the heart," 66 blushing cheeks," "dewed lashes," and "kisses." This may all have been as it is there written. I incline to be.. lieve that it was; but, though these matters are all very pleasant in real life, they do not look well on paper. Chap. VIII. Which shows that, though mammas are sometimes unreasonable, misses are not always untrue; fashion not a petrifier; nor woman a weathercock. Scenes are disagreeable. Love scenes are particularly disagreeable to all but the parties immediately interested. I dropped the curtain on the last tableaux, therefore, with all possible despatch. Yet it was a remarkable scene; the more so that it was of actual occurrence. Not less so is the scene that follows. Mrs. Million did not interrupt the tête-àtête. It was most judicious, in her opinion, to leave the whole matter to the good sense of her daughter. Harry is gone, therefore, when mamma comes sweeping in with all the dowager stateliness of flesh and fifty. Mary prepares for an explosion. "Well, my child, I suppose that you have brought this silly affair to an end. You know that I never approved your engagement with Mr. Singleton, and his recent impru dence has placed the possibility of his connexion with our family quite out of the question." Now, in ordinary cases, where an interview is commenced by mamma in this very decided and peremptory manner, I would bet two to one on the old lady. Mary was sitting upon the same ottoman where we introduced her to our readers, and where she had first listened to the maternal eulogy on the young man with a 66 very pretty property." Her heart throbbed a little, and her cheek flushed, as she thought of the coming conflict with an authority which she had always reverenced; but her purpose never faltered for a moment. "You must remember, Mary, that I have always objected to Mr. Singleton's attentions, chiefly because he differs from us in religion. He is an Unitarian: you and your family have always been educated in the Episcopalian worship." If he had been a heathen, thought Mary, mamma would never have very obstinately objected to him on that account; but she said nothing, and hung down her head. "Besides, Mary, he is, to the last degree, thoughtless and improvident. Can I trust the happiness of my daughter in the hands of a gambler and spendthrift ?" The imputation touched Mary to the quick. Improvident he may have been, mother, and guilty therefore, if improvidence be a crime. Gambler he is not, unless the daily hazard of the mercantile world be gambling. The dupe of knaves I believe he has been; but even a censorious world has never coupled with dishonour. Prove to me that in any the most trivial instance he has stained his reputation, and, though it cost me my life, I would cast him from my heart." "Fine speeches, truly, miss: and do you think that I will ever consent that any of the family of the Millions should unite herself with a beggar!" Mary started to her feet. Most unfilial was the aspect of that curled lip, and the glance of that flashing eye! An angry girl is certainly a very lovely object. Not a spoiled, pettish girl-not a juvenile termagant, whom years will mature into an indomitable scoldnot a noisy, raging, Vesuvius girl, who blazes up with unexpected and unaccountable passion; all these are sufficiently odious. But a gentle and serene woman, self-respectful, sweet-tempered, and not easily roused, in a sudden burst of proud and indignant anger, is the most beautiful thing in creation. Α sea-fight, or a ship in a tempest, is nothing to it. "Beggar !" repeated the astonished girl; when, terrified by her own sudden passion, and awed by the spirit of habitual obedience to an arrogant and self-willed mother, she sunk, half fainting, at her feet. All this "No theatricals, here, I beg. will do very well in stage-plays, and such nonsense, but it is not to be tolerated among people of sense. I'll soon rid you of such humours. Why, a moment ago, you struck up like a tragedy queen-a perfect Lady Macbeth; and now you are going into hysterics. Perhaps you could not do better than to make an engagement with Mr. Barry, to play the dumb girl in Massaniello." Mary rose, and condescended no reply. She was nerved to her task, by an impulse and a purpose not to be shaken by the idle ravings even of a mother. "Yes, Miss Million," resumed the mother, "I ask you again, for the last time, if you have discarded, for ever, that profligate and beggar." "If to be stripped of fortune, mother, is to be profligate, and to be thrown utterly upon his own talents and acquirements for subsistence is to be a beggar then is Harry Singleton both a beggar and a profligate; but, such as he is, he is my affianced husband and your son." "No son of mine, Miss Million; and unless you will break your mother's heart, and destroy the peace and prospects of the family, no husband of yours." "Hear me, mother, and once for all. You received Harry Singleton into your family when he was accounted a young man of fortune, and when ambitious girls and mothers were competing for his hand." Mamma took the remark as personal, but bit her lips and said nothing. "You encouraged his addresses to your daughter. You did not frown when those addresses were accepted. You consented to entrust to his keeping that daughter's happiness. Wherein is he less worthy now than when I accepted his hand ?” Here "The old story, I suppose; love in a cottage and all that! Mary Million, Mary Million, I thought you were a woman of more sense. This is all very well in a romance, and you flatter yourself, no doubt, with the idea of figuring like one of your novel ladies, who jump out of a three story window to throw themselves into the arms of a beggar, and run the risk of breaking their necks to keep from breaking their hearts. Stuff, Miss Million, the whole of it. No well behaved and well educated young woman ever indulged in such tantrums as these." "Mother, mother!" said Mary. "Don't interrupt me, if you please. is a matter touching the peace of your mother and family, and you would not suffer me to get a word in edgeways. Haven't you seen enough of your acquaintances ruined by marrying beggars? Do you really suppose that young ladies have nothing to do but consult their own fancy in a husband? Do you imagine that civilized people marry for love, Miss Million? Did I marry your dear father for love, you ungrateful girl? And will you pretend to know better how young ladies should marryt han your mother? No, Miss Million-but I will not hear a word in reply. I will never consent to your forming this beg.. garly connexion. Reflect, coolly, miss, on the good advice I have given you. Follow it, and you will have no reason to repent; but disobey my commands and I discard you for ever. Did you ever see my old favourite, Mrs. Barnes, make an exit in a rage? Mrs. Million's was a facsimile. Chap. IX.-A conclusion, not a catastrophe. What's to be done? In France the lovers would have ordered charcoal, or thrown themselves into the Seine. In England they would have set mamma at defiance, and called a postchaise for Gretna Green. But in this country suicide is ungenteel, and the best writers on domestic relations agree that an elopement is among the last of the improprieties. Be that as it may. Three years have elapsed. Shift the scene again. Give another turn to the kaleidoscope. What have we here? A pretty cottage this; with everything neat and green about it, and other signs of domesticity besides that little draperied cherub, which is as much prettier than either of Greenough's as flesh is prettier than marble. Curly locks and blue eyes-pray does it more resemble papa or mamma? It would be difficult to say. The creature has a trick of either of them. And here, then, they have brought up at last!" "Mary, my dear, do you remember that evening at Mrs. Peacock's?" "What evening?" "That evening, to be sure, of all others, when I waded through the streets in a second deluge, to revenge myself for your abominable coquetry? Three years since, little did I then expect to be filing writs and planting potatoes at my own Florence, with a little girl of my own that could call papa as plain as the parrot." "Well, Harry, and what think you of the change?" "A change, truly! The dollars swept, and a few acres of thousands left! But to tell you the truth, Mary, with this quiet little tenement and the hope of a better-a profession that already yields an humble competence, and promises distinction ;-with a wife of my own, and that little girl, I really begin to believe, that for the first time in my life, I am entitled to the reputation of a young man with QUITE A PRETTY PROPERTY. In BORES IN WRITING AND READING. DESCRIPTION OF A HEROINE. THIS is an inevitable bore-unshunnable. So sure as you take up the novel, so sure are you to be favoured with an inventory of the heroine's perfections, mental and bodily. A good description is certainly a pleasure rather than a bore, but then that is so very rare. general not anything can be more flat and insipid. You hear plenty of angelic virtues and angelic charms, but no impression is made— nothing painted upon the retina of the mind. All is vague and unsubstantial as a dream. If this were only done in the brief and business fashion of the Lady Olivia-" Item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two gray eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth," it would not so much matter. But the ambitious writer cannot consent to have his fair one introduced in this unceremonious manner. Earth, air, and water must be searched for becoming similitudes, and special contributions levied on the feathered tribes and the vegetable creation. Her brow is of the Parian marble, her skin is of the driven snow, or anything else equally white, and equally unlike good wholesome flesh and blood. The rose and the lily have of late, it is true, got rather into disrepute as illustrations of her cheeks, but her voice, of course, resembles "the warble of a bird,” or has a “silvery sound." What is meant by those " silvery sounds" or tones, we could never exactly make out; but if any gentleman tries the experiment of chinking a dollar, half-dollar, or ten cent piece upon the table, and then says that he would like his wife's or mistress's voice to resemble that, we have only to say that we Instead of all these tinklings and warblings, how much more unpresuming, simple, definite and distinct, is the great master's description: "Her voice was soft and low: An excellent thing in women !" But a heroine is an uncommon sort of creature, common words, it seems, are not available in describing her. It is amusing, too, to mark how certain matters have settled down to rules. For instance, if there should chance to be a brace of heroines in a novel, and they should happen, as is frequently the case, to be sisters, any reader of common sagacity or ordinary experience can at once sketch their pictures in imagination. In ordinary life there not unfrequently prevails among members of the same family a certain similarity in manner, person, features, or complexion, which goes by the name of a "family likeness." This is never the case in novels. Two sisters are always so specially different as really to create an unpleasant suspicion in the mind of the thinking reader as to whether or not they can have had a common parentage. Caroline is tall and stately-Helen short and sylph-like. Caroline's eyes are dark and lustrous-Helen's blue and tender. The hair of the one is black as the wing of the raven, that of the other like waving gold. The one "Walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, Meet in her aspect and her eyes; "— the other is an Aurora" fair as the opening morn;" which, by the by, is generally foul and misty. The one is an Italian, the other a Scandinavian; or, to be classical, the one is a Juno, the other a Psyche. And then comes the puzzle in the mind of the ingenious describer which of the two is the most attractive. Whether the superb and dignified Caroline, or the gentle and sportive Helen is the most enchanting. After a page or two of bewildering doubt, this is generally left to the decision of the reader; and two heroes, of very different tastes, are provided for the accommodation of the two heroines. When we look round among our friends and acquaintance, or upon the crowds we encounter in our daily walks, what a very small quantity of "fine, classical features" do we meet with. How rare are "high and lofty foreheads, and "finely chiselled" nostrils. On the contrary, what numbers of snipe and snub-noses, of high cheek bones and hollow cheeks, of extensive mouths, sans teeth, of dull and sunken eyes, of cadaverous comHow plexions, encounter us at every turn. many are short and fat-how many long and lanky; and nearly all how awkward! In fact a very handsome man ought to be taken hold of and put in, a show. It is not is he but a reproach to his fellow-creaturesfitting that he be allowed to go at large. What an odious comparison—a walking insult! Let him be confined or tattooed. It may not be new, but it is very true, that most things are valued in proportion to their rarity. Men are vainer of personal beauty than women, and far less skilful in concealing their vanity; consequently, a handsome man is a decided impertinence a thoroughbred Narcissus. He is of opinion that the business of the world stands still, in order to give the people engaged therein leisure to contemplate him. When he appears, he thinks that all thoughts and emotions in the breast of every one present are suspended or obliterated in order to make room for an intense feeling of admiration. He feels quite certain that every woman who looks upon him loves him, and that her peace of mind is from thenceforth sacrificed; and he has even the egregious folly to suppose that he is admired by those of his own sex! Poor deluded mortal! Little does he dream that men of sense never bestow a thought upon his pretty face, and that those who are not overburdened with that quality, feel a very strong desire, indeed, to kick him. Why, then, if good looks in reality so greatly interfere with the accumulation of good sense, and so much deteriorate a man for social and companionable purposes, why should we be bored with those pen and ink Adonises? It is not necessary. In real life how many handsome women do we find linked to plain, and sometimes oddlooking fishes, whom there is every reason to suppose they are tolerably fond of. Why then, in that which professes to be a copy from life, should it be held impossible for the heroines to fall in love with any other than regular pieces of physical perfection? They would much rather have a plain man who admired them than a handsome man who admired himself. And when they have once got over a singularity in outline, or a deficiency in filling-up, they think little more about it, being by no means such slaves to the eye and appearances as sensible, reasonable, selfsufficient man. In all the profound and beautiful sayings of Shakspeare there is not one more profound or beautiful than where the duke tells Viola "For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, If there was no love in the world except what was kindled by the contemplation of handsome features, it would be a remarkably scarce commodity, and the population of the United States would not double itself with anything like the rapidity with which it does at present. A GHOST STORY. [An apparition has been seen in Canada, according to the " Montreal Transcript." No one can read the last paragraph and disbelieve the account. No wonder the poor man could not lie quietly in his grave, after dying unannealed of such a sin.] (a lady Last Tuesday fortnight, Mrs. of literary taste and other studious habits) sat reading in her drawing-room; the clock on the mantel-piece struck twelve, and as the last stroke reverberated through the apartment its door was suddenly flung open. In the act of raising her head to reprove the intrusion of her (unrung for) servant, her eyes rested on the form of her late husband; she screamed and fell senseless on the carpet. This brought up such members of the family as had not yet retired to rest; restoratives were administered, and when Mrs. had regained possession of her suspended faculties, and being a woman of strong mind and highly cultivated intellect, she felt disposed to consider the whole of the distress she had undergone as the result of certain associations between the melancholy tale she had been perusing, and her late loss operating on a partly deranged nervous system. She, however, deemed it advisable that her maid servant should repose in her chamber, lest any return of what she had been determined to consider a nervous affection, should distress herself and alarm the family. Last Tuesday night, feeling stronger and in better spirits then she had enjoyed for several months past, Mrs. dispensed with the attendant, retiring alone to her chamber, and went to bed a little before 10 o'clock. Exactly as the clock struck 12, she was awakened from her sleep, and distinctly beheld the apparition she had before seen, advancing from the table, (on which stood her lamp,) till it stood opposite to, and drew aside the curtains of her bed. A sense of suffocating oppression deprived her of all power to scream aloud. She describes her very blood retreating with icy chillness to her heart from every vein. The countenance of her beloved wore not its benevolent aspect; the eyes, once beaming with affec Chapter I.-Containing sundry original interrogations and reflections, and the birth and parentage of Josiah Jefferson Craggs, and of his progenitors. WHO can estimate the pains and pangs attendant upon the possession of the fatal gift of genius? Who can form the slightest conception of the wild ideas, the bewildering reveries, the scathing thoughts, the gloomy reflections, the eagle flights, that tear and rend to pieces the fine tissue work of the cellular membranes? Who can comprehend the inflammatory action incessantly going on in the over-excited brain? Who, indeed-for who, it may boldly and fearlessly be asked, can comprehend the incomprehensible? Is not genius or the reputation of it-coveted by all men? Yet, what has it done for them? Has it not plunged those afflicted with it into the depths of misery-brought them to the verge of madness-given them hints, not to be mistaken, of ultimate starvation? Has it not lifted them above the clouds, only to let them fall the heavier to earth again? Has it not elevated them to barren high places-mental pillories-merely to be pelted, scoffed at, and reviled, by the crowd below? It has. has found men poor, and it has kept them poor. It has found them rich, and brought them to the insolvent court. Ít has drugged the bowl, sharpened the dagger, whetted the knife, strapped the razor, primed the pistol, for its unhappy possessors! It has hung them up by the neck in verdant forest glades, and caused them to bathe in deep waters without taking off their clothes. It has done many things; and most indubitably, among others, it shut up the shop of Josiah Jefferson Craggs, apothecary, 638, Bowery. Terrible gift! dreadful distinction! It The great Craggs, when little, came into the world pretty much in the same manner as other people, and for the first twelve months of his existence took his infantile sustenance without evincing any marked peculiarity to distinguish him from the ordinary run of children. Shortly after this, however, his mother and female relatives began to express an opinion that he was by no means a common child," (very few are,) and being an only one, his precocious sayings and doings were duly noted and narrated for the profit and entertainment of all who visited the house of Craggs. But it is much to be regretted that 66 the details of the earlier period of his life are lamentably obscure and apocryphal. A hazy incertitude hangs over the days of his childhood and adolescence; indeed, the only thing of moment that is positively known, is the interesting fact recorded in the literary scrapbook of an azure maiden aunt of his, that at the age of six he showed a decided preference for the history of Jack the Giant Killer, (or, as many learned men and sound authorities write it-Queller,) over that of Tom Thumb. The father of our hero, Hancock Madison Craggs, flourished in the city of New York as an eminent tallow-chandler towards the close of the eighteenth and early portion of the nineteenth centuries. It may be as well to mention as everything connected with genius acquires a perhaps adventitious consequence that the original manner of spelling this obscurely-illustrious name was " Scraggs;" but one of Josiah's ancestors being gifted with a refined taste and euphonious notions, thought proper to drop the s, thus at once cutting the association which connected the family name with the extreme or "scragg" end of a neck of mutton, and at the same time skilfully connecting it with the picturesque beauties of nature-"ye crags and peaks," &c. Hancock Madison Craggs was an inoffensive man. He neither distinguished, nor sought to distinguish himself, in arts, arms, politics, philosophy, or literature, but no man made better candles; and as the fame of his "dips," long and short, spread abroad, and the excellency of his "moulds" became known, his money, and consequently his respectability, increased. But his accumulative propensities relaxed not; and he continued to devote all his energies to the profitable task of enlightening his neighbours. Sitting in his shop, however, one summer's afternoon, being then in the fortieth year of his age, it suddenly occurred to him, that he might just as well take a wife and perpetuate the name of Craggs, as leave his cash to distant relatives. It also occurred to him that there were not many orders to execute, and therefore there could not be a better time than the present. Being a man of strictly business habits, he accordingly advertised for a helpmate the next morning, and in the evening paper of the same day he was blessed with a favourable response. He was a little daunted, it was true, by the promptitude of the reply, but he scorned to shrink from his word. An interview took place, preliminaries were arranged, and three weeks afterwards he bowed his neck to the yoke, and went through the trying ceremony of matrimony with a decent fortitude and a manly resignation that evinced no ordinary firmness of character. In the due and legitimate time allowed by law and nature, Josiah Jefferson Craggs, the illustrious obscure of the present memoir, squalled melodiously in his nurse's arms. Chap. II. Of the early days of young Craggs, and how he astounds his relatives. of the great Craggs's tea-drinking, and the consequences thereof. In The biographies of most eminent menSheridan, Scott, Crabbe, Byron, &c., go to prove that they were but dull boys, inapt scholars, and that wit, poetry, or eloquence, could neither be whipped into or out of them. Young Craggs, in these respects, bore a striking and hopeful resemblance to those great men, for a more inveterately stupid youth never puzzled a tutor. True, he learned to read, and, moreover, wrote a hand which, like that of other gentlemen of genius, it was almost impossible to decipher; but all attempts to inoculate him with any portion of arithmetical knowledge were found to be altogether fruitless; and as for grammar, not only did he loathe, abhor, and despise it in his secret soul, but he habitually evinced his thorough contempt for it in ordinary conversation. fact, common people thought him a fool; but the backs of his copybooks began to show flashes-coruscations of the spirit within him. They were covered with such rural rhymes as "plough," and "cow" of a suiicidal character, as "despair," "nightmare,”and of an affecting or incipient amatory tendency, as "heart," "smart," "depart,' ters blue," "long adieu," "think of you; from which those who could see beyond the mere surface of things, or were under obligations in business to the elder Craggs, surmised that there was more in the young Josiah than met the eye. The "faculty divine," however, might have remained long undeveloped— might have smouldered away unseen, unknown; he might have been a "mute inglorious Milton;" he might have been a tallowchandler, but for an event untoward in itself, but productive of the happiest and most important consequences, and which, like the application of a match to a rocket, sent his genius at once soaring and blazing away into the seventh heaven. cat. 99 66 wa His blue-stocking aunt had a tortoise-shell The tortoise-shell cat was imprudent in its habits-staid out late o'nights, and a cold, an inflammation, and an untimely end were the series of consequences brought on by its bad hours and irregular modes of living. Great was the lamentation which ensued. The aunt was inconsolable; and for two days and two nights afterwards, young Craggs, then in his sixteenth year, was observed to be a changed creature. He was lost in thought, abrupt in his answers, absent in his manner, and started in his sleep. This was attributed to his extreme sensibility: but lo! on the third morning, a folded sheet of foolscap gilt-edged paper was observed upon his literary relative's dressing-table. She opened it, and a |