The tea was served out of a majestic delf tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses, tending pigs-with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenions Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in repienishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy msesronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside cach cup. and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and econ mic old lady, which was, to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth-an ingerious expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany, but which prevails, without exception, in Communipaw, Bergen, Flat-Bush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting-no gambling of old ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones-no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets; nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all." On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs and knit their own woollen stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say, 'Yah. Mynheer,' or Yah, ya Vrouw.' to any question that was asked them; behaving in all things like decent well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the bine and white tiles with which the fire places were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed: Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jovah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion. They were carried home by their own carriages-that is to say, by the vehicles ature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door; which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it at the present: if our great-grandfathers approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to say a word against it. Feelings of an American on First Arriving in England.— From 'Brace

bridge Hall."

England is as classic ground to an American as Italy is to an Englishman, and old London teems with as much historical association as mighty Rome.

But what more espec ally attracts his notice, are those peculiarities which distin guish an old country, and an old state of society, from a new one. I have never yet grown familiar enough with the crumbling monuments of past ages, to blunt the iutense interest with which I at first beheld them. Accustomed always to scenes where history was, in a manner, in anticipation; where everything in art was new and pregressive, and pointed to the future rather than the past; where, in short, the works of man gave no ideas but those of young existence and prospective improven ent-there was something inexpressibly touching in the sight of enormous ples of archtecture, gray wih antiquity, and sinking to decay. I cannot describe the ante but deep-felt enthusiasm with which I have contemplated a vast monastic ruin like Tintern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, and shut up from the world as though it had existed merely for itself; or a warrier pile, like Conway Castle, standing in stern loneliness on its rocky height, a mere hollow yet threatening phantom of departed power. They spread a grand and melancholy, and, to me, an unusual charm over the landscape. I for the first time behield signs of national old age and empire's decay and proofs of the transient and perishing glories of art, amidst the everspringing and reviving fertility of nature.

But, in fact, to me everything was full of matter; the footsteps of history were everywhere to be traced; and postry Lad breathed over and sanctified the land. I experienced the delightful feeling of freshness of a child to whom everything is new,

I pictured to myself a set of inhabitants and a mode of life for every habitation that I saw from the aristocratical mansion, amidst the lordly repose of stately groves and solitary parks, to the straw-thatend cottage, with its scanty garden and chorished woodbine. I thought I never cond be sated with the sweetness and freshness of a country so completely carpet with verdure; where every air breathed of the balmy pasture and the honeysuckled hedge. I was continmay coming upon some little document of poetry in the bio somed hawthorn. the daisy, the cowsap, the prin.rose, or some oiner simple object that has received a supernatural vaide from the muse. The first time that I heard the song of the mig tingale, I was intoxicated more by the delicious crowd of remembered associations than by the melody of its notes; and I shall never forget the thrill of ecstasy with which I urst saw the ax rise, almost from beneath my feet, and wing its musical flight up into the morning sky.

Rural Life.—From 'The Sketch-book.'

In rural occupation there is nothing mean and deb. sing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing reyolting in an intercourse with the lower orders of rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together, and the sounds of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferior orders In England than they are in any other country; and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege.

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life: those incomparable descriptions of natur which abound in the British poets, that have contented down from The Flower and the Leaf' of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and reveled with her-they have wooed her in her most secret hauntsthey have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground, a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet. nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.—From 'Bracebridge Hall.'

It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indi-position. from which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby A wet Sunday in a country inn! whoever his had the luck to experience one, can alone judg⚫ of my sitnation The rain pattered against the casements, the bells tored for church with a me ancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tied roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-vord on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In one corDer was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, mong which was a miserable crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow chewing the end, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the

loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house, hard by, uttering something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kiteben wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself: everyiuing, in short, was comfortless and torlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon-companions round a puddie, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted und-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bels ceased to tell, and the streets becane silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being contined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday firery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to amuse me

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no valety even in the rain; it was one dull, contined, monotonous paiter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was eniivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrela. It was quite refreshing-if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day-when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and a carroty-headed hostler and that nondescript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an iun; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on.

The evening gradua ly wore away. The travellers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew round the fire, and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their overturus, and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice ancedotes of pretty chamber-maids and kind kandladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps-that is to say strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or so:ae other mixture of the kind: after which they one after another rang for Boo's and the chamber-maid, and walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marve lously uncomfortable slippers. There was only one man left-a short-legged, long-bodied, plethoric fellow, with a very large, sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port-wine negus and a spoon, sipping and st rring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fellasleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box. coats of departed travellers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn reathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain-drop, drop, drop-from the eaves of the house.

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

Associated with Washington Irving in the Salmagundi' papers was JAMES KIRKE PAULDING (778–1860), a voluminous writer. In 1819, Mr. Paulding commenced a second series of 'Salmagundi' essays, but without much success. His novels of The Dutchman's Fireside' (1831) and Westward Ho !' (1832) are said to contain faithful historical sketches of the early settlers of New York and Kentucky of the former, six editions were published within a year. Among the other works of Mr. Paulding are The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan' (1813); 'Letters from the South'

(1817); 'The Backwoodsman,' a poem (1818); A Sketch of Old England' (1822); Koningsmarke' (1823); The New Mirror for Travellers (1828); Chronicles of the City of Gotham' (1830); a Life of Washington' (1835); and various other slight novels and sat rical sketches. A Life of Paulding by his son was published in 1867, and about the same time his Select Works,' in four volumes, were issued by a New York publishing house.

REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

One of the most witty, popular, and influential writers of the age was the REV. SYDNEY SMITH, born at Woodford in Essex, in 1771. He was one of the three sons of a somewhat eccentric and improvident English gentleman, who out of the wreck of his fortune was able to give his family a good education, and place them in positions favourable for their advancement. The eldest, Robert--best known by the name given by his school-fellows at Eton, of Bobus--was distinguished as a classical scholar, and adopted the profession of the law, Sydney, the second son, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and entered the Church. Courtenay, the youngest son, went to India, and acquired great wealth, as well as reputation as a judge and oriental scholar. The opinion or hypothesis that men of genius more generally inherit their intellectual eminence from the side of the mother than that of the father, is illustrated by the history of this remarkable family, for the mother of the young Smiths, the daughter of a French emigrant, was a woman of strong sense, energy of character, and constitutional vivacity or gaiety. Sydney having gained a fellowship at New College, Oxford, worth about £100 per annum, was cast upon his own resources. He obtained a curacy in a small village in the midst of Salisbury Plain. The Squire of the Parish, Mr. Beach, two years afterwards, engaged him as tutor to his eldest son, and it was arranged that tutor and pupil should proceed to the university of Weimar, in Saxony They set out; but before we could get there,' said Smith, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years.' He officiated in the Episcopal chapel there. After two years' residence in Edinburgh, he returned to England to marry a Miss Pybus, daughter of a deceased banker. The lady had a brother, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, under Pitt, but he was highly incensed at the marriage of his sister with a decided Whig without fortune, and the prospects of the young pair were far from brilliant. The lady, however, had a small fortune of her own, and she realized £500 by the sale of a fine necklace which her mother had given her. The Salisbury squire added £1000 for Sydney's care of his son, and thus the more sordid of the ills of poverty were averted. Literature also furnished an additional source. The Edinburgh Review' was started in 1802, and Sydney Smith was the original projector of the scheme.

The principles of the French Revolution,' he says, 'were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated state of society. Among the first persons with whom 1 became acquainted were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray-ate Lord Advocate for Scotland-and Lord Brougham; all of them maintaining opinions upon political subjects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, then exercising supreme power over the northern division of the island. One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleuch Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Review; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the "Edinburgh Review." The motto I proposed for the Review was :

"Tenui musam meditamur avena "—

We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal.

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read a single line;* and so began what has since turned out to be a very important and able journal. When I left Edinburgh, it fell into the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and reached the highest point of popularity and success.'

One feature in the scheme, important to Smith, as to all the others, was, that the writers were to receive for their contributions ten guineas a sheet, or sixteen printed pages. In 1804, Mr. Smith sought the wider field of London. He officiated for some time as preacher of the Foundling Hospital at £50 per annum, and obtained another preachership in Berkeley Square. His sermons were highly popular, and a course of lectures on Moral Philosophy, which he delivered in 104, 1805, and 1805, at the Royal Institution-and which were pub lished after his de th-still more widely extended his reputation. In Holland House and in other distinguished circles, his extraordinary conversational powers had already made him famous. His co: tributions to the Edinburgh Review' also added to his popularity, though their liberality of tone and spirit rendered him obnoxious to the party in power. During the short period of the Whig adminis tration in 1806-7. he obtained the living of Fosten-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, and here he wrote a highly amusing and powerful political tract, entitled Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, to my Brother Abraham, who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley.' The suc cess of the Letters' was immense they have gone through twenty-one editions. Since the days of Swift, no such masterly political irony, combined with irresistible argument, had been wit

Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur-The judge is condemed when the guilty are absolved. The young adventurers, it was said, had hung out the bloody flag on their title-page!