66 Why," continued Q-, " how about the 'old man,' and the ‘German boy,' and the 'freebooter?" "Gol hang shimmenetty," was the luminous response, "I knows nick's about 'em." The indefinable expression on Q- -'s countenance was cut short by the most terrific yells aad whoops ever heard outside of Freshmen pow WOWS. We peered anxiously out, and saw a crowd disguised as Indians, evidently with no good intentions. Recollecting some cautions of our guide, the nature of the case soon became evident. It seemed that the whole section had belonged to Jacob Astor, who in consequence of anti-rent difficulties, had ceased to urge his claims. The present owner, fearing the result of our investi gations, had persuaded the people that we were agents sent to enforce the rents, and hence the occasion of the present assemblage. A salutary respect for our fowling pieces kept them from entering, but they were evidently preparing materials to smoke us out. Matters were fast becoming serious. Q- was just considering the propriety of "making a rush," when we luckily discovered that our castle, like the chemical lecture-room, had "exit" as well as an an 66 entrance." We hastened to squeeze ourselves through a cleft in the rock, communicating with the other side of the hill, and left at most undignified speed, leaving our worthy guide, whose "aldermanic rotundity" would not permit a passage, sticking fast in the hole, like the greedy fox in the fable. Thinking this little popular demonstration somewhat significant, we judged it expedient to depart straightway out of their coasts, and left without even taking leave of the ladies, or bidding our host good bye. With increased scientific knowledge, we may examine the silver mine at some future day. Qis confident of its existence, and insists that to other legends of the grand old Hudson, shall be added "The Legend of Canopus Hollow." S. T. F. Skepticism. In early ages, it was the fashion to believe. The history and literature of primitive nations are chiefly made up of numberless traditions and fancies, all tending to show that credulity was universal. Truth in those days was so blended with, or rather enveloped by fiction, that it is almost always difficult, often impossible, to draw the line of demarkation between them. "Bright eyed" fancy and strong imagination seem to have vied with each other in playing pranks with weaker reason. Even every day life was invested with a kind of weird, unreal reality. Every hill-top was peopled with its family of ghosts, every wild flower had its presiding fairy, and particular localities were wrapped in halos of hallowed and famous memories. Religion was both fashionable and fanciful. Philosophers speculated deeply about the essence of the Gods and the immortality of the soul. Poets sung in strains, "Wilder than the unmeasured note, Of that strange lyre whose strings And yet, all was truth to the ancient mind. Men, as they seem to us in those early and misty times, were simpler-hearted than modern men and we fall in love with what we call their disingenuousness. Old Herodotus and Homer are synonyms for honesty and simplicity, as well as for beauty and sublimity. With all writers it seemed to be a moral necessity to swallow as substantial food every idle tale that floated in the wind, until reason, long overburdened and crushed beneath the weight of so much rubbish, having gained strength, began to make huge rents in the clouds of superstition, and at length burst forth in a flood of light, to be deified in the nineteenth century. In contradistinction, the present is an age of doubt and skepticism, of suspicion and distrust. It is an age of reason-venders and reason-worshipers. The tendency is to treat with contempt things past and ancient, as being unworthy of serious consideration even, in the light of reason. Men are amazed at the credulity and simplicity of their ancestors, and congratulate themselves that they are not to be duped by the flimsy theories which made dupes of their fathers. They live in an age of reason and are reasonable men. They are those "Who grind among the iron facts of life And have no time for self-deception." Their mission, in their own estimation, is to go through the past and present snuffing for intellectual carrion, not to feed upon it, but for the pleasure of telling people where it is, and of gratifying their love of snuffing generally. And so they build theories, and fight imaginary battles against imaginary shams and cheats, and so, often unconsciously perhaps, become shams and cheats themselves. Such men approach with wary step everything which bears marks of antiquity; they smell the mould which has accumulated around ancient things, and grow suspicious ere they break the seal. They would have us believe that everything which has been written hitherto, is a literary delusion; that ancient records belie ancient deeds; that history ought to be re-written after an ideal theory of their own, so that it should set forth facts as they ought to have been and undoubtedly would have been, had they been recorded aright. There are those who tell us that this universe is a monstrous lie, that it was generated in a lie, and has been breeding lies ever since its birth. In these days we have had a Berkeley denying the evidence of the senses, and the existence of matter; a Hume, who annihilated both mind and matter at a single blow; a Voltaire, who cut up by the roots the tree of Christian truth, and laid it so low that it could not be raised again. We have had a host of philosophers who maintain that there is a saving principle in every man, fully exemplified in Jesus, the Jewish moralist; philosophers who place all faith and yet no faith in man. We have had those who claim that the monkey is the grandfather of man, yet themselves belying the old saw, that "every generation grows wiser and wiser." We have had scores of leathern-headed, "tar-blooded" Germans, with brains so befogged with beer and smoke, that they were ready to swear that Herodotus was an old babbler and tell-tale, and during all his travels was positively so drunk that he could not distinguish lake Moeris from a frog pond, or the pyramids from as many cocked hats. We have had a Neibuhr who denies, to a great extent, the authority of Livy, and styles Tacitus almost a novelist. We have had a Hardoin who claimed that all the literature of Greece and Rome, except some of the Odes of Horace and a part of Virgil, was produced during the Middle Ages. We have had a Wolf and others, who have mercilessly attacked poor old Homer, torturing his name into at least two different significations,-by one, proving the identity of the poet, by the other, the identity of his works, by both, neither. We have had a Joshua Barnes who claimed that Solomon was the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, on the ground that the name Onpos when read backwards becomes Soremo, and by changing R to L, Solemo, which needs but a little effort of fancy to make it Solomon. We have had a Wilhelm Mueller who grounded an argument against the unity of the Iliad on the fact that, as it now stands, Ulysses is made to eat three dinners in one night. We have had a "John Smith" attempting to prove that the Persian wars were a hoax, and Xerxes and his millions a humbug. We have had a Maillet, whose theory of Creation was, that the dry ground arose from successive contractions of the waters; that men were originally Tritons with tails, and wriggled themselves into human shape in their agitations on the land, whence originated, probably, the idea of tailed devils. We have had a Jacob Bryant who derived all mythology from Noah and the Ark; proving that from these arose the myth of the Argo, and the story of Jonah shut up in the whale; showing that, as there were eight persons in the Ark, so there were eight Egyptian Gods; tracing the worship of all crescent-shaped objects to the form of the ark, the worship of rivers &c., to the element on which it floated; showing that the names Naus and Aa-vaus are only corruptions of the name of Noah; in short, that Noah in his name or attributes is connected with the Iris and Osiris of Egypt, with the Chaldean Dagon, with the Tyrian Hercules, with Tuisco of the Germans, with the Woden of the Saxons and all other heathen gods, which the vice or device of man ever pictured or fashioned. We have had all these men and systems of belief, and each system has had its numerous followers. Indeed, what have we not had in this age of carping and canting criticism, of insincerity and infidelity, when men consent to cast aside their only chart and compass, and launch without purpose on the limitless seas of Skepticism ? Now the cause of all this skepticism may be found in a single word, pride-odious, stubborn, accursed pride-pride of novelty with some; with others, that pride of reason which assumes Reason itself to be a law unto itself, and so acknowledges no other, nor higher law. In regard to the first there is no nobler employment for human reason than explaining away the inconsistencies and correcting the errors of history. If the scholar does this in a truthful spirit, goes no further than facts will justify, draws no conclusions but such as are highly probable, he is a benefactor to the race. All honor to the man who earnestly seeks to develop truth, even though his efforts result in error. It is by no means criticism as such that we make the subject of complaint, but the spirit in which it is conducted and the excess to which it is carried. We do not wish to believe in, nor be troubled with theories put forth merely as theories, for the sake of gaining notoriety, even though supported by the statement that their authors are honorary members of no less than twenty-seven very scientific societies. If the student by diligent research can throw any real light over the past, if he can advance in any degree the cause of true knowledge, posterity will be grateful to him and reward him as he deserves. But if we are to have that weird incantation over names which has been so successfully attempted by some modern critics, or that warping of general truths for personal ends which has so universally been practised, men can easily see, by an application of the same principle to our own age, how readily the truth may be perverted. Not to mention anything more serious, take names and suppose that some critic, a thousand years hence, should treat them as modern critics treat ancient names. Goldsmith would be nothing but a common jeweler, Cooper nothing but a barrel-maker, while Fox, Shelley, Washington, Lamb, Savage, and a host of others, would find themselves in such company, and have such attributes ascribed to them as would cause ghastly grimaces in their ghosts. While those great men who have been so unfortunate as to be blessed with nick-names would be astonished at the degeneracy of some of their relations. "Old Bullion" would inevitably be regarded as the father of John Bull, and these two, together with the "Irish bull." the Pope's bull and the bull-terrier would unquestionably be placed in the same family. The "little giant" would be thought a pleonasm or a contradiction, and be set down as a mythical personage at once. If some future reader should fall upon one of Poe's criticisms of the Bostonians, as a relic of this century, he would immediately conclude that the inhabitants of that city were in reality Frog-pondians, and place them in the same category with the croakers of the Molluscan age. How interesting, too, would it be to the future critic to trace the genealogy of the Smiths' and Jones' of modern days after the analogy of ancient genealogies, and find, after an infinite deal of research, that the nineteen-hundredth second cousin of "John Smith" was an honorable man! But when considered with reference to sacred history, this tendency towards skepticism, insincerity and excess becomes injurious and dangerous. God wrote in words of fire on Sinai, and transmitted them to us through an ancient historian. And if later writers are so readily misrepresented, how easy is it to make the name of Moses, as signifying "that which is drawn out of the water," not the appellation of a sacred lawgiver, but of the slime which lies in ancient Nilus,' or of the crockodile which wallows in it, or of any other representation which a diseased fancy may please to make. Nay, men in these days are ready to go further, and in the pride of intellect, have audaciously modeled the universe after a plan of their own, have ignored the existence of a Creator, and have referred all things to themselves, to blind chance, or to |