The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

You must quite give up your rigsh;
Alsho, you mosht join our nation,
And renounch ta flesh of pigsh.’

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At a meeting of the Rabbis,
Held about the Whitsuntide,
Was this thorough-paced Barabbas
Wedded to his Hebrew bride.
All his former debts compounded,
From the spunging-house he came;
And his father’s feelings wounded
With reflections on the same.’

It is a very dear marriage for Uwins, for on visiting his father the Baron, that incensed nobleman tells the double-dyed apostate never to cross his threshold again, and directs John the porter to kick him into the street. The order is anticipated:

‘Forth rushed I. O. Uwins, faster
Than all winking, much afraid
That the orders of the master
Would be punctually obeyed;
Sought his club, and there the sentence
Of expulsion first he saw:
No one dared to own acquaintance
With a bailiff’s son-in-law.

Uselessly down Bond-street strutting,
Did he greet his friends of yore;
Such a universal cutting
Never man received before.
Till at last his pride revolted;
Pale, and lean, and stern, he grew;
And his wife Rebecca bolted
With a missionary Jew.

Ye who read this doleful ditty,
Ask ye where is Uwins now?
Wend your way through London city,
Climb to Holborn’s lofty brow;
Near the sign-post of ‘The Nigger,’
Near the baked-potato shed,
You may see a ghastly figure,
With three hats upon his head.

When the evening shades are dusky,
Then the phantom form draws near,
And, with accents low and husky,
Pours effluvia in your ear;
Craving an immediate barter
Of your trousers or surtout,
And you know the Hebrew martyr,
Once the peerless I. O. U.’

A friend, in a recent letter to the Editor, thus alludes to the ‘National Intelligencer,’ one of the ablest and most dignified journals in the country, and to two of its ‘special correspondents:’ ‘Mr. Walsh, who writes from Paris, seems an incorporation of European literature and politics; and his articles are, in my belief, the most valuable now contributed to any journal in the world. Willis is the lightest and most mercurial ‘knight of the quill’ in all the tournament. It is astonishing with what dexterity, felicity, and grace he touches off the veriest trifle of the day, investing the trite with originality, and giving the value of wit and poetry to the worthless and the dry. Pity that this brilliant ‘quid nunc’ should degenerate into a mere trifling ‘arbiter elegantiarum,’ and expend his buoyant and ductile genius in the indictment of ephemeral paragraphs. His genius, it is true, has little solidity; but if he would rest two or three years on his oars, he might collect the scatterings of wit and poetry, which would in that time accrue to him from his readings and reflections, into a volume of essays, etc., which would be inferior in brilliancy and piquancy to but few of any nation.’ Possibly; but in the mean time, let us advise our friend, Mr. Willis has the little substantials of every-day life to look after. He ‘pleases to write’ frequently and currente calamo, because he ‘pleases to live.’ Fame is one thing, and can be waited for; there are other things that cannot tarry so well. Mr. Willis has ‘seen the elephant.’ He knows that Kenny Meadows is not far out of the way in his humorous picture of ‘The Man of Fame and the Man of Funds,’ wherein a shadowy hand protrudes from cloud-land, holding a pair of steel-yards, to resolve the comparative weight of an appetizing leg-of-mutton, and a huge laurel-wreath. The mutton ‘has it’ all to nothing, and the wreath ‘kicks the beam! ••• Punch, up to the latest dates, suddenly makes his appearance in our sanctum. Merriest of Merry Andrews, he is ever welcome! His ‘Comic Blackstone,’ must be of great service to legal gentlemen. In it, among other things, we are enlightened as to the ‘Rights of the Clergy.’ We subjoin a few items: ‘An archbishop is a sort of inspector of all the bishops in his province; but he does not call them out as an inspector would so many policemen, to examine their mitres, and see that their lawn sleeves are properly starched, before going on duty in their respective dioceses. An archbishop may call out the bishops, just as a militia colonel may call out the militia.’ ‘A bishop (episcopes) is literally an overseer, instead of which it is notorious that some of them are overlookers of their duties, and blind to the state of their diocese, though they call it their see.’ ‘The duties incumbent on a parson are, first to act as the incumbent, by living in the place where he has his living. Formerly, a clergyman had what is called the benefit of clergy in cases of felony; a privilege which, if a layman had asked for, he would have been told that the authorities would ‘see him hanged first.’ ‘A curate is the lowest grade in the church, for he is a sort of journeyman parson, and several of them meet at a house of call in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, ready to job a pulpit by the day, and being in fact ‘clergyman taken in to bait’ by the landlord of the house alluded to.’ Concerning ‘Subordinate Magistrates,’ as officers of the customs, overseers of the poor, etc., we glean the following information: ‘Tide-waiters are overseers of the customs duties, therefore it is their duty to overlook the customs. Custom is unwritten law, and a practice may be termed a custom when it can be proved to have lasted for a hundred years. Now, can any man doubt that the custom of defrauding the customs has endured more than a hundred years? Then the practice has become a law, and for observing this law, which, it seems, is one of our time-revered institutions, and a profitable proof of the wisdom of our ancestors, landing-waiters and tradesmen are to be prosecuted and punished. Monstrous injustice!’ ‘Overseers of the Poor are functionaries who sometimes literally over-see or over-look the cases of distress requiring assistance. The poor law of Elizabeth has been superseded by a much poorer law of William the Fourth, the one great principle of which is, to afford the luxury of divorce to persons in needy circumstances. It also discountenances relief to the able-bodied, a point which is effected by disabling, as far as possible, any body who comes into the work-house. The Poor Law is administered by three Commissioners, who spend their time in diluting gruel and writing reports; trying experiments how little will suffice to prevent a repeal of the union between the soul and the body.’ We have this information concerning the clock heretofore complained of: ‘Punch has been accused of hitting this clock very hard when it was down; and it certainly must be admitted that it was wholly unable to strike in return. We are happy to say that the wound has been followed by the clock being at last wound, and we now offer to take it by the hands in a spirit of friendship. We have been told that the long stagnation has been caused by the absurd scruples of the pendulum, which refused to go from side to side, lest it should be accused of inconsistency.’ Under the different months, ‘Punch’s Almanack’ gives many important directions, one of which is for the proprietors of the public gardens: ‘Now trim your lamps, water your lake, graft new noses on statues, plant your money-taker, and if the season be severe, cut your sticks.’ The following ‘Tavern Measure’ is doubtless authentic: Two ‘goes’ make one gill; two gills one ‘lark;’ two larks one riot; two riots one cell, or station-house, equivalent to five shillings.’ For office-clerks, as follows: Two drams make one ‘go;’ two goes one head-ache; two head-aches one lecture; two lectures ‘the sack.’ To those gentlemen who are lovers of the Virginia weed in its native purity, a list of prices, ‘furnished by one of the first Spanish houses,’ is published. It includes ‘choice high-dried dock-leaf regalias,’ ‘fine old cabbage Cuba’s,’ ‘genuine goss-lettuce Havana’s,’ and ‘full-flavored brown-paper Government Manilla’s!’ Two scraps under the head of ‘University Intelligence’ must close our quotations: ‘Given the force with which your fist is propelled against a cabman, and the angle at which it strikes him; required the area of mud he will cover on reaching the horizontal plane.’ ‘Show the incorrectness of using imaginary quantities, by attempting to put off your creditors with repeated promises to pay them out of your Pennsylvania dividends.’ ••• Many German physicians and surgeons hold that there remains in the brain of a decollated head some degree of thought, and in the nerves something of sensibility. It is stated by his biographer, that in the case of Sir Everard Digby, executed for a participation in the Gunpowder Plot, the tongue pronounced several words after the head was severed from the body. After the execution of Charlotte Corday, also, it is alleged that the executioner held up her lovely head by its beautiful hair, and slapped the pale cheeks, which instantly reddened, and gave to the features such an expression of unequivocal indignation, that the spectators, struck by the change of color, with loud murmurs cried out for vengeance on barbarity so cowardly and atrocious. ‘It could not be said,’ writes Dr. Sue, a physician of the first eminence and authority in Paris, ‘that the redness was caused by the blow, since no blow can ever recall any thing like color to the cheeks of a corpse; beside, this blow was given on one cheek, and the other equally reddened.’ Singular facts. Do they not militate against certain theories of ‘nervous sensation’ recently promulgated in our philosophical circles? ••• Doesn’t it sicken you, reader, to hear a young lady use that common but horrid commercial metaphor, ‘first-rate?’ ‘How did you like Castellan, last evening, Miss Huggins?’ ‘Oh, first-rate!’ ‘When a girl makes use of this expression,’ writes an eastern friend, ‘I mutter inly,’ ‘Your pa’ sells figs and salt-fish, I know he does.’ And it is all very well and proper, if he does; but for the miserable compound itself, pray kill it dead in your Magazine! Hit it hard! By the by, talking of odd phrases, hear this. A young Italian friend of mine, fresh from Sicily as his own oranges, a well-educated, talented person, who has labored hard to get familiar with English letters, and has read our authors, from Chaucer downward, dilated thus on the poets: ‘Po-pe is very mosh like Horace; I like him very mosh; but I tink Bir-ron was very sorry poet.’ ‘What!’ quoth I, ‘Byron a sorry poet! I thought he was a favorite with Italians?’ ‘Oh, yes; I adore him very mosh; I almost do admire him; but he was very sorry poet.’ ‘How so? Byron a sorry bard?’ ‘Oh, yes, very sorry; don’t you think so? molto triste—very mel-an-choly; don’t you find him so? I always feel very sorry when I read him. I think he’s far more sorry than Petrarca; don’t you?’ This will remind the reader of the very strong term used by a Frenchman, who on being asked at a soirée what was the cause of his evident sadness, replied: ‘I av just hear my fader he die: I am ver’ mosh dissatisfied!’ ••• We shall probably find a place for the paper entitled ‘Foreigners in America.’ The writer touches with a trenchant pen upon ‘the social abuses which the first families in the metropolis tolerate at the hands of disreputable exquisites and titled rascals.’ Nervous words, but not undeserved. ‘How much more rapidly a fashionable foreigner will move in the high road of preferment than one of your thinking, feeling, complex persons, in whom honor, integrity and reason make such a pother that no step can be taken without consulting them!’ ••• We have indulged in one or two sonorous guffaws, and several of Mr. Cooper’s ‘silent laughs,’ over the following ‘palpable hit’ from a New-Jersey journal: ‘A talking-machine,’ says the ‘Newton Herald,’ ‘which speaks passable French, capital English, and choice Italian, is now to be seen at New-York. It is made of wood, brass, and gum-elastic.’ ‘A similar machine,’ adds the ‘Sussex Register,’ ‘compounded of buckram, brass, and soap-locks, and familiarly called ‘Green Josey,’ is to be seen in Newton, at the Herald office; though we cannot say that it speaks any language ‘passably.’ It frequently makes the attempt, however, and here is one of its last ‘essays:’ ‘Gov. Gilmer is understood to have had a standing cart-balance for any appointment under the present administration, which he might choose to except; but he will not except an appointment of any kind under this administration.’ Isn’t that ‘standing cart-balance’ rich? The usual phrase carte-blanche, which in the sentence quoted might be rendered by ‘unconditional offer,’ is transmogrified into cart-balance! Among all the blunders perpetrated by conceited ignorance in its attempts to parley-voo, this stands unequalled. We have seen hic jacet turned into his jacket, in an obituary; that was a trifle; but cart-balance overcomes our gravity!’ So it does ours. The anecdote, to adopt the reading of a kindred accomplished linguist whom we wot of, is a ‘capital jesus-de-sprit!’ ••• The beginning of ‘L.’s ‘Stanzas’ is by no means unpromising; but what a ‘lame and impotent conclusion!’

‘Lord Howe he went out,
And Lord! how he came in!’

The third verse would do credit to Street, so graphic and poetical are the rural images introduced; but it runs into the fourth, a stanza ‘most tolerable, and not to be endured.’ Our young friend may be assured that we shall not ‘regard with indifference’ any thing from his pen that may fulfil the promise of the lines to which we allude. Na’theless, he must ‘squeeze out more of his whey.’ ••• The admirers of one of the most popular contributors that this Magazine ever enjoyed, will be glad to meet with the following announcement:

‘Burgess, Stringer and Company, corner of Broadway and Ann-street, New-York, have in press the Literary Remains of the late Willis Gaylord Clark, including the Ollapodiana Papers, with several other of his Prose Writings, not less esteemed by the public; including also his ‘Spirit of Life,’ a choice but comprehensive selection from his Poetical Contributions to the Literature of his Country; together with a Memoir: to be edited by his twin-brother, Lewis Gaylord Clark, Editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine. The publishers do not consider it necessary for them to enlarge upon the character of the writings which will compose the above volume. The series of papers under the title of Ollapodiana will be remembered with admiration and pleasure, by readers in every section of the United States. Their rich variety of subject; their alternate humor and pathos; the one natural, quiet, and irresistibly laughable; the other warm from the heart, and touching in its tenderness and beauty; won for them the cordial and unanimous praise of the press throughout the Union, and frequent laudatory notices from the English journals. Reminiscences of early days; expositions of the Ludicrous and the Burlesque, in amusing Anecdote; Limnings from Nature; and ‘Records of the Heart,’ were among their prominent characteristics. It is not too much to say of the other Prose Writings which the volume will contain, that although of a somewhat different character, they are in no respect inferior to the Ollapodiana, in their power to awaken and sustain interest. The Poetical Writings of Mr. Clark are too well known to require comment. They have long been thoroughly established in the national heart, and have secured for the writer an enviable reputation abroad.’

The work will be embraced in four numbers, of ninety-six~pages each, stereotyped upon new types in the best manner, and printed upon fine white paper; and the price will be but twenty-five cents for each number. Need we ask the interest of our friends, of the friends of the Departed, in behalf of the volume in question? ••• The Italian Opera, at Sig. Palmo’s new and beautiful temple in Chambers-street, has taken the town captive. I Puritani was first produced, and to overflowing houses at each representation. Belisario is now running a similar successful career. We shall have occasion in our next to advert more at large to this very popular establishment, and to notice in detail the artists (with and without the e) who compose its prominent attractions. ••• Since the direction given by an afflicted widow to some humane persons who had found the body of her husband in a mill-race, full of eels, ‘Take the eels up to the house, and set him again!’ we have seen nothing more affecting than an anecdote of a widower at St. Louis, who, on seeing the remains of his late wife lowered into the grave, exclaimed, with tears in his eyes: ‘Well, I’ve lost sheep, and I’ve lost cows, but I never had any thing to cut me up like this!’ As Carlyle says, ‘his right arm, and spoon, and necessary of life’ had been taken away, and he could not choose but weep. ••• The typographical error to which our Natchez friend alludes was corrected in some two or three thousand sheets; hence we dispense with his trifling errata. ‘I remember a clergyman in New-England,’ once wrote an accomplished contributor to us, ‘that when ‘the rains descended and the floods came and the winds blew,’ carried away in the pulpit in the height of his ardor the wrong house, and left that standing that was built upon the sand. After the service was over I ventured to observe to my uncle, Parson C–, (whose assistant had been preaching) that this seemed to be a new reading to the parable, and that I wondered when Mr. A– had discovered his error, as he did at the time of re-iteration, that he did not correct it. My uncle defended his curate, and observed that if he had then corrected himself, he would have carried away both houses, which was utterly in opposition to all Scripture. Part of the audience, said he, were asleep; and many of the rest so drowsy that, so long as one of the houses was taken off, the moral was enforced upon their perceptions as well by the one as the other. If he had made a thorough correction, he would have roused the attention of the whole parish, and nothing else would have been talked of for nine days. When a man has made an error he had better let other people make a discovery; and this truth, my lad, said he, you will understand better when you grow up.’ Let us conclude with an expression of great force and newness: ‘Comment is unnecessary.’ ••• ‘T.N.P.’s article, as he will perceive, is anticipated by the initial paper in the present number. How does he like the new definition of Transcendentalism: Incomprehensibilityosityivityalityationmentnessism?’ To us, it seems ‘as clear as mud!’ ••• The graceful ‘penciller’ of the ‘New Mirror’ weekly journal copies the beautiful ‘Lines to a Cloud’ from our January number, with the remark: ‘This Bryant-like, finished and high-thoughted (‘a vile phrase’) poetry was written by a young lady of seventeen, and is 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.’ We think ‘The two Pictures,’ from the same pen, in our February issue fully equal to the fair writer’s coup-d’essai. By the by, it would have been but simple courtesy, as it strikes us, to have given the Knickerbocker Magazine credit for the lines in question. ••• Numerous articles in prose and verse are on file for insertion, touching which we shall hope soon to have leisure to advise with the writers by letter.

‘America Well Defended’ would not be inappropriate as a true designation of a beautifully printed pamphlet before us, from the press of Mr. Benjamin H. Greene, Boston, containing a ‘Letter to a Lady in France on the supposed Failure of a National Bank, the supposed Delinquency of the National Government, the Debts of the several States, and Repudiation: with Answers to Inquiries concerning the Books of Capt. Marryat and Mr. Dickens.’ We have read this production with warm admiration of its calm and dignified style, the grouping and invariable pertinence of its facts and arguments; and the absence of every thing which savors of retaliatory spirit, in its animadversions upon the misrepresentations of the United States by the English press. Expositions are offered of the character of the old United States’ Bank, as contradistinguished from the ‘United States’ Bank of Pennsylvania;’ of the origin and nature of our public debts, national as well as of the separate States, etc. The themes of love of money, gravity of manners, of slavery, lynch-law, mobs, etc., are next considered; and the pamphlet concludes with some remarks upon the strength of our government, general results of our experiment, and our growing attachment to the Union. The author we understand to be Mr. Thomas G. Cary, a distinguished merchant, who has brought the observation and knowledge of a practical life in aid of his reasoning, throughout his pamphlet. It has passed, we are glad to learn, to a speedy second edition; and we cannot but hope that it may be re-published in England. It could not fail to produce great good, in the rectification of gross errors in relation to this country.

Parley’s Cabinet Library.—In this work Mr. Goodrich proposes to furnish the public with forty numbers, at twenty-five cents each, of biographical, historical and miscellaneous sketches, designed for the family circle, and especially for youth. The first two numbers consist of the lives of famous men of modern times; as Scott, Byron, Bonaparte, Burns, Burke, Goethe, Johnson, Milton, Shakspeare, Bacon, etc. The next two numbers are devoted to famous men of ancient times; as Cæsar, Hannibal, Cicero, Alexander, Plato, etc. The fifth and sixth numbers contain the ‘Curiosities of Human Nature,’ as Zera Colburn, Caspar Hauser, etc. The seventh and eighth contain the lives of benefactors: as Washington, Franklin, Howard, Fulton, Bowditch, etc. We notice also, in the biographical series, the lives of celebrated Indians and celebrated women. The historical sketches will present a series of striking pictures, illustrative of the history of the four quarters of the globe. The miscellaneous department will embrace arts, sciences, manners and customs of nations, a view of the world and its inhabitants, etc., etc. The intention of the author is to furnish a library of twenty volumes, devoted to the most interesting portions of human knowledge, with the design of rendering their subjects interesting and attractive to the general reader. Several of the numbers are now issued; and judging from these, we are happy to give the work our hearty approbation. The sketches will not be found to be mere sketches, drawn from cyclopedias: the author has evidently gone to the original sources, and culled with care the most interesting points on each subject. A contemporary expresses surprise that he has been able to say so much that is striking, just and new, in so brief a space; a praise in which we fully concur. The work entitled ‘Curiosities of Human Nature’ is one of the deepest interest, and is calculated to suggest profound reflections as to the capacities of the human mind. The two numbers devoted to the American Indians, as well as other volumes, present a good deal of new and curious matter. The life of Jetau, the Indian Voltaire, is very striking. The Benefactors will be read with gratification by every one who loves to dwell upon the actions of those who have been great in doing good. The moral tendency of these works is excellent, and they may be read with pleasure as well as profit by old and young. They are happily adapted to the family as well as the school-library; and we are glad to know that they have been adopted for the latter purpose in some of our principal cities. They will constitute a wholsome check upon, as well as an agreeable substitute for, most of the trashy and pernicious literature that is now so freely poured upon the public. Mr. John Allen, at the office of the Knickerbocker, is the agent for this city.

‘Wonders of the Heavens.’—A superb large quarto volume has recently been put forth by Messrs. Robert P. Bixby and Company, entitled, ‘The Wonders of the Heavens: being a Popular View of Astronomy, including a full Illustration of the Mechanism of the Heavens; embracing the Sun, Moon, and Stars, with descriptions of the planets, comets, fixed stars, double-stars, the constellations, the galaxy or milky way, the zodiacal light, aurora-borealis or northern-lights, meteors, clouds, falling-stars, aërolites, etc.; illustrated by numerous maps and engravings.’ We cannot too highly commend this volume to our readers. The author, Mr. Duncan Bradford, has kept constantly in view one object, viz: to make his subject plain and interesting to the people. Instead of mingling mathematics with his great theme, to such an extent as to alarm the neophyte at the very threshold of the temple of astronomy, he has with a wise judgment selected from the best works, including the latest, those parts that were least encumbered with the abstruse and the unintelligible; and the illustrations serve to make his sublime teachings still more clear.

Rogers’ Poems.—We have not seen a more beautiful volume for a twelvemonth than the new illustrated edition of ‘Poems by Samuel Rogers, with revisions and additions by the author,’ recently issued by Messrs. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia. It is indeed in all respects an exquisite work; being printed upon the finest drawing-paper, with a large clear type, and illustrated with ten engravings on steel, from paintings by the very first artists in England. The volume opens with the ‘Pleasures of Memory,’ and contains every thing from the author’s pen which his maturest consideration has deemed most worthy of preservation. We cordially commend this admirable work to the attention of every reader of the Knickerbocker to whom it may be accessible.

notes

1

Men who are yearly selected by the inhabitants to superintend the business of the town, and who, among other duties, have the charge of managing the poor.

2

Ενθα δὲ Νυκτὸς παῖδες ἐρεμνῆς οἰκί' ἔχουσιν, Ὕπνος καὶ Θάνατος, κ. τ. λ. Hes. Theog. 1. 758, etc.

3

Observe the order of collocation in Genesis i: 5. ‘And the EVENING and the MORNING were the first day.’

4

‘When the morning stars sang together,’ etc. Job: xxxviii., 7. In the same chapter observe the astonishing boldness of scripture personification, and the unequalled pomp of oriental imagery.

5

This line is from one of Grimke’s polished and most scholar-like orations.

6

See ‘’ of the present number.

7