school-boy who glanced at the sign-board, committed to memory the cabalistic words,Mens conscia recti, and went on, repeating them at every step. Last of all remained Mr. Jonas Jones, promenading in solitary grandeur before the house; now watching his elegant shadow in the sun, now glancing at the window where Ellen Van Dyke had first appeared to his enraptured vision, now bringing his glass to bear upon the sign, and winding up the dumb show by producing a white cambric handkerchief, somewhat soiled by use, with which he wiped his eyes; and looking upward and apostrophizing a cluster of invisible stars, he placed his hand on his breast, struck his ivory-headed cane to the ground, and walked off with an air that would have made him illustrious even in Broadway, Chestnut, or Tremont.

Never did cobbler set to work with less confidence than did Caleb Van Dyke on that day, and never was cobbler more agreeably disappointed. Scarce half an hour had passed, when customer after customer came flocking in, to purchase a pair of new boots or shoes, distinguished by the original name of men's conscia recti. Never was cobbler so complimented for his work: such capital leather! such elegant stitches! such a capacity for making large feet small, and small feet large! that every man who shod himself anew, declared that Caleb had at length discovered the true philosophy of cobbling. Conscious as Caleb was that the very articles now so highly commended, were manufactured months previous, and had been lying by in want of purchasers, he was forced to attribute this sudden change in his fortunes to the magical effect of the sign-board.That was a proud day for Nicholas Pelt. All this time he had been reviewing from his loop-hole the busy scenes enacting at the cobbler's, and when school was over, he hastened into the street in advance of his eager pupils, and rushed to the cobbler's, where he was met at the door by Caleb in a high glee, jingling the genuine coin in both pockets, and declaring that he had realized more profit during that single day than in the entire month preceding.

This seemed a prosperous tide in Caleb's fortunes. Cheerfulness again lighted up his countenance, and competence and independence seemed the sure and early rewards of his toil. Successful industry never threw a brighter glow around any fire-side than was felt at the humble hearth of the honest cobbler. Caleb was growing so good-humored and facetious, had purchased of late so many dainties from the village store, that the dame and the children werenotoverwhelmed with astonishment, as they should have been, when one morning at breakfast the old gentleman informed them that he was going to devote that day to shopping, and would take them all with him. Such piles of calicoes, cloths, and muslins, as the busy mercer threw down on the counter with an air that said he didn't mind it—he was quite used to it—he could put them all up again in five minutes; such trinkets, toys, and fineries as were then and there displayed, the little urchins had never dreamed of seeing, much less of wearing. And then the old gentleman bought so much and so fast that the clerk, a youth with a sleek head, and a pen behind each ear and one in his fingers, was kept quite busy noting them down. There was a new bonnet for the dame, and a new dress and a 'pink-red' shawl for Ellen, and a hat for Rip, and a doll for the baby, and trowsers and jackets for a dozen more, and stuff for a bran new suit for Caleb, to be converted into fashionable shapes by that arch knight of the shears, the little French tailor. And then you should have seen them at church the next Sunday; how the dame sported her new bonnet, and how Ellen sportedhernew shawl, and how Rip kept trying on his new hat right in the face of the minister, and how young old Caleb looked in his new suit; and how the neighbors all stared at them, and Nicholas Pelt chuckled in one corner, and the minister preached to them about vanity, fine clothes, and all that! ah, that was fine, and it all came from thatMens conscia recti!No fear of poverty there; no dowdy hats nor ragged breeches, taxing the needle and the patience of the dame; no thought of casting Ellen into the embraces of such a graceless scamp as Hans Keiser. All these thoughts and a thousand more passed rapidly through the cobbler's mind; and when he remembered the kindness of the school-master, he did not hesitate to forget his old prejudices, so far as to admit that a Yankee might be both a gentleman and a scholar.

While the honest Dutchman was thus inhaling the breezes of good fortune, his rivals, Jonas Jones and Company, were fast sinking into obscurity. The exquisite individual whose name gave title and dignity to the firm, was fairly smitten, as we have seen, with the charms of Ellen Van Dyke. For several weeks he devotedhimself to all the external blandishments his fancy could invent to arrest the affections of his rival's daughter. These had failed, and worse still, his customers were dropping off, one by one; his supplies were suffering under a collapse. Mr. Jonas Jones soon grew crest-fallen. His elegant form and fascinating attire ceased to be visible on the public walks, as of yore when fortune smiled. His wit had ceased to sparkle like champagne; his wares no longer dazzled the credulous Idlebergers with their cheapness and durability. Adversity had driven him to the bench, where he sat day after day, waxing his ends, brooding over his reverses; now dreaming of Ellen Van Dyke, and now moralizing on the vanity of earthly things in general. Mr. Jonas Jones was evidently in a decline.

While Mr. Jones was sitting one day in this happy frame of mind, tugging very hard at a most obdurate piece of leather, his reflections were suddenly interspersed with a series of original ideas. Unable to compete with his rival, he would call on him immediately, and offer his services as a copartner in his business and a husband for his daughter. Animated by these conceptions, Mr. Jones leaped from his sitting posture with a degree of activity that astonished the Company, threw aside the cumbersome rigging peculiar to his craft, devoted a few minutes to his toilet, and with hasty strides started out on his errand of love and copartnership. By one of those fantastic freaks which Fancy sometimes plays, his first step on the pavement was arrested by a new thought which flashed through his mind, and suffused his weazen face with smiles; and turning on his heel, he reëntered the shop, and walked deliberately into a private apartment, where he remained for several days on the plea of pressing and important business, secluded from the observation even of the Company. He had procured an immense board, and a great pot of black paint; and that was all they knew.

Sailing under a fair sky, with the wind all astern, and his canvass swelling in the breeze, Caleb Van Dyke was little prepared for the clouds that so soon lowered above his head. Early one morning, when on the point of resuming his daily toil, he glanced carelessly up the street, and beheld a great crowd before the Yankee's door, staring at a gigantic sign-board inscribed in quaint characters:

Jonas Jones and Company.MEN'S AND WOMEN'S CONSCIA RECTI.

Adjusting his spectacles to reassure him that he was not dreaming, and muttering something very dreadful to think of, he called the school-master from the breakfast table, and directed his attention to the rival sign-board.

'Well, well,' said Nicholas; 'nobody but a Yankee would ever have thought of that. They are very bright over there; they havetranslated a Latin inscription into English in a manner truly original. I confess I never thought ofthatbefore; we will see, however; we will see.' And Nicholas went off in a brown study to his school-room.

Caleb Van Dyke had good cause that day to know that the population of Idleberg was as vacillating as an aspen-leaf, or any thing else that may be shaken by a breath. Not a single customer called that day, nor the next, nor the next. In addition to the crowds of male customers who thronged Mr. Jones's establishment, he saw numbers of the other sex on a similar errand, who were curious to see that particular fashion of shoe called 'women's conscia recti.' Mean time Nicholas Pelt was very grave, and spent all his leisure time in his chamber; and at the end of a week, during which Caleb's shop had been entirely deserted, Nicholas had the satisfaction of showing to his host a sign-board larger, longer, and more imposing than all the rest, inscribed:

MEN'S, WOMEN'S, AND CHILDREN'S CONSCIA RECTI.

It is needless farther to pursue the ebb and flow of popular favor between the rival cobblers. Suffice it to say that this last device succeeded to the entire satisfaction ofourcobbler; and men, women, and children, literally flocked to his shop, until his hands were kept busy night and day, and his pockets overflowed with gold, silver, and bank-notes. Yankee had met Yankee in the conflict of intellect, and fortune had smiled upon the school-master. In a very short time Mr. Jonas Jones and Company pulled up their stakes, moved farther west, and were never heard of afterward.

What now interposed to prevent the union of Nicholas and Ellen? How readily the fond father said: 'Yes, certainly, Mr. Pelt. God bless you! I can never repay your kindness.' How beautifully Ellen blushed at the thought that she was actually going to be married; how the parson tied the knot which no enactment of man should ever sunder; how friends gathered there to congratulate the happy pair, and share the bountiful repast prepared by the dame; how the wit of the bridegroom and the beauty of the bride never shone so brightly as then, and how Rip was put to bed of a surfeit; and how through it all the story of theMens conscia rectiwas repeated over and over in tones of merriment, until the cobbler's dwelling rang again; these pictures are all too bright for delineation by our feeble pen.

Departing from the well-beaten paths of many writers of legends and chronicles, who usually drop the curtain at the bridal night, we ask but a moment, gentle reader, to record in outline the incidents which grew out of and succeeded this alliance. These weddings, after all, are actual occurrences, and not dreams of romance. Nightwillslowly retire; the lamps must necessarily go out, even though filled with the oil of Aladdin's; the liveliest tongues will get tired of talking, and the briskest feet of dancing; and then the quiet honeymoon will succeed, and life with its stern realities will wake the loving pair to the thought of duties and pleasures yet in store,until the fading twilight of existence shall restore the bright ideal of 'Love's young dream.'

Nicholas's first step, then, was to inform Caleb Van Dyke that beside being a school-master, he was also a very respectable cobbler; and Caleb was convinced of this fact, almost against his will, at the sight of a pair of sturdy shoes manufactured by the quondam pedagogue, with a neatness and despatch that truly astonished him. Having arrived at the conclusion that the Idlebergers were disposed to spend their money more freely on their feet than their heads, Nicholas delivered his pedestal and birchen-rods to another adventurer who came along soon after in search of a school, and betook himself to cobbling in all its varieties. The firm of Van Dyke and Pelt thrived beyond precedent, and the old sign-board, after having become so illustrious, was permitted to retire, and its place was soon filled by another, composed and executed by the gifted Yankee, as follows:

'Blow, blow, ye winds and breezesAll among the leaves and treeses:Sing, oh sing, ye heavenly muses,While we make both boots and shoeses.'

In the mean time Hans Keiser returned to Idleberg, thoroughly cured of his passion for adventure. His old father, while under the combined effects of those genial stimulants, beer and tobacco, received him with great cordiality. Hans soon became reconciled to the loss of Ellen Van Dyke, having found a congenial spirit in the person of a farmer's buxom daughter, who had been for years selling butter, eggs, and poultry, at the sign of the yellow sky and blue stars, until the young Dutchman was suddenly smitten with her charms; and all parties consenting, they were in due time pronounced man and wife by the very parson who had officiated at the nuptials of Nicholas and Ellen.

Since then Idleberg has emerged from the ashes of its primitive obscurity, and has risen into great consideration at home, if not abroad, for its chaste attractions and its elegant society. The spot of ground once occupied by the hostelry of Karl Keiser, now sustains an imposing mansion-house, distinguished hereabouts as the Indian Queen Hotel. During Caleb Van Dyke's life-time nothing could induce the old gentleman to improve the indifferent dwelling to which a long residence had so much attached him; but Nicholas took the earliest advantage of his decease to remove the old shop, and rear upon its ruins a larger and more elegant building. While the Pelts are enjoying the luxuries of elegant country-seats and well-tilled acres, they cherish a commendable pride in remembering the humble means by which they have arisen to competence. Nicholas and Ellen are now enjoying a green old age, surrounded by their numerous and prosperous posterity; and the old family carriage, as it comes rumbling into town every Sunday, drawn by a pair of sterling gray horses, has painted on the pannel of each door an odd-looking pair of shoes of the last century's fashion, beneath which are inscribed in antique characters, the magical words:

MENS CONSCIA RECTI.

Atthe battle of Lake Champlain, a sailor, called Portuguese Joe, performed the gallant exploit of nailing the stripes and stars to the mast, after they had been shot down. He perished in the flames at the late fire in Exchange Place, New-Orleans.

Uponthe lake the battle raged,And warmly was each heart engaged,To win their nation's liberty—To conquer or to die!The iron hail was flying fastAgainst the sail, against the mast,And many a warm and gallant frameThe prey of death became.And louder grew the cannon's sound,And faster flew the balls around,And sadly rose above the strifeThe groans of parting life!Still the brave tars beheld with prideThe stripes and stars exulting rideWhere many an eye was fondly cast,Upon the towering mast.But hark! a shot! 'twas guided well,And suddenly the colors fell!Another—and another—nowThe flag is lying low!Upon the deck the stripes and starsDip in the blood of dying tars;Oh! surely 'tis a glorious stain,The life-blood of the slain!But who is this who nobly daresReplace those precious stripes and stars?The tattered shrouds his fingers seize!—'Tis Joe—the Portuguese!Into the rigging quick he springs,Close to the splintered mast he clings,And now aloft how eagerlyIs gazing every eye!A long, a loud, a deafening cheer,Bursts from each gallant sailor near,Behold! the flag of libertyAgain is waving free!Three cheers! the flag once more is spread,Joe's shining hat waves o'er his head!And hark! a shout of triumph now!Three cheers from those below!The fight is o'er—the battle done;'Twas bravely fought—'twas bravely won;And Joe a glorious part did play,That long-remembered day!. . . . . . . . . . . .Long years have passed, and Joe is dead;His ashes to the winds are spread;Long live within our memoriesBrave Joe—the Portuguese!

Uponthe lake the battle raged,And warmly was each heart engaged,To win their nation's liberty—To conquer or to die!

The iron hail was flying fastAgainst the sail, against the mast,And many a warm and gallant frameThe prey of death became.

And louder grew the cannon's sound,And faster flew the balls around,And sadly rose above the strifeThe groans of parting life!

Still the brave tars beheld with prideThe stripes and stars exulting rideWhere many an eye was fondly cast,Upon the towering mast.

But hark! a shot! 'twas guided well,And suddenly the colors fell!Another—and another—nowThe flag is lying low!

Upon the deck the stripes and starsDip in the blood of dying tars;Oh! surely 'tis a glorious stain,The life-blood of the slain!

But who is this who nobly daresReplace those precious stripes and stars?The tattered shrouds his fingers seize!—'Tis Joe—the Portuguese!

Into the rigging quick he springs,Close to the splintered mast he clings,And now aloft how eagerlyIs gazing every eye!

A long, a loud, a deafening cheer,Bursts from each gallant sailor near,Behold! the flag of libertyAgain is waving free!

Three cheers! the flag once more is spread,Joe's shining hat waves o'er his head!And hark! a shout of triumph now!Three cheers from those below!

The fight is o'er—the battle done;'Twas bravely fought—'twas bravely won;And Joe a glorious part did play,That long-remembered day!

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Long years have passed, and Joe is dead;His ashes to the winds are spread;Long live within our memoriesBrave Joe—the Portuguese!

Charleston, June, 1843.

Mary S. B. Dana.

Authorsare very unequal. The loftiest sometimes sink lower than the mediocre ever do; the passionate are often lifeless; and the deep and original portrayer of character and the heart frequently utters sententious truisms and apophthegmatic nonsense. I have lately been perusing the writings of La Bruyere, and have been forced more than ever to admire his masterly choice of language, his vivid wit, and keen discrimination. Among some very acute and just remarks I observed one so amazingly juiceless, that for a time I thought it must have been hazarded as a kind of tantalizing puzzle—a hollow nut for fools to crack in the hope of finding a kernel. He says, 'As we become more and more attached to those who benefit us, so we conceive a violent hatred for those who have greatly injured us'—that is, 'we love our friends and hate our enemies!!' A truly profound conclusion, and one requiring long experience and deep philosophy to discover! My efforts to detectsomebrilliant thread in the triteness, andsomesavor in the jejuneness of the above childish enunciation, gave rise to the following 'scatterings' on aphorisms, etc., and their writers.

Proverbs have been called 'the condensed wisdom of nations.' They may, I think, with more propriety be entitled 'an epitome of the truths and falsehoods contained in the more extended forms of books, and in the practical commentary of life.' Those of them which are true, are like the rules in the practical sciences, which the most ignorant artisan may apply, although he know nothing of the principles on which they are based, or of the process by which they are proved. If all these adages were true, they would prove of infinite advantage in life; since by a slight effort of the memory we might retain rules for our guidance through almost every difficulty of doubt or of temptation. But the misfortune is that here, as elsewhere, the true is mingled with the false, and only excellent sense with an addition of long experience can inform us which are worthy and which unworthy of reception. Now this same good sense and experience would furnish us with the same wisdom bythe induction of our own minds, and thereby supersede the necessity of the written or oral maxims of others. Hence it is clear that proverbs are of little practical utility, since the very wisdom they would teach is a prerequisite to an intelligent adoption of their teachings. Their chief value lies in their conveying a great deal of instruction in a portable form, and presenting it very impressively by the energy of some brief and homely illustration.

The frequent use of aphorisms and proverbial phrases has in all ages been regarded as a vulgarism. Many of them are strikingly true and extremely elegant, having emanated from thoughtful and polished minds; yet in their daily use among writers and speakers of all classes, they become soiled and worn, familiar and profane. They acquire the tone of cant, and are resigned to the possession of those who cannot think and speak for themselves. In the fragments of the old Greek comedy and in others of their familiar writers, we find proverbs usually given up to the subordinate characters. Even in Euripides, 'the philosopher of the scenes,' nearly all whose personages harangue in sententious monostichs like disputants in the Academus or declaimers from the Stoa, the proverbial style is mostly left to messengers and attendants, pedagogues and nurses. Among the Romans, Plautus is most profuse in adages, and with him they drop, thick and fast, from the mouths of pimps and parasites, courtesans, and slaves. Horace employs them seldom, save when personating some humble character; and Cicero, even in his 'Familiar Letters,' often prefaces their introduction by an apologetic 'ut aiunt'—'as they say.' Every one, who has read (and who hasnotread?) the romance of the renowned Cid Hamet Benengeli, remembers the ludicrous distress suffered by the knight of La Mancha in hearing his squire discharge whole broadsides of rustic proverbs at all times and on all subjects. The Italian language overflows with these trite familiarities. The low characters in the early English comedies, and the old English writers in general, abound in these homely texts, which teach the rustic moralist tolive. If the novelists of this age of gas and steam-boats place in the mouths of their subaltern heroes few of the thread-bare aphorisms so common in the works of Smollet and Fielding, it is because the 'ignobility' of the present day have arrived at great perfection in a peculiar dialect—a compound of buffoonery and sentiment, of poetry and flash. In place of the quaint proverbs and worn allusions, in which their ancestors couched their humble thoughts, they bedizen their every-day attire of flimsy cant and coarse burlesque with borrowed flowers of fancy and the stolen jewelry of wit.

Writers of apophthegms, maxims, laconisms, etc., are more liable to errors than most other authors. Their aim is to be striking rather than consistent; and hence, in their pages you may frequently find sentiments of the most conflicting tendency. They have conceived a truth, and in order to illustrate it more forcibly, they clinch it with a brilliant catch; that is, they sharpen it with a glittering nothing, or point it with a sparkling lie. They fall into the same categorywith the epigrammatists of the Martial school, who often bore you with a long and irrelevant preface for the purpose of introducing a smart turn at the conclusion. How infinitely inferior, by the way, with all their wit and all their polish, are the sharp conceits and coquettish affectations of Martial and his successors to the severe and noble simplicity of the Greek epigram! An ingenious thought is commonly a false one. Its very ingenuity and uncommonness areprimâ facieevidence that it is neither natural nor correct. The apophthegmatist perceives that a particular fact is frequently associated with another fact. He immediately notes it down, and in a shape of antithetic brevity delivers it to others as a universal guide.

Many of these maxims are like those of Rochefoucault, on which Bulwer and some other self-imagined dissectors of the heart appear to have looked with an envious emulation. They are hard, cold, and brilliant—the deductions of a long, active, and passive experience in scenes of courtly treachery and polished heartlessness. They are gems, that have crystallized by an infusion of selfishness in the residuum of exhausted feeling—sparkling stalactites, formed by continual drippings from the cells of an acute and scheming brain upon the bottom of a cavernous and icy heart. If true at all, they are true, thank God, only among the summits of social life, where the scintillations of loveless intellect flash from peak to peak through an atmosphere of frosty splendor. Even if they be better founded and more widely applicable than I believe, their spirit is baleful, their tendency pernicious. They sow in the warm heart of youth the suspicions of the hackneyed worldling, and teach him that to meet and baffle the simulations and dissimulations of his fellows, he must sheathe his innocent spirit in the panoply of craft, subject every movement to the guidance of consummate art, and conceal every generous impulse and each warm emotion beneath the ice of unchanging coldness, or behind the glittering veil of one inscrutable, invincible, and everlasting smile. Asserting the absolute wickedness of all men, and impressing the necessity of a sleepless and universal doubt, they inoculate the tender nurslings of a rising generation with that poisonous wisdom which diffuses a moral death through the pithless trunk and leafless branches of their riper years. When I hear one rehearsing these odious lessons, and affirming that Virtue lives not in the heart of man, I am not so much convinced of her non-existence in the world as I am of her non-residence in the bosom of her slanderer. Whether the upholders of this infamous doctrine find in their own breasts the prototype of the unmitigated moral deformity which they attribute to their race, I shall not attempt to decide. But it is certain that these degraders of humanity are reduced to this dilemma. They either have an internal consciousness of their own utter depravity, which induces them to think all others equally devoid of worth, or from the evidence of history and experience they infer that mankind are entirely abandoned-devils incarnate. If the first be the basis of their belief, they must indeed be wicked—wicked beyond hope, and beyond redemption; for even thieves, cheats, and impostorsproceed on the conviction that there is something good, honest, and unsuspecting in the human breast. If they draw the foul tenet and utter the blasphemous libel from testimony and experience, how poorly must they have read the volume of history, how blindly have moved on the theatre of life, not to have seen that humanity is a mixture of good and evil, and that its eventful records are often bright with kindness, and faithfulness, and every virtue, though oftener alas! black with cruelty, and treachery, and crime! Leave, dear youth, leave 'Timon of Athens' and all others, who have outlived, or fooled away their capacities of enjoyment, to gnash their toothless rage at a world they have abused, and, believe me, you may find on the written and unwritten page of human action a thousand deeds of noblest daring and most unswerving love—deeds whose touching moral beauty will thrill through all your frame, causing your eyes to glisten, your flesh to quiver, and your heart to swell.

The aphorisms of Epictetus, Antoninus, Seneca, and others of that class are not, indeed, of the same heartless and freezing character with those of Rochefoucault, and the Chesterfieldian school; yet they are mostly of too Stoical and superhuman a cast to be of much practical benefit to poor human nature. They counsel you, for instance, to bear the gout with patience, by considering that many have had it before you, have it now, and will have it after you; that impatience will not ease your pain; that your were born for suffering and must expect to suffer, and that, at the worst, it cannot last for ever. All mighty, true, and philosophical, no doubt; but the twinged and wincing sufferer cannot extract one grain of comfort from any of these considerations but the last. Sometimes they bid you reflect whether your sorrows are not the consequences of your own crime or folly. The affusion ofthis'oil of consolation' is literally the casting of oil upon the fire. It is a sedative for grief resembling a handful of red-pepper thrown into inflamed eyes. It is adding to the agonies of the previous torture the rage of remorse and the bitterness of self-contempt.

These calm and rational exhortations to 'take it coolly,' and 'never to cry for spilled milk,' are all very good till they are needed. They are extremely salutary before the fever kindles or the milk is spilled; but in the presence of pain, or on the advent of disaster, to all but those who are gifted with fortitude by nature, or have been disciplined in the school of affliction, they are about as effectual as whistling in the teeth of a nor'wester. Their utter impotence in the storm of passion reminds me of the directions given by a good New-England deacon to his choleric son. 'Whenever you feel yourdanderrising,' said he, 'be sure to say the Lord's prayer, my son, or else the alphabet clean through; and long before you git to the eend on't, you'll be as cool as a cucumber, or an iceberg. Promise me faithfully, my son.' 'Yes, daddy, I promise.' Off trudged Jonathan to school, carrying his bread and meat with a small bottle of molasses in his jacket-pocket, and his late firm promise uppermost in his mind. A boy, who bore him an oldgrudge, met him, and, after calling him the 'young deacon,' and many other scurrilous nicknames, caught him off his guard, and threw him to the ground, tearing his jacket, and breaking his molasses-bottle. Now itissaid by censorious Southrons, that a Yankee will take a great many hard names with the patience of a martyr: his spirit is word-proof; but tear his clothes or cheat his belly, and he will fight 'to the knife.' Up jumped Jonathan, his eyes wolfish and his lips white with rage. But 'there was an oath in Heaven,' and he did not forget it. So he proceeded to swallow his alphabetical pills—an antidote to wrath, not mentioned in the 'Regimen Salernitanum,' nor recognized by the British College. 'A, B, C,—you've tored my jacket—D, E, F,—you've spilt my 'lasses—G, H, I, J, K,—you're a 'tarnal rascal—L, M, N, O, P, Q,—I'll larn you better manners, you scamp, you!—R, S, T, U, V,—I'll spile your picter, you old wall-eye!—W, X, Y, Z,ampersand—now I'll pound your insides out o' you, you darned nigger!' And with that, Jonathan, whose passion had been mounting alphabetically throughout all his father's prescription of vowels and consonants, caught the young scape-grace, and, throwing him down, was proceeding to work off each of the deacon's twenty-six anti-irascible pills in the shape of a dozen hearty fisticuffs, which might, perhaps, have brought the poor fellow to the omega of his days had not the timely approach of a passenger interrupted the manipulations. So much for rules to control the passions.

The Greek pentameters, containing the 'Admonitions of Theognis the Megarian' form one of the strangest compositions I ever read. They are as complete a medley as anycolluviesof vegetables, shells, and bones, swept by the Noachic flood into the hollows of the earth. Here a petrified rose-leaf rests its cheek upon a nettle; here lies the bill of a dove, and here a shark's tooth; here is the grinning chasm of a lion's jaws, and here the skeleton of a loving lamb. A kindly maxim is followed by a cynic snarl, and exhortations to universal affection sleep side by side with counsels to entire distrust in man. They are probably the 'disjecta membra'—a pest on the pedantry of Latin!—the scattered limbs of several moralists, and in their present incoherency, they remind one of that anomalous species of union facetiously styled by grammarians, a 'conjunctiondisjunctive!'

The proverbs of Solomon, apart from their inspiration, are of clearer and more comprehensive wisdom than all the parœmial precepts of the world beside. But among them, as Peter said of the writings of his brother Paul, there are 'some things hard to be understood.' As one instance out of many, I refer to Prov. xxvi. 4, 5. 'Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him;' and again, 'Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit'—directions which it requires the wit of an Œdipus fully to explain, and the wisdom of Solomon himself to act out with appropriate discrimination.

Among all modern books of that cast, I prefer the 'Lacon' of the eccentric Colton. Straggling through the fields of life after theGreek and Roman reapers, he has bound his gleanings into a bundle scarce inferior to their sheaves in beauty and abundance. If hardly equal to some of his Gallic rivals in glitter and acuteness, neither has he dazzled the eyes of Truth with sparkling falsehoods, nor pierced the heart of Virtue with the darts of slander, nor sundered with the sword of sarcasm the fresh-strung nerves of Hope. Expressing thoughts at once noble, original, and true, in words always happy, and in a style at times of almost unrivalled elegance, the teachings of his few brief pages are of more value than all the tawdry sentiment and flimsy ethics scattered through the fifty 'parvum in multo' volumes of theLastof theBaronets.

'Dans toutes les conditions,' says La Bruyere, 'le pauvre est bien proche de l'homme de bien, et l'opulent n'estquère éloigné de la friponnerie. Le savoir-faire et l'habilité ne mènent pas jusq 'aux énormes richesses.' How shallow and how false! One can hardly imagine how a man of his wit and sense could have ventured the sweeping declaration, that poverty is a proof of honesty, and wealth of knavery. Every one must see in the world around him that riches fall exclusively neither to the good nor to the bad, but somewhat according to the industry of men, and still more by the caprices of Fortune, or, in better language, by the mysterious dispensations of Heaven. Many of the rich have acquired their wealth by discreet and honest industry, and manage it with a thoughtful and wise benevolence. Many of the poor, on the contrary, are niggards on a contracted scale, and in their avidity for money would engage in any knavery to obtain it. Why have they not become rich? Because they had neither industry, enterprise, nor patience, and many constantly laid out their little gains in extravagant dress, temporary pleasures, and vicious indulgence. If, then, we grant the eager love of money to be a vice, the poor are often chargeable with it to the same extent as the rich, while the sum of their moral excellence being still farther lessened by idleness, impatience, imbecility, and vice, they are left far inferior to the wealthy in the scale of character and value. The truth is, the larger portion of mankind are dishonest, so far as temptation urges, and their courage or their opportunities allow. It is also true that large numbers of the rich have amassed their fortunes by knavery or gross injustice, and that a majority of them have occasionally infringed the rules of rigid honesty. And it is certainly no less true that, in some shape or other, a large plurality of the poor are more or less unjust and knavish in their little dealings with each other. The proportion of truly upright men is doubtless greater among the poor than among the rich, because riches have confessedly a corrupting influence upon the heart. But this corrupting influence of wealth has nothing to do with the mode of its acquisition. The ranks of the rich are constantly recruited from the crowds of the poor, and most of those who are now rolling in wealth were at first but penniless and friendless boys. If, therefore, a majority of the poor be radically and truly honest, so are an almost equal number of the rich, who are taken indiscriminately from among the poor.Furthermore, the position that the opulent have generally gained their money unfairly, clashes with two other very orthodox and ancient proverbs, that 'villany never prospers,' and that 'honesty is the best policy.' I leave those who guide themselves by old saws to reconcile these contradictions, and independently of all proverbs I form my own opinion; which is, that riches and power are distributed among men with little or no respect of merit, and that fraud, however beneficial temporarily and in a coarse, pecuniary view, is ruinous, if we regard the sum total of our existence.

There are many opinions so commonly entertained and so frequently expressed, that although they have not perhaps attained the fixed form of an adage, yet they have the operation, and may be considered in the light, of proverbs. These opinions may be divided into two classes—generalities in general, and generalities in particular. The first arise from men's observing a few instances of a given fact, and erecting these instances into an all-embracing rule. They consist in such unqualified assertions as these—'Americans are money-worshippers: Frenchmen are fops: religionists are hypocrites: doctors are pretenders: lawyers are knaves: politicians are time-servers. These may be termed generalities in general, and they generally amount to falsehoods in particular. Unqualified assertions are usually qualified lies; for every thing in this world is a commixture of good and evil. What is good at one time, is bad at another; or what is good in itself is bad from its circumstances and adjuncts, or bad in comparison with something better. He, therefore, who affirms a tiling to be good or bad absolutely, entirely, and at all times, commonly affirms more than is true, or, in other words, affirms a restricted falsehood.

Generalities in particular are derivative generalities, and the detection of their falsity requires a double analysis. After generalities in general have been established by a course of false reasoning, generalities in particular are inferred by a process of similar sophistry reversed, and an unfair deduction from an unsound predicate derives specific falsehoods from a generical untruth. Like that famous tree of the Indies, whose branches droop downward to the ground, and take root, and rise again, and descend once more, and rise afresh, till the central trunk is guarded by a youthful forest, and clings to its native earth by a thousand vegetable arms; so one of these comprehensive untruths sends forth its ramifications of mistake, which spring upward in a fresh growth of reproductive errors, till they are all fastened to the soil of the social mind by numberless and ineradicable roots, and the parent falsehood stands, surrounded by a giant progeny of lies. Here is the reasoning. Such a class of men are bad in general;therefore, this particular individual is worthless. Lawyers are usually dishonest men;ergo, this individual lawyer is a knave.' Here is the same beautiful logic reversed. 'I have heard ofsomecruel slave-holders;therefore, every slave-holder is a bloody tyrant. I have seensomehaughty and oppressive 'millionaires;'ergo, all the opulent are purse-proud and unfeeling aristocrats.' These are the foolish generalities ofopinion and assertion, which have caused so many misunderstandings, suspicions, antipathies, and heart-burnings among the classes of society, the sects of religion, and the nations of men. He who should believe in the infallibility, and guide himself by the directions, of accredited opinions, and undisputed proverbs, would often, be wofully puzzled by their divergent counsels and contradictory assertions. They often uphold as unfailing truths things that are true but in a majority or even a measureless minority of instances, and that according to extraneous contingencies.

For example, in speaking of heirs they represent them as universally a race of spendthrifts. Now they may, or may not, be so, according to their peculiar dispositions. Doubtless the acquisition of wealth by inheritance is less calculated to impress its possessor with a prudent estimate of its value than its accumulation by 'eating the bread of carefulness.' Yet thousands of legatees are more miserly than their legators, and thousands more manage their inheritances with discreet liberality.

It is said that intemperancealwayshardens the heart. Far be it from me to play the sophist in favor of excess, or to deny its naturaltendencyto blunt the feelings, and brutalize the soul. But, though I know not how it is, I haveseenmany, who, amid the ruins of their character and the withering of their hopes, seemed only to grow the more tender, generous, and self-sacrificing, and while shrinking from the coldness of their connections and the contempt of the world, overflowed with affection toward all mankind. A few years since I chanced to sit by the death-bed of one, who had drank up a fine estate, and brought down his once full and muscular form to a shrunken, fleshless frame—a very skeleton. That man would, at any time, have periled his life for another; and, when in his cups, would have rushed on inevitable death for the meanest of his kind. And even then, as he lay now writhing in pain, now fainting with feebleness, forgetful of his own sufferings and danger, he followed all my motions with his eyes, constantly beckoned to the servants to attend to my wants, and watched me, stranger as I was, with an anxious tenderness, which almost choked me with tears. Peace be with thee, poor Ned! May the earth rest lighter on thy heart than did the scorn of thy kindred! The adamantine chains of habit bound thee to degradation, and dragged thee to the grave—but a truer and kinder spirit never dwelt within a human breast!

A common maxim is, that 'old maids' are peevish, tea-drinking, scandal-loving bodies. Many old maids are so; for their constant exposure to unfeeling derision renders them the first; sympathy with each other's condition gives them the second habit; and the weakness of human nature prompts them to envy and detract from those whom they deem more fortunate than themselves. But there are many of these slandered sisters who never coveted the double blessedness they are supposed to envy; who are too independent to sigh for gilded compliments and hollow homage; and are quite content to live in isolated virtue, and die in solitary peace. Yes! thousands of these unappropriated 'units' have been mellowed bythe touch of Time, till they have become the very models of womanhood; modest and intelligent, just and generous, mild and charitable; aiding by their labors, consoling by their words, enlightening by their wisdom, and instructing by the beautiful teachings of uniform example. Hannah More is at the head of the female world.

It is a frequent remark that the sons of eminent men are rarely eminent. Now eminence is rare ineveryclass of society—for it is a relative term, meaninguncommonexcellence, and of course, it cannot be very common. But I think the proportion at least as large among the offspring of the great as among the children of the obscure. If among the former, vice too often consumes the energies of the spirit, and parasites persuade them that greatness is the privilege of their birth, and that Elisha will receive the mantle, although he walk not in the footsteps of Elijah; to the latter 'the ample page of Knowledge' has been sealed by stern necessity, and 'Penury has frozen the genial current of the soul.' Not one in ten thousand among the sons of the humble has ever attained to eminence, and quite as great a percentage is found among the children of the distinguished. The opinion, therefore, is either false, or is a stupid truism amounting to this: 'Few of the multitude distinguish themselves byuncommonmerit.'

Another common assertion is, that the sons of very good men are generally more profligate than those of others. This proverb contradicts another adage, that a 'good tree bears good fruit,' and they nullify each other. In truth, however, the latter maxim is true, agreeing with reason, and verified by experience; while the former is absurd in theory, and false in fact. It forgets the grand principle of cause and effect. It were, indeed, a strange and mournful comment on the perverseness of our race, if the pious counsels and pure example of an upright father only served to harden and degrade the child. Strange were it, most strange and sad, did the seeds of a blameless life fail generally of their natural crop, and fructify only in acts of guilt and shame. On this theory, the tender parent, who would take the surest course for securing the integrity and welfare of his offspring, should in his own person display an obscene drama of flagitious action, and, like the lawgivers of Sparta, infuse in others a disgust of vice by a practical exhibition of her foulness. I do not thus believe in the force of contrast, or the power of opposites to beget and produce each other. The ordinary rule of Nature is, 'Like produces like.' The quite common opinion that reverses this rule in reference to the children of pious parents, arose from the observation of some instances of sad degeneracy, and as these were very striking, people forgot the mass of instances on the other side of the question, and generalized a few scattering exceptions into a universal rule.

Once more. Many modern novelists, when they wish to be very novel and acute, exclaim (in some suitable context) 'Misery loves company.' 'Ho! ho! are you there, old Truepenny!' 'Misery loves company.' And, pray, my fine apoththegmatist, are you deep andoriginal in this remark? Is it a profound discovery, or is it a shallow truism? Are you very wise, or quite otherwise? 'Misery loves company.' And doesn't joy love company? Does not anger long to diffuse its fires, confidence to reveal its hopes, and triumph to announce its exultations? Instead of appearing to say something when you were saying nothing, why did you not remark in unpretending prose that we are sociable, sympathy-craving beings, and love company, whether miserable or happy; and that all our passions, save the morose ones, seek for participation? If you wished to go a little father, and assert a truth, which should not be very brilliant, nor entirely unfathomable, you might remark, that if ever our joy or our sorrow fly from crowds, it is only because it is unfitted for their sympathy or too great for their comprehension. When our happiness or grief is so intense that it fills all the heart and engages all the brain, we withdraw ourselves from all communion, and reverize in the selfishness of solitude and silence.

Here endeth the commentary on the Book of Proverbs.

Polygon.

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