casion. (Cries of "Order!") He (Gin) had no wish to create confusion. (Ironical cheering from Marsala.) He understood the meaning of that cheer; and would certainly confess that the honourable beverage-for he would not use the stronger term of wine (a laugh)-was not likely to create confusion in any quarter. No; he (the honourable beverage) was not strong enough for that. (Renewed laughter.) He (Gin) had, perhaps, suffered more from water than all the other wines and spirits whom he now saw before him put together. His reputation had been materially hurt by it; and he was strongly of opinion that the only thing to be done with water is to throw it overboard. (Hear, hear.) A French wine, whose name we could not learn, let something drop, but we were unable to catch it. Cape now rose, but was immediately coughed down in a very unceremonious manner. The thanks of the meeting having been voted to Port for his able conduct in the decanter, the meet. ing separated; but not until a committee had been chosen, consisting of a dozen of wine and a gallon of beer, with power to add to their number, either by water or otherwise. MATTERS ABOUT TOWN. An editor is not supposed, (as the world and subscribers to newspapers know,) to require or possess the luxury of sleep. We sleep with one eye open-we scorn to deny. We see all that is going on about us, daylight or dark, and Washington being the fountain of law, order and information, we duly give the alarm-like the geese who saved the Capitol. Our readers have, from week to week, read our lucubrations in this wise, and here are some more of them. We send them to the Intelligencer as daguerreotypes of the present-sent as records of matters as they fly We think they are worth preserving in the Mirror bodily-and we so preserve them. The first day of '44 came in like a specimen number of a magazine, and the open doors of New-York, had at least one unexpected visiter in a veritable October sun. The day was mild enough to make overcoats uncomfortable in walking the pavement was dry and summery-and all the male world seemed abroad. The household gods of Manhattan were probably unanimous in their happiness-as all the ladies were "at home," and all the ladies' lords were bound to be "out." This morning the weather is still softerOctober, possibly, like other popular persons, not finding one day to suffice for its visits. I have a headache on the top of my pen, and cannot venture any further description of new-year's day than the above facts, though yesterday I thought I could make you a tip-top gossipy letter out of the day's hilarities. The hosts of the Astor wound up the excitement for their guests by a superb dinner at candlelight, with champagne and sweetmeats "à discretion," and altogether I think January one must be marked with a white stone. You have read, of course, and loved (much more, of course) Leigh Hunt's poem of The Rimini. Ticknor & Co., of Boston, have republished it in one of their beautiful boudoir editions, and along with it, in the same neat volume, the half dozen other poems, most famed, of Hunt's prolific pen. The story (of the lady who married one brother and loved the other) is told with a sort of entire new-ness of style and language, as if it were the one admirable work of a natural but unpractised poet, and it sticks to the memory after it is read like Moore's rose-scent to the vase. Leigh Hunt is a born poet, but one of the most unhappy citizens of the world that the world holds. With all the mental capabilities (the wit, the delicacy, the imagination and the desire) to be the carpet-poet of aristocracy that Moore is, he has a most wo-begone person, and a most marvellous lack of tact and reliability. He never can stay-acquainted with the only people who, by refinement and talent, are alone capable of making friendship comfortable to him; and he has quarrelled with most other of his great contemporaries, as he did with Bryon. And, by the way, he is dead-by epigram! Moore's felicitously witty verses on Hunt's Life of Byron killed him quite out of contemporary respect. The ludicrous image of the puppy-dog desecrating the body of the dead lion follows him into every drawing-room and walks behind him in every street. He will never recover from that epigram. Indeed, he has never been like himself since it was written. It is the most signal extinction of a great genius by ridicule that I know of on record-more enduring, from the fact that the English, among their other conservative peculiarities, have none of our marvellous alacrity at public forgetting. Had Leigh Hunt been born with a little thicker skin, somewhat a cooler head, and the inestimable power of catching the snow-balls of ridicule in his bosom, and keeping them there till they could be thrown back hardened into ice, he might have been something between Fonblanque and Moore, Thiers and Janin, and equal at least to either of these powerful "penditti." As it is, he is uncomfortably poor, and more uncomfortably un-complacent. With two lines very Leigh-Hunt-ish, I cut my para. graph short. He is describing Apollo's reverie while resolv. ing upon the Feast of the Poets "I think," said the god, recollecting, (and then A very superb book of drawings is being subscribed for in New-York-" Forty Atmospheric Views of American Scenery," ," from water-colour drawings by George Harvey. The engravings are to be in aqua-tint, and to be beautifully and artistically coloured, so as closely to resemble the origi. nal designs. The views consist of different atmospheric effects at different times of day, beginning at daybreak and ending at midnight-each view a complete landscape, and the subjects emblematic of the progress of civilization, from the log-cabin to the highest achievement in architecture. Mr. Harvey is one of the leading artists of the new watercolour school, and this will propably be the most superb work of its kind ever published. A letter from Washington Allston to Mr. Harvey says: "I am unwilling that you should leave Boston without knowing how much I have been gratified by your beautiful drawings of American Scenery. To me it appears that you have not only been successful in giving the character of our scenery, but remarkably happy in clothing it with an American atmosphere, which you have expressed with great truth and variety." The letter-press is to be edited by Washington Irving. Subscribers direct their letters to Mr. George Harvey, Chambers-street, New.York. By the thermometer, the winter has commenced this day, the 5th of January. People pass under my window with their backs shrugged up to their bump of philoprogeni. tiveness, and even the coats of the hard-working omnibus. horses "stare"- -as the jockeys say. I wish the physiologists would explain why horses' coats do not lie closer when it is cold, and why men, with the same sensation, raise their arms instinctively from their sides. Cats and dogs seem to economize their bodily heat better-lying down when cold in such an attitude as to expose as little surface to the air as possible. Public amusements in New-York are in a temporary trance. The excitement is diverted from the epidermis to the heart. Social gayety is at its holiday effervescence, and the town is what the stranger calls dull. The Park theatre is shut up. Macready is on his way South-diminishing in attraction, I understand, as he goes. The indi genous theatrical force of the country is now concentrated dear reader? He is twenty-four-in the full tide of blood on New Orleans, and I see by the papers that the leading and youth, and “Love's sun has filled his soul with splenstars, Placide and others, are drawing houses of the old-dour." In building up a climax of his feelings at this im. fashioned overflow. Wallack will find that he is "himself petuous and passionate age, what should you fancy would again" at New Orleans, or I am much mistaken. rush up to crown it like flame to a volcano? What would his "heart break" for, at passionate twenty-four? Among good things floating by in the newspapers, I have remarked a very fine critique on Prescott's Mexico in the Boston Daily Advertiser, and a most honest, truthful, and discriminating "notice in the Boston Morning Post," on the character of Lowell's genius and writings. I am pleased to see that George Lunt, who was some time since metamorphosed from a poet into a legislator, has come back to Castaly for a drink. Some stirring poetry from him is among this week's "fugitives." LAST PAGE MORNING. OUR thoughts are entirely occupied this morning with two poets. It must be a pleasant book that we take for company the first hour after waking, and to-day, with his new volume of Poems open on our dressing-table, we dressed and read LOWELL. Thence he went with us to a tête-a-tete breakfast, (for we chanced, else, to be breakfasting alone,) and we were reading him with a cup of coffee in one hand and his book in the other, when the letters came in from the Post-and one letter was from a poet new-plumaged, of whom we had never heard, and who had probably never heard of himself, (as a poet,) but still indubitably a poet albeit "an apprentice-boy in a printing-office" in a small village in Pennsylvania. We read his timid letter and two sweet pieces of poetry enclosed within it, marked the poetry "good" for the Mirror, and then reverted to our breakfast and book. But, so early in the morning, a little reading is enough for a brainfull of thought, and from pondering on Lowell's "Shepherd of King Admetus," we fell to thinking over the probable position and destiny of these two poets. Lowell is the best-launched poet of his time, and the de fect of his poetry is an advantage to his go-along-ery. He is stern and strong enough to "take the wall" of Envy and Misfortune, but not yielding and soft enough to bend to the unconscious and impulsive abandonments of love. Love with him is sound sense, not beautiful madness. He is too bold and abstract for the "levia affectuum vestigia Gracilesque sensus lineas," and, if he knows, he has a contempt for, the "quibus Vehantur alis blanduli Cupidines." The way Lowell handles the word love makes one start like seeing Rolla pick up Cora's baby with one hand. The fact is, he is a strong minded, tough sinewed, defying poet, fit to be a martyr to opinion or a partisan soldier, and if his love be not an excellent lamp not yet lighted (which is possible) he has never experienced its first timidity, nor is he likely to know its ultimate frenzy and prodigality. He has drawn his own portrait, however, in a " Sonnet written on his Twenty-Fourth Birthday," and let us read his character from it: "Now have I quite pass'd by that cloudy If "if] I should dare to doubt That from the wrong, which makes its dragon's lair In another poem on " Love," he describes "true love" as That claims of it the rights of brotherhood." half its worth, if it slip any opportunity of making itself heard and felt," etc. criticism to tell what a poet is not, except more clearly to Lowell is one kind of poet, and it is the worst manner of define what he is. Though his sexual heart never swims in his inkstand, he is warm enough in his enthusiasm for all generous sentiments, and both daring and delicate enough in his powers of imagination. Truth, good sense and fancy were seldom more evenly braided together than in his poem of "The Heritage," and Rosaline, (though it never could have been conceived by a man who had passionately loved,) is the very finest cobweb of fancy. Nobody could help loving the truth, honesty, fearlessness and energy, stamped on all his poetry, and as we said before he has the "vim" to carve out for himself any destiny he pleases. He has determined to live by literature, but we do not believe he will long remain a poet only. He will wish to take the world by the beard in some closer clutch than poetry gives room for, and his good judgment as to the weight of heavy English words, will try itself before long on more serious matter than sonnets. At least that is what we think, while admiring him over our breakfast. As to the other poet, Bayard Taylor, we had a great deal to say to him-sympathy, encouragement, promise of watch fulness over his fame, etc. etc. But he will need no special kindness yet awhile. Love is plenty for new-found poets. Many people love little chickens who are insensible to the merits of cocks and hens, and we reserve our friendship till he is matured and envied. Meantime, if he wants our opinion that he is a poet, and can be, with toil and studyimmortal-he has it. His poetry is already worthy of long What should you think would naturally follow this "if," preserving-apprentice-boy though he be. |