THE MAD POET. McDonald Clarke, commonly called the mad poet, died a few years ago in the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, New York. He wrote those oft-quoted lines, Now twilight lets her curtain down, And pins it with a star. In his wilder moments he set all rules at defiance, and mingled the startlingly sublime and the laughably ridiculous in the oddest confusion. He talks thus madly of Washington:Eternity-give him elbow room; A spirit like his is large; To the memory of America's greatest man: In the following lines, he sketches, with a few bold touches, a well-known place, sometimes called a rum-hole : Ha! see where the wild-blazing grogshop appears, As the red waves of wretchedness swell; FOOTE'S FARRAGO. The following droll nonsense was written by Foote, the dramatist, for the purpose of trying the memory of Macklin, who boasted that he could learn any thing by heart on hearing it once: So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and, at the same time, a great she-bear coming up the street pops its head into the shop-What! no soap? So he died; and she very imprudently married the barber: and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblilies, and the Garyulies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top. And they all fell to playing the game of "catch as catch can," till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots! BURLESQUE OF THE STYLE OF DR. JOHNSON. While I was admiring the fantastical ramifications of some umbelliferous plants that hung over the margin of the Liffey, the fallacious bank, imperceptibly corroded by the moist tooth of the fluid, gave way beneath my feet, and I was suddenly submerged to some fathoms of profundity. Presence of mind, in constitutions not naturally timid, is generally in proportion to the imminence of the peril. Having never learned to move through the water in horizontal progression, had I desponded, I had perished; but, being for a moment raised above the element by my struggles, or by some felicitous casualty, I was sensible of the danger, and immediately embraced the means of extrication. A cow, at the moment of my lapse, had entered the stream, within the distance of a protruded arm; and being in the act of transverse navigation to seek the pasture of the opposite bank, I laid hold on that part of the animal which is loosely pendent behind, and is formed by the continuation of the vertebræ. In this manner I was safely conveyed to a fordable passage, not without some delectation from the sense of the progress without effort on my part, and the exhilarating approximation of more than problematical deliverance. Though in some respects I resembled the pilot of Gyas, Jam senior madidaque fluens in veste, yet my companions, unlike the barbarous Phrygian spectators, forbore to acerbitate the uncouthness of embarrassment by the insults of derision. Shrieks of complorance testified sorrow for my submersion, and safety was rendered more pleasant by the felicitations of sympathy. As the danger was over, I took no umbrage at a little risibility excited by the feculence of my visage, upon which the cow had discharged her gramineous digestion in a very ludicrous abun dance. About this time the bell summoned us to dinner; and, as the cutaneous contact of irrigated garments is neither pleasant nor salubrious, I was easily persuaded by the ladies to divest myself of mine. Colonel Manly obligingly accommodated me with a covering of camlet. I found it commodious, and more agreeable than the many compressive ligaments of modern drapery. That there might be no violation of decorum, I took care to have the loose robe fastened before with small cylindrical wires, which the dainty fingers of the ladies easily removed from their dresses and inserted into mine, at such proper intervals as to leave no aperture that could awaken the susceptibility of temperament, or provoke the cachinnations of levity.* NEWSPAPER EULOGY. The following alliterative eulogy on a young lady appeared, many years ago, in a newspaper : If boundless benevolence be the basis of beatitude, and harmless humanity a harbinger of hallowed heart, these Christian concomitants composed her characteristics, and conciliated the esteem of her cotemporary acquaintances, who mean to model their manners in the mould of their meritorious monitor. CLEAR AS MUD. In a series of Philosophical Essays published many years ago, the authort gives some definitions of human knowledge, the following of which he considers "least obnoxious to comprehension:" A coincidence between the association of ideas, and the order or succession of events or phenomena, according to the relation of cause and effect, and in whatever is subsidiary, or necessary to realize, approximate and extend such coincidence; understanding, by the relation of cause and effect, that order or The peculiar stateliness and dignity of Johnston's style, when applied to the smaller concerns of life, makes, as will be seen from the above caricature, a very ludicrous appearance. A judicious imitation of his phraseology on trifling subjects was a favorite manner of attack among the critics. Erskine's account of the Buxton baths is one of the most amusing. When several examples of this sort were shown to Johnson, at Edinburgh, he pronounced that of Lord Dreghorn the best: "but," said he, "I could caricature my own style much better myself." † Ogilvie. succession, the discovery or development of which empowers. an intelligent being, by means of one event or phenomenon, or by a series of given events or phenomena, to anticipate the recurrence of another event or phenomenon, or of a required. series of events or phenomena, and to summon them into existence, and employ their instrumentality in the gratification of his wishes, or in the accomplishment of his purposes. INDIGNANT LETTER. Addressed to a Louisiana clergyman by a Virginia correspondent. SIR-You have behaved like an impetiginous acroyli-like those inquinate orosscrolest who envious of my moral celsitude carry their mugacity to the height of creating symposically the fecund words which my polymathic genius uses with uberity to abligate the tongues of the weightless. Sir, you have corassly parodied my own pet words, as though they were tangrams. I will not conceroate reproaches. I would obduce a veil over the atramental ingratitude which has chamiered even my undisceptible heart. I am silent on the foscillation which my coadful fancy must have given you when I offered to become your fanton and adminicle. I will not speak of the liptitude, the ablepsy you have shown in exacerbating me; one whose genius you should have approached with mental discalceation. So, I tell you, Sir, syncophically and without supervacaneous words, nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me. I warn you that I will vellicate your nose if I thought your moral diathesis could be thereby performed. If I thought that I should not impigorate my reputation by such a degladiation. tagygraphic; your oness inquinate draws oblectation from the greatest poet since Milton, and draws upon your head this letter, which will drive you to Webster, and send you to sleep over it. Go "Knowledge is power," and power is mercy; so I wish you no rovose that it may prove an external hypnotic. INTRAMURAL ESTIVATION. In candent ire the solar splendor flames; How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Το me, Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. Is, after all, but metaphysical. Oh! would that I, my Mary, were an Acid A living Acid; thou an Alkali Endowed with human sense; that, brought together, We both might coalesce into one Salt, One homogeneous crystal. Oh that thou Wert Carbon, and myself were Ilydrogen! We would unite to form olefiant gas, Or common coal, or naphtha. Would to heaven That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime, I'd be content to be Sulphuric Acid, In that case, So that thou mightst be Soda. Our happy union should that compound form, |