Long Island's sea-girt shore,' swaying backward and forward in the cool healthinspiring breeze, and hearing

'far off, the melancholy roar

Of billows white with wrath, battling against the shore.'

In the immediate fore-ground is Cranston's Marine Pavilion, crowded with cool and happy guests, many of whom were this very morning sweltering in the insufferable heat of the metropolis. Beyond is the dark blue sea, where 'go the ships,' some near at hand, some with their white sails flitting into dimness at the horizon's verge of the vast watery plain, and other some' setting harborward from sea, all sail spread, with rejoicing hearts on board, hailing once more their native shores. Well do our citizens show their appreciation, this year, of what is truly enjoyable at such a summer watering-place as Rockaway. Sea-air, capacious apartments, an unexcelled cuisine, and the watchful attentions of the popular host and his assistants, have made the Marine Pavilion' even better known than ever the present season. Similar houses, nearer by, as the excellent Hamilton House' at the Narrows, the 'Oceanic' at Coney-Island, with WILLISTON's, at the mouth of the Shrewsbury, have also, we are glad to learn, been well attended by contented and improved metropolitan visiA THOUGHTFUL and clever woman is the lady who indites the following 'Loving Epistle from a Wife to her Husband.' She has an eye to her spouse's corporeal comfort, that can scarcely fail to be appreciated by all sensible persons:

tors.

Go, dear Sir, to Mr. BURTIS,
He so very kind and courteous,
And ask him a nice vest to make,
Smooth and striped like a snake,
Of some sober, quiet color,
Just like mud, or somewhat duller:
Aud pray the gentle artist tell

To sew the buttons strong and well,
That they may bear the potent stretch
When after-dinner sighs you fetch.

Alas! I fear I'm sadly rude,
But then you know 't is for your good.
And then another thing you lack:
A summer-coat upon your back.
This coat must be of comely gray,
Like that renowned at MONTEREY,
Which borrowed glory from old ZACH,

And thence from him is called a sack !
This sack must be of just dimensions,
With good allowance for extensions,
And pockets great and manifold,
All kinds of wondrous things to hold:
Lobsters and letters, gloves and shoes,.
Spectacles, candies, billet-doux,
Keys, apples, nuts, newspapers, books,
Sweet oranges and fishing-hooks,
Collars and combs for cat and dogs,
And one for book-sale catalogues!

Those wife-abhorred and odious things,
Which give so many eagles wings!
And you must have a pair of 'pants;'
They're just the thing your worship wants..
Pray get all these, for love of me,
Thy ever careful wife,

M. B.

Ir was only in our last number that we called the attention of our readers to a beautiful little song composed by JOHN BALLANTYNE, of Edinburgh, the well-known author of 'The Gaberlunzie-Man,' the burden of which is alike affecting and natural: Ilka blade of grass keps its ain drap o' dew;' set to an exquisitely plaintive air by JOHN WILSON. Little did we then think, that before another moon should have passed away we should be called upon to record the death of our friend the composer. Mr. WILSON died at Quebec on the morning of Monday the ninth of July, from spasmodic cholera, caused by exposure while fishing on Lake ST. CHARLES, on the Satur-day preceding:

'MOURN, Scotia, mourn!-a voice from the ocean,
Borne fitfully o'er the Atlantic's broad wave,
Proclaims to your children, with tearful emotion,
That your favorite minstrel lies low in his grave !'

Mr. WILSON was a kind-hearted, honorable man; exemplary in all the relations of life, and beloved by all who had the pleasure to know him. He was a warm friend, a kind husband, a tender father. He leaves behind him accomplished daughters, who inherit his virtues and his delightful musical genius. May he rest in peace! WE

are doing a service for which our metropolitan readers will thank us, in calling attention to the removal of The Carcel Mechanical Lamp Dépôt to Number 445, Broadway. M. D'ARDONVILLE, a brave and gallant officer, who acquitted himself with distinguished valor in General Scott's column in Mexico, has succeeded to our old friend Mr. DIACON in the agency for the Mechanical Lamp in New-York; and he has recently received from Paris a very large assortment, an entirely new stock, in porcelain and bronze, than which nothing could be more beautiful. Our readers know our opinion of the Carcel lamp. No light that we have ever seen can compare for a moment with its constant, clear, and mellow rays; and a little care is all that is required to keep the lamp in perfect order. We commend our readers to M. D'ARDONVILLE's establishment; not the least pleasure of a visit to which will be the conversation and courteous demeanor of the proprietor. HEYWOOD, a quaint old Eng

lish poet, in his 'Challenge for Beauty,' pays this tribute to his countrymen :

THE thrifty Frenchman wears small waist,
The Dutch his belly boasteth;

The Englishman is for them all,
And for each fashion coasteth.

'Some love the rough, and some the smooth,
Some great and others small things,

But oh, your liquorish Englishman,
He loves to deal in all things !'

which we believe is a fact, established beyond the reach of peradventure or gainsaying. 'An Englishman,' says a modern author, 'will always climb the highest mountains, and ascend towers and steeples; he will always pay well to be taken up in a balloon; and if he could get so high, he would always be found rubbing his nose against the sky. I cannot bring myself to doubt that the people who built the tower of Babel were English, with a small sprinkling perhaps of Irish laborers!'... SOMETHING we had written for the last number, but are now compelled to leave unsaid touching a jaunt with cherished friends in Mr. Moon's smooth-rolling patentaxle barouche, (sitting on the back-seat of which, by-the-by, we'realized' in thought the feelings of LAFAYETTE in his national tour,) from the United States' to Saratoga Lake, a charming spot, not the least attractive of which is Mr. LOOMIS's nice establishment, with its adjacent bass'-dom and 'trout'-ery; touching also that neatest of all neat steamers, the WILLIAM CALDWELL,' of Lake George, and its courteous and accomplished county-officer Captain, Mr. FARLIN; involving likewise a short ride in 'long time' over a most execrable road to Ticonderoga, and a hurried survey of that altar-place of Freedom; not forgetting our sail down Lake Champlain, and the awful, awful sun-bakery encountered at Whitehall; together with brief records of pleasant reünions, public and private, at Saratoga, and so forth, and so forth. . . . 'David Copperfield, the Younger' promises to become one of the very best of DICKENS' productions. We envy no reader his emotions who can peruse without tears the description of DAVID'S first return home from school, his reception there by the MURDSTONES, his second return, and the death and burial of his lovely and gentle-hearted mother. The latter scenes, especially, are the very perfection of pathos. His longing for the holidays, in which he was to make his first visit, is admirably depicted in the ensuing passage:

"THE rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening school-room dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning school-room which was nothing but a great shivering machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog'seared lesson books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all. I well remember though how the distant idea of the holidays, after seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come toward us, and to grow and grow. How, from counting months, we came to weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should not be sent for, and

when I learned that I had been sent for and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after to-morrow, to-morrow, to-day, to-night; when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and going home.'

GENERAL F

of

6

Pennsylvania, relates a candid confession of one of his fellow-members of the legislature of that state, from one of its northern counties, who one evening stepped into his room, sat down, and saying nothing, seemed wrapt in a brown study.' 6 The General offered him the compliments of the evening, but he paid no attention to it. At length he broke out: General, I've got to speak tomorrow. There is a bill I want to get through, and W - and P. (mentioning the names of able speakers) are going to oppose it, and I want you to tell me how I am to get along.' 'Oh,' said the General, that you can do well enough: the bill is a simple matter; just say what you think, and sit down; you'll get along well enough.'. 'Well,' said he, ‘if the speaker would let me say a few words, and then sit down, and then get up again, and go on, I think I could do well enough; for, General, it is peculiar with me, my wit generally comes afterward! We have heard not a few 'latter-day' speakers of whom the same fact might safely be predicated. . . . ' WAES US! waes us!' - would that we could have been with, or afterward joined, our esteemed friend and correspondent, who recently wrote us as follows, from Prospect-Rock, Wilkesbarre Mountain, Pennsylvania:'

6

'MY DEAR C -: With my port-folio on my knees, my back propped up against old gray primitive, tall hemlocks and pines waving with breezy murmurs over me, and flecking with a curious fret-work of shine and shade this paper on which I am trying to write; with the distant mountains, like undulating billows, rolling and blending into the measureless West; with a vast breast-work of granite in front of me, earthquake-proof, descending in startling perpen dicular some sixty feet to the tree-tops below, over which the eye skims downward for two miles to the picturesque town of Wilkesbarre, lying in the lap of the valley of Wyoming; with the Susquehanna in view, now sinuous, now abruptly gone, then gleaming far off, then gone again, then glinting still in the blue distance, and over all the soft haze of departing day, like a veil over the bosom of dreaming loveliness; here twelve hundred feet above the valley, and some thousands above tide water; with my neckerchief off, my collar open to the breeze, vest loos. ened, and spirits as free as the free air I breathe; I am trying, trying to fulfil the first part of the contract: I am trying to write to you. But oh! CLARK, who can write amid such scenery? I dare not raise up my eyes to look at it. Describe it? Pen nor pencil can delineate it. It is a dream of Arcadia. From horizon to horizon stretch the mountains; behind me are mountains; before me, mountains; and beyond, and still beyond, mountains; and lo! in the bosom of this vast amphitheatre, lies Wyoming, with its peerless river, and islands, and golden squares of wheat alternating with green pasture-fields, extending on either hand into indistinctness: 'EACH feature that divides what labor's son

Claims for his portion from his laboring brother'

blent into one, save where yon bright spot indicates the river rolling southward to the broad Chesapeake and the Atlantic! I wish you had been with us on the bright dewy morning that saw, us on our way to Elizabethtown; thence by rail and stage to Easton; thence to stilly Bethle hem and quaint Nazareth, where German is much spoken, and all the road-posts smack of Rheinlandt; then on foot over the Pocono mountain, through the Wind-Gap, and so onward to Tobyhanna creek, where we leave the stage, and with rods, tackle and fly-book essay the trout. Now picture to yourself tall hemlocks, giant pines, and Titanic oaks overshadowing a rapid stream, clear as truth, with fish quick darting—from us: we, up to our waistcoat-pockets in water and excitement, whipping the stream right and left; then bethink you of a thundercloud rolling up its dark ugly pall over us, darkening the stream; and now before us we see the water breaking off abruptly and reäppearing far below, and as we gain the ledge of rocks the white cataract bounds over the gray fretted crags and falls into the dark basin beneath. Now the drops dimple the stream and patter on the leaves, and anon down falls the rain, and we in the

woods with no path in sight. Aha! a blazed tree- - and another! So we follow them out of the woods at last, and into open fields. How pitilessly it rains! Four miles to Stoddard'sville; and night and rain, and roads in the worst possible condition; well, a weary way has its end; there's a light at last, and we are stripping the wet clothes from our reeking bodies, coarse towels are in requisition, and the white table-cloth and odorous supper looks wholesome! 'But what success?' you will say: 'Oh, the usual luck; we brought home just three wet men, and no fish. Better luck next day, when we filled our basket with large trout out of the Lehigh. But fish-stories, in this enlightened age, will not bear to be amplified, or else I would tell you of the hair-breadth 'scapes,' the delicate address with which we landed the large ones, the accuracy with which we cast our flies into the darksome pool, where the willow dipped its fingers in the waters deep and cool, with many other things that would amuse you; but we will go on toward Wyoming.

'Nothing of note occurred until we got out of the stage at Bear Creek, which is nine miles from the valley. Here we started to walk up hill, feeling much in the spirit thereof. Behold us upon the mountains! — and here upon the right a silver-gray mist with feathery edges uprises, and all thereward is conjectural; but on our left are the clear hills relieved against the sky; and now suddenly the mist clears away, and discloses a wood of spectral hemlocks; dead, stripped, fire-scathed; the long skeleton masts rose from the deep, as if a phantom navy, sailing upon the wind, had furled its misty wings and anchored there. Now we are passing through a dense wood, called the 'Shades of Death,' for here many who escaped from the massacre perished. Methinks you could almost see them, men, women and children, huddling together in these noisome shades, and starting at every noise in the sounding wood. But we must press onward; seven miles to walk, and that with a rapid pace, to see the valley at sunset. Five-mile Hill; and now down this long walk, and up the Wilkesbarre mountain. This way,' said M—, striking into the deep wood, and leaving the road: 'Don't look until I tell you; so-up this ledge of rocks;' and scrambling up the gray granite, we come to a rocky barrier: 'Now gentlemen!' We raised our eyes, looked over the parapet, and at our feet, lay the Valley of the Wyoming! Never shall I forget it. All the dreams of Tempe, the imaginings of the 'Happy Valley' of RASSELAS, and what I had conceived of the beautiful Vegas of Grenada, fade into unsubstantial air, when compared with the surpassing loveliness of that vision!

'And now, my dear CLARK, I am writing to you with that very scene below me; and I only wish that you were here to enjoy it. One thing will surprise you: the extent of the valley. Wilksbarre, a town of five thousand inhabitants, laid out with ample gardens, etc. around the houses, makes but an inconsiderable figure in it: indeed, if you can imagine the width of the Hudson at Sing-Sing continued from that point as far as New-York, and converted into a cultivated vale, surrounded with high mountains on every side, and you looking down upon it midway from some prospect-rock higher than any of the Palisades, you can form some idea of the place from which I am now subscribing myself, Yours, as ever, RICHARD HAYWARDE.'

THE 'Society Library,' in Broadway, has just received a fresh accession to its already large and valuable stock of foreign books. The institution is greatly indebted to the taste and zeal of our friend DANIEL SEYMOUR, Esq., for the present as well as for former purchases of continental literature. The volumes now received include several of the noblest productions of the French press. Perhaps the most striking is the Galérie de Versailles,' in some twenty large folio volumes, including engravings of every apartment and every object of art in that vast collection. The History of the Fine Arts,' by D'AGINCOURT, is a work of especial interest; and the great work on Egypt, by the savans of NAPOLEON's army, is one which may be considered indispensable to a public library. There are many other volumes, now spread upon the library-tables, which it would be pleasant to linger over; but, to say nothing of time, the tyranny of space' at this present prevents. It matters little, however; for the works themselves, and the courteous welcome to a view of their contents which will be extended to visitors by Mr. FORBES, the librarian - who is, to its most time-honored patrons, one of the marked and proverbial 'quiet enjoyments' of the Library-render farther comment unnecessary. THERE is a beautiful simile in the annexed

stanza. The comparison of the journey of life to a transit across a desert is very felicitous:

HERE in the body pent,
Absent from heaven I roam;

Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home.'

WILL nobody come forward to defend the little town of Alexandria, District of Columbia, taken by assault' in the subjoined passage of a letter just received from an esteemed friend and correspondent in the city of Washington? Have you ever visited Alexandria? Let me indulge the pleasing hope that you will answer this question in the negative. I went there not long since, and suffered crucifixion for five whole hours; a St. SIMEON agony. The day was unusually warm, or from my exposure to the heat seemed so at least; and the sail down the Fotomac was, therefore, not unpleasant. I wish I could say as much of my rambles through the streets of Alexandria; a town that for stupidity and dulness more than rivals those dreary GoD-forgotten places in central Italy, so graphically described by DICKENS. There is a positive vivacity, a gay, frolicksome, Parisian gaiety, about the streets of Elizabethtown, New-Jersey, on a hot Sunday afternoon, compared with those at Alexandria in their liveliest aspect. I never saw anything so very dead;' and strolling through the principal thoroughfares, the shop-windows of which being open, materially aided the effect of suspended vitality, (like corpses with raised eyelids,) I half fancied myself in Pompeii or Herculaneum. As WORDWORTH says, 'Dear GOD, the very houses seem asleep!' I saw but one horse there; a circumstance which surprised me not a little, for more luxurious pasture than is to be found in any of the public streets of the town could not be desired by the daintiest fed horse. The specimen I allude to had been pushed by an empty dray upon the wharf, down among the shipping, which consisted of a melancholy-looking sloop, disembarking a few lean rats, and basking in the hot sun like a shunned leper; a fishing-smack, whose moistureless bottom glistened with dried shad-scales; and the wheezy little steam-boat that had borne me thither. I observed a sign in this vicinity, which a humorous shop-keeper, long since dead, I presume, had placed beside his door, announcing that 'All orders would be attended to with promptness and despatch.' I respect that man's memory for his facetiousness. I left at five o'clock in the afternoon, perspiring freely, and with feelings subdued by the holy quiet of the place ;` a frame of mind not unlike that accompanied by a stroll through a village church-yard. In my next I will give you some account of a recent trip to Mount Vernon.' 'Danks, mynheer!' . . . ‘I can't compose any thing,' writes a new correspondent, that is very sublime, but I can write something tremendously ridiculous;' and he sends us some very far from bad' Lines on a Pitcher of Butter-milk, which nevertheless are not quite up to the mark.' Try again, young gentleman. A REVIVALIST at the West recently paid this compliment to womankind in general: 'I wish to notice a little objection I heard of to-day concerning our meeting. Some persons have said that this is not really the work of the LORD, because nearly all the 'seekers' are females; they moreover challenge us to tell why there is so large a proportion of the weaker sex engaged. Now I will not answer this directly; but see here: two years ago I had occasion to preach to the prisoners in your penitentiary. Now how did it happen that there were there more than four hundred males, and but about half-a-dozen of the weaker sex?” He was generally supposed by the objectors, about that time and place, to have 'got 'em:' leastways, so the narrator states. THE letter mentioned in our last num