made him familiar with its nature. Mr. Kimball also published, through Putnam, his 'Lectures before the Law Institute of the City of New-York.' He was one of the editors of the 'Knickerbocker Gallery.' He took a zealous interest in the success of 'Putnam's Monthly,' and wrote the leading article of the first number a comprehensive paper on Cuba. Besides printing a great number of political articles, he has, from time to time, published orations, addresses, etc., and was a constant contributor to the 'International Magazine' while in existence. He has also written for the 'Atlantic Monthly.'

In 1842 he went a second time to Europe, renewing the associations of his travel and student-life in Great Britain, and on the continent. Then, for ten years, he was an industrious and successful lawyer in New-York. Since 1852 he has resided, a large portion of the time, in Europe. He thus became conversant with the customs, language, and governmental policy of most European states, and acquainted with the most distinguished authors of England, France, and Germany.

Mr. Kimball is said to be a man of aptitude in affairs, possessing the requisites for a good merchant, or a successful financier. Antagonistic qualities, seldom reconcilable in the same individual, are thus evinced; the loftiest ideality, and the adaptability to the practical pursuits of life; a fair desire for comfortable possessions, and a constant grasping after the intricacies of thought, and subtleties of argument - which, combining, form a character remarkable for its intensity. It is not alone a pleasing but an useful study to analyze the constituent elements of such a mind, and trace its movements in the drama of life. In 1859 Mr. Kimball returned from Europe, purchased an estate in Westchester county, near New-York, and has since devoted himself to literature.

We had nearly forgot to say, that 'Cuba and the Cubans,' a volume illustrative of the history, and social, political, and economical condition of the island of Cuba, was written by Mr. Kimball during the excitement occasioned by its invasion in 1849, and exhibits a degree of research, and a judicial fairness of statement and argument which characterize no other production upon this subject. As it is generally admitted to be the most reliable, complete, and altogether important work upon points commanding the attention of several nations, its circulation was very large, and the work will ever hold rank among our standard authorities. Many of the author's 'Letters from Cuba,' published de temps en temps in the KNICKERBOCKER are embodied in this volume. To give an idea of the avidity with which it was snatched up by the reading public, two large editions were exhausted in a fortnight; and so great was the interest taken by the Spanish government in the numbers, as they appeared in the KNICKERBOCKER, that the Spanish consul called at the office, with a polite request that he should desist from their publication! This, however, the usually courteous Editor refused to do, and the elegant don 'walked Spanish' from the sanctum, and was seen no more.

Now for a stroll through the rooms of the daguerreotypists of the town; through the ambitious saloons' of the Bowery, and the more pretentious galleries in Broadway, where the irrepressible itch for self-portraiture or sunportraiture breaks out on the awning-posts, and on the fences, and along the halls, and at the door-ways, and on the walls of every second or third house one meets; in the most extraordinary and truly surprising blotches and pustules and pimples; sometimes in the virulent form of a prodigious 'full-length,' more often in the less aggravated and less expensive, but equally eye-starting and malignant shape of a magnified 'half-size,' but commonly in the slightly exaggerated, or the really mild and comparatively diminutive miniature pimply type.

This last modification of this peculiar disease or affection is not, it can be fairly and honestly and candidly assumed, owing to a lack of constitutional predisposition, or diathesis, as the doctors say, to the worst and most extravagant species of it; but to that chronic and generally incurable flaccidity and impecuniosity of the pockets, which, by some immutable and inflexible law of nature, or of social or political economy, seems bound to torture the greater part of mankind perpetually, although in this case, it must be admitted, that by a sort of compensatory or betterment law, which does not conflict with the one we have before alluded to, it acts as a powerful prophylactic, where a serious attack is threatened.

That we all have a tendency to this eruption, which no administration of sulphur and molasses, or any such diablerie or atrocity will eradicate, is as indisputable as the theological, orthodox dogma of our proneness to peccability. Like the whooping-cough, the mumps, the measles, and other inevitable juvenile ills, which flesh and the rebel soldiers down at Manassas became heir to, in consequence of our grand parent's pomological propensities to forbidden pippins, we are sure to have at least one attack of the complaint in our lives; and like the exceedingly disagreeable, inconvenient and sometimes noisy afflictions before mentioned, it usually, though not by any means invariably, comes on us in the happy, unalloyed and unamalgamated days of our precious youth and innocence, when our ideas of our inestimable selves particularly are alarmingly original, fresh and altitudinous.

No state of society, civilized or barbarous, is exempt from this disease; it is to be found in all stages and conditions, and among all classes, divisions, sub-divisions, species and sub-species, and- - antithetical as it is, and paradoxical as it may appear - though common, it cannot be considered exactly vulgar; as it results in no physical inconvenience or uneasiness, being of an extremely sedative character, and accompanied by no irritation whatever, as every one who has experienced an attack of it can truthfully testify. There may be some slight difference in the symptoms of it, owing to individual, social or national idiosyncrasies, but the malady itself is the same every where, at all times, in all places, and under every sky; and it is not in the least degree presumptuous to assert, that it will never disappear from among us until we all undergo a general trepanning operation for removing the organ of self-esteem.

When the disease seizes on the tender, unsophisticated and untutored squaw, over whose unkempt head a cycle of the moon has scarcely passed, to use a phrase which we do not remember to have read or to have heard before, she squats on sunny days at the edge of some placid or melodiously murmuring stream, in her native wild, near the paternal wigwam, and with neck outstretched, over the mossy, fern-fringed brink, sits for hours at a time, grinning with delight at the tawny face and figure she sees mirrored on the liquid surface of the water beneath her. When it insidiously attacks the artless and impressible child of the pale faces, she manifests it by indulging in prolonged and frequent observations of her sweet self, as reflected in the various lookingglasses available; before the vitreous ornaments or utilments aforesaid, she exercises her facial muscles until she is perfectly able to travel on them, in the accepted metaphorical sense of a not strictly eloquent phrase, any distance without fatigue; she circumhoops herself and gives a tremendous impetus to the manufacture of steel and to the business of New-Bedford; she sometimes revels in farinaceous arrangements of dyspeptic associations; she takes to various ingenious, and not always ingenuous, little devices, which result in irretrievable losses on the part of many of the more grammatically worthy sex, of their hearts and their heads and their senses, too, sometimes. When it begins to affect the impetuous and inexperienced Arrapahoe or Comanche, who is devoutly longing for somebody's scalp to ornament his bran-new girdle, he attires himself in the moiety of a dilapidated red blanket and a pair of moccasins, em

broidered with the colored quills of a porcupine, which has ceased to fret; he tittivates his flat nose with the largest brass ring obtainable; he illumines his prepossessing countenance with ochre of the brightest red, and then shades it artistically with charcoal of the deepest black; his ample chest he covers with dazzling tin medallions; his neck he extravagantly encircles with vari-hued beads of glass, and his head he bedecks with the dyed plumage of the falcon of the plains, a defunct buzzard. Then mounting his mettlesome mustang, he sallies forth to the nearest mud-puddle on the hunting-ground of his tribe, and there uninterruptedly admires his symmetrical form as reflected on the oozy pool, with unwrinkled pleasure, evinced by innumerable and unmistakable grunts of satisfaction. When the malady gets seated comfortably in our young men, they take vigorously to agricultural pursuits; they assiduously and praiseworthily fertilize their downy mandibles, though seldom blessed with a large crop in return for their labor, but with the coöperation of their cordwainers, they succeed in adding greatly to the cereal products of the country; they encourage industrial pursuits, too, by expending fabulous sums annually in purchasing extensive trowsers, skin-fitting coats, paper dog-collars, rat-skin gloves, fragile neck-ties, inoffensive walking-canes and avoirdupois jewelry. Buxom widows are sure to be troubled with the disease, even before their saturated pocket-handkerchiefs can be wrung out; grief-stricken widowers, too, get it ere the customary weed has time to take root in their inconsolable hats; famously unknown politicians get violent attacks of it, so do unappreciated actors and actresses, so do ambassadorial Japanese, erudite lyceum lecturers, progressive preachers, spectacled professors, specialty doctors, African melodists, Egyptian lawyers, prime donne of the lager-bier opera, 'What is it?' and other individuals of corresponding physical and intellectual characteristics. In fact, as I said before, every body is the victim of this disease at some time or another in his liie. Now, here is a dreadful eruption of it before us! What an array of intelligent faces; what a delightful and original variety of attitudes; how vividly the human countenance is here portrayed; into what astonishing shapes, though, it has screwed and twisted and contorted and distorted and pursed up itself! Every expression on it except the natural one; every body looking as though he had first gone through a process of starching in some mammoth laundry, and had then gotten himself up in his made-to-order suit for the eventful occasion; and every body getting himself promiscuously mixed in with every body else in the truly democratic-republican-liberté-egalité-fraternité-and-Declaration-of-Independence style; and every body seeming to be on the best terms with himself and with every body and every thing pertaining, or in any way related thereto, or in any manner or form connected therewith, lineally, collaterally, or otherwise. The sanctimonious visage of Mr. Lincoln, one of the elect and elected and inaugurated, and now duly in power, beams benevolently down on us from over his unstarched shirt-collar with such a paternal smile, that we hesitate to give utterance to the disrespectfully affectionate name of 'Old Abe,' knowing that he is now the rather anxious father of a very large and unruly family, of somewhat disobedient and undutiful children, made so by not applying the assuaging switch to them in time, in