produced by anxiety for the state of his country; but the same thing which wounded him may have helped to keep him up; for he had plenty of business to attend to, and fought with his own hand in fifty-six pitched battles. Now exactly twenty years after, in the forty-fifth year of his age (if our former recollection is right) this disorder totally left him; and his great heart was where it ought to be, in a heaven of health and calmness.

KINDNESS.

In the loneliest wilds some bird will oft sing,
Breathing joy to regions unblest;
And sweet as the soft, balmy zephyrs of spring,
A tone of pure kindness will soothingly bring
Relief to the spirit opprest.

Though carelessly uttered a kind word will cheer,
And tender emotions impart;

Refreshing as rain to the earth parched and sere
Its musical accents enravish the ear,

And swell the deep founts of the heart.

The soul with whose thrillings fate rudely hath dealt,
In haughtiest seeming may bear

Each bleak frown of fortune, unheeded, unfelt;
Yet a mild-beaming look hath the power to melt
The sternness of settled despair.

Thus ever the feelings responsively thrill
To kindness when offered sineere;
But oh, it is rapture, more exquisite still,
To mark the bright eye unconsciously fill
With sympathy's radiant tear."

Ah! grateful as dew to the delicate flower,

Whose sensitive petals unclosed

With the freshness and bloom of morning's sweet hour,
Undreaming, the moment of noon's fervid power,
To which they must soon be exposed.

And blissfully oft will a smile's tender light
Bring hope to the bosom again,

Though fleeting it gleams; as a glad star at night,
Beameth suddenly out on the mariner's sight,
While wand'ring alone o'er the main.

CHIT-CHAT OF NEW-YORK.

A. W. N.

FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. New-York, February 9. THE Opera gets more crowded, more dressy, and more fashionable nightly. Some malicious person started a rumour that the building was unsafe, and many stayed away till it was tested. There are many, too, who wait for the stamp of other people's approbation before they venture upon even a new amusement. The doubtfuls have now gone over, however, and the Opera is" in the full tide," etc., etc. Some of the first families have taken season tickets in the opera boxes, (there are but two private boxes, and those very inconvenient and undesirable,) and the best seats in the pit are sold out, like the stalls at the Italian opera in London, to bachelors in the market. The prima donna, Borghese, improves with every repetition, and what with dressing, singing, and acting-all exceedingly well-she is a very enjoyable rechauffée of Grisi, whose style she follows. This is a day of such sunshine and air that those,

"Who cannot spare the luxury of believing
That all things beautiful are what they seem,"
must be in love with the sunny sidewalk of Broadway.
And this recals to my mind a little book of poems, better
described by their title than any book whose name I ever
knew-Droppings from the Heart," by Thomas Mack-
ellar, lately published in Philadelphia. Everybody must
love the man who reads his book, though its simplicity
would sometimes make you smile. He thus apostrophizes
the city of New-York:

"New-York! I love thy sons, beyond compare
Ennobled-not by empty words of kings,
But by ennobling acts, by virtues rare,

And charities unbounded. These the things

That crown their names with honour. Peerless all
Thy lovely daughters, warm with sympathy,

Swift to obey meek mercy's moving call,

To heal the heart and dry the weeping eye
And hush the plaint that fears no comforter is nigh."

The credulity of this stanza is not weak-mindedness, by any means-as the strength of expression and beauty of poetry in the other parts of the book sufficiently prove. The writer's only vent seems to be the expression of affection. He loves everything. He believes good of everything and everybody. I do not know that, in my life, I ever saw a more complete picture than this book of a heart overrunning with tenderness. The lines to his " Sleeping Wife" are as beautiful as anything of Barry Cornwall's. The piece called "The Heart Longings," too, is finely expressed. A little infusion of distrust, bitterness, and contempt would make Mackellar a poet of the kind most admired by critics, and most read and sympathized with by the world. He is, I un. derstand, a printer in Philadelphia, and enjoys the kindly friendship of Mr. Chandler, of the United States Gazette, to whom is addressed one of the sonnets in his book. For family reading, among people of simple lives and pure tastes, the "Droppings from the Heart" is the best adapted book of poetry I have lately seen.

One of the most charming resuscitations from the trance of oblivion that have come about lately, is the re-publication (in the "Mirror Library") of Pinkney's Poems. Mr. Pinkney, your readers will perhaps know, was the son of the Hon. William Pinkney, our Minister in 1802 at the Court of St. James, and was born in London during the diplomatic residence there of his father. He was partly educated at college, entered the navy, gave it up for the law, and, after much disappointment and suffering, died at twenty-five. With discipline and study he might, I think, have written as well as Moore. What poetry would be in a world where Toil were not the Siamesed twin of Excellence-(in other words, where man had not fallen)-" is a curious question, coz!" The wild horse runs very well in the prairie, but we give a preference of admiration to the "good continuer" by toilsome training. Whether the fainéant angels who "sit in the clouds," admire more the objectless careerings of the wild steed, or the "wind and bottom" of the winner of the sweepstakes-whether fragmentary poetry dashed off while the inspiration is on, and thrown aside ill-finished when the whim evaporates, be more celestial than the smooth and complete product of painful toil and disciplined concentration-I have had my luxurious doubts. Pinkney's genius, as evidenced on paper, has all the impulsive abandonment which marks his biography. He was a born poet-with all needful imagination, discrimination, perception, and sensibility; and he had besides, the flesh-and-bloodfulness neces. sary to keep poetry on terra firma. Several of his productions have become common air-known and enjoyed by everybody, but without a name. The song beginning—

"I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone," A woman of her gentle sex the seeming paragon," etc. -this, and two or three others of Pinkney's "entire and perfect chrysolites," should be re-graven with his name, for the world owes his memory a debt for them. The small volume of his poetry from which the Mirror Library edition is copied was printed in 1825, and has been long lost sight of. It contains not the stuff for a classic-but a delicious bun. dle of heart-reaching passages, fresh and peculiar, and inva. luable especially to lovers, whose sweetest and best interpreter Pinkney was. Every man or woman who has occa sion to embroider a love-letter with the very essence-flowers of passionate versc, should pay a shilling for Pinkney's

Poems.

couplets of love-makery there are few books like it. Wit.

"We break the glass, whose sacred wine
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,
Should e'er the hallowed toy profane;
And thus I broke a heart, that pour'd
Its tide of feelings out for thee,
In draughts, by after-times deplored,
Yet dear to memory."

THE MORALS OF PEN AND INK. THE chair and pen of an editor should be assumed withness this verse :as binding vows and as solemn ceremony as were the sword and war-horse of knighthood-for the editor, like the armed and mounted knight, is an aggregation of more power than nature properly allots to the individual. Indeed, it is because the power has not been well considered by law and by public opinion, that the penalties of maleficent pen and ink are not more formidable than those of fist and dagger. Take the consideration of this thought for a wile-time in your next omnibus-ride, dear reader, and if you chance to be young and have a lust for POWER, write down EDITORSHIP for your second choice-the CHURCH, of course, number one, and POLITICS, possibly, number three.

The temptation to the abuse of pen-power is greater as the mind of the editor is more little. It is so easy to do brilliant tilting in the editorial lists, by slashing alike at the offending and unoffending! Abuse is the easiest, as courtesy is the most difficult kind of writing to make readable, and, as it is a relief for the smooth-faced card-player to vent before he sleeps his pent-up malice upon his wife, so a heart naturally ill-willed makes a purulent bile-spiggot of a penrelieved, so the venom is spent, no matter upon what. There is so seldom good cause to be ill-natured in print, that it would be safe, always, when reading an ill-natured criticism, to "smell the rat" of a bad heart near by.

If perversion of pen and ink be very blameable, forbearance should be laudable, and we claim credit for much pains-taking in this latter way. The reputations, readyspitted, that are sent us for roasting, would alone (did we publish them) sell our paper to the ten thousand malicious, who may be counted on as a separate stratum of patronage to periodicals. This is some temptation. Then we are often attacked, and we could demolish the assailant very amusingly, and we resist this temptation,-though, if his pin be not winced at, puny impunity will prick again. There is much that is ludicrous, much that is pervertible to sport, in new books and new candidates to fame; and by fault-finding only, or by abusing the author instead of his book, (easy and savoury!) the review is made readable without labour in writing-and this tempts both malice and idleness. No man can live, elbow to elbow, with competitors in love, life and literature, without his piques and his resentments, and to "turn" these pleasantly "to commodity," with a laugh that outstabs a dagger, is very tempting-very-to those who can do it dexterously.

Now that you have read the three foregoing paragraphs, dear reader, you are prepared to know the value of your acquittal, if you acquit the Mirror of ill-nature-of which it has been accused. We do not remember that, in its pages, we have ever, intentionally, wounded feelings, or trenched upon delicacy.

THE ROCOCO No. 1, is now ready for your shilling, dear reader-one shilling for the three purest gems ever crystallized into poetry-three narrative fairy-tales in verse, exquisitely full of genius. The book too, is beautifully printed, as are all the works of the Mirror Library-suitable for company at a lavender-fingered breakfast, or for the draw. ing-room table of your lady fair.

Rococo No. 2, is also ready, containing Pinkney's long neglected yet delicious poems, and you should pay a shilling if it were only to know what the country has to be proud of among its poetical dead. The author of

"I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone" had a smoothness in his touch of a thought like the glide of a cloud-edge just under a star. For quaint and sweet

The following Bryant-like, finished, and high-thoughted poetry was written by a young lady of seventeen, and her first published production. She is the daughter of one of our oldest and best families, resident on the Hudson. If the noon be like the promise of the dawn of this pure intellect, we have here the beginning of a brilliant fame:

Thou beautiful cloud, a glorious hue is thine!
I cannot think, as thy bright dyes appear
To my enraptured gaze, that thou wert born
Of evening's exhalations; more sublime,
Light-giver! is thy birthplace, than of earth.
Art thou not formed to herald in the day,
And clothe a world in thy unborrowed light?
Or art thou but a harbinger of rains
To budding May? Or, in thy subtle screen,
Nursest the lightnings that affright the world?
Or wert thou born of the etherial mist
That shades the sea, or shrouds the mountain's brow?
Spread thy wings o'er the empyrean, and away-
Fleetly athwart the untravelled wilds of space,
To where the sun-light sheds his earliest beams,
And blaze the stars, that vision vainly scans
In distant regions of the universe!
Tell me, air-wanderer! in what burning zone
Thou wilt appear, when from the azure vault
Of our high heaven thy majesty shall fade;
Tell me, winged vapour! where hath been thy home
Through the unchangeable serene of noon?
Whate'er thy garniture-where'er thy course-
Would I could follow thee in thy fair flight,
When the south wind of eve is low and soft,
And my thought rises to the mighty Source
Of all sublimity! O fleeting cloud,
Would I were with thee in the solemn night!
And now, what say to winding off this chatty page
such rhymes (of our own) as are written on a round trot
without stopping or mending? They were scrawled off,
years ago, on a blank leaf of a music book, in reply to
an accusation, and stumbled on accidentally this morning.
They may bear one reading:-

"Tis not that when I saw thee first
Thou wert a rose-bud newly burst-
A flower of girlhood's fragrant May-
Sweetly fair and freshly gay-
Not, that on thy thoughtful brow
The star of life burns paler now-
And calm the eye and, cold the tone,
That once were love's and music's own.
I find thee changed-but every line
As I would wish, if thou wert mine-
Riper, softer, gentler-eyed,
With more of love and less of pride;
Thou wert, to day, it seem'd to me,
As fair as woman well could be.
"Tis not for change in thee, I say,
I coldly met thine eye to day-
I say 'tis not, that thou art changed,
I met thy look with eye estranged!
Change like thine the star of even
Climbs for to the highest heaven-
Change like thine the half-shut flower
Pants for in the morning hour-
But oh, in that sweet time gone by,
An unshut Heaven was that soft eye!
The unpluck'd rose, the unsunn'd dew
Were like that lip-that eye of blue!
And tho' not mine the future fate
To be that bright bird's envied mate,
While thou wert free, tho' bold it seems,
I woo'd thee in the land of dreams-
Woo'd and won, in ravish'd sleep,
What I could die in dream to keep!
But flowers belov'd are coldly scann'd
When pluck'd and in another's hand-
Forgive me that I pass'd thee by
With wordless lip, and careless eye!

with