'CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.'-' Dies Boreales' is the title of a 'Noctes'-like gossip by KIT NORTH,' in the last number of BLACKWOOD's Magazine. Much of the old fancy, feeling, egotism, vim, are apparent in the article. Under the awakening eyelids of the morn' CHRISTOPHER is ascending Cruachan, a mountain in the north of Scotland. BULLER, his present interlocutor, endeavors to dissuade him from the attempt. 'Thereat, thus then old CHRISTOPHER,' with a good deal of reminiscential pathos, as it strikes us:

'WELL, be it so: I am not obstinate; but such another day for the ascent there may not be during the summer. On just such a day I made the ascent some half-century ago. I took it from Tyanuilt, having walked that morning from Dalmally, some dozen miles, for a breathing on level ground, before facing the steepish shoulder that roughens into Loch Etive. The foxhunter from Gleno gave me his company with his hounds and terriers nearly half-way up, and after killing some cubs we parted-not without a tin-ful of the creature at the Fairies' Well. Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past! A tin-ful of the unchristened creature to the health of the Silent People. Oh, BULLER, there are no Silent People now! Well, on I flew, as on wings, or on feet, if you will, but the feet of a deer; or on all-fours, like a frog in his prime, clearing tiny obstructions with a spang; on all-fours, like an ourang-outang, who, in difficult places, brings his arms into play. Without palpitation of the heart; without determination of blood to the head; without panting; without dizziness; with merely a slight acceleration of the breath, and now and then something like a gasp after a run to a knowe which we foresaw as a momentary resting-place; we felt that we were conquering Cruachan! Lovely level places, like platforms-level as if water had formed them, flowing up just so far continually, and then ebbing back to some unimaginable seaawaited our arrival, that on them we might lie down, and from beds of state survey our em pire, for our empire it was felt to be, far away into the lowlands, with many a hill between; many a hill that in its own neighborhood is believed to be a mountain; just as many a man of moderate mental dimensions is believed by those who live beneath his shade to be of the first order of magnitude, and with funeral honors is interred.'

Subsequently, in the course of the ascent of Cruachan, there ensues an incidental colloquy, involving the Comparative claims of Scotch-Presbyterianism and Churchof-England Episcopacy. We condense CHRISTOPHER's opinions on this theme somewhat, and separate them from the occasional interruptions of his interlocutor, who, it should be premised, is a high old Churchman:

'I CAN easily suppose a Mind, strong in thought, warm in feeling, of an imagination susceptible and creative; by magnanimity, study, and experience of the world disengaged from all sectarian tenets; yet holding the absolute conviction of religion, and contemplating, with reverence and tenderness, many different ways of expression which this inmost spiritual disposition has produced or put on; having a firmest holding on to Christianity as pure, holy, august, divine, true, beyond all other modes of religion upon the earth; partly from intuition of its essential fitness to our nature; partly from intense gratitude; partly, perhaps, from the original entwining of it with his own faculties, thoughts, feelings, history, being. Well, he looks with affectionate admiration upon the Scottish, with affectionate admiration on the English Church-old affection agreeing with new affection; and I can imagine in him as much generosity required to love his own Church, the Presbyterian, as yours, the Episcopalian; and that, Latitudinarian as he may be called, he loves them both. The ground of the Scottish Form is the overbearing consciousness that religion is immediately between man and his MAKER. He that worships in spirit and in truth cannot endure, cannot imagine, that any thing but his own sin shall stand betwixt him and GOD. Intervening saints, images and elaborate rituals, the contrivance of human wit, these the fire of the Spirit has consumed, and consumes. The Scottish service comprehends Prayer, Praise, Doctrine; all three necessary verbal acts among Christians met, but each in utmost simplicity. That simplicity I have felt to be most affecting. The Praise, which unites the voices of the congregation, must be written. The Prayer, which is the burning toward GoD of the soul of the Shepherd upon the behalf of the Flock, and upon his own, must be unwritten, unpremeditated; else it is not prayer. Can the heart ever want fitting words? The Teaching must be to the utmost, forethought, at some time or at another, as to the Matter. The Teacher must have secured his intelligence of the Matter ere he opens his mouth. But the Form, which is of expediency only, he may very loosely have considered. That is the Theory. It presumes that capable men, full of zeal and sincerity and love-fervent servants and careful shepherds-have been chosen, under higher guidance. It supposes the holy fire of the new-born Reformation, of the newly-regenerated Church, to continue undamped, inextinguishable.'

It is a pleasant circumstance to find one so evidently disposed to elevate the Presbyterianism of Scotland over the religion of the Church-of-England, of sufficiently

catholic and noble a spirit to render this deserved tribute to the merits of the religion and service of the latter church:

'I TREMBLE to speak of your Ritual; for it appears to me as bearing on its front an excellence which might be found incompatible with religious truth and sincerity. The Liturgy looks to be that which the old Churches are-the Work of a Fine Art. A poetical sensibility, a wakeful, just, delicate, simple Taste, seems to have ruled over the composition of each prayer, and the ordering of the whole Service. The whole composition of the Service is copious and various. Human Supplication, the lifting up of the hands of the creature, knowing his own weakness, dependence, lapses, and liability to slip, man's own part, dictated by his own experience of himself, is the basis. Readings from the Old and New Volume of the Written Word are ingrafted, as if GOD audibly spoke in His own House; the Authoritative added to the Supplicatory. The hymns of the sweet Singer of ISRAEL, in literal translation, adopted as a holier inspired language of the heart. Throughout, the People divide the service with the Minister. They have in it their own personal function. The Homily, which, one might say, interprets between Sunday and the Week, fixes the holiness of the Day in precepts, doctrines, reflections, which may be carried home to guide and nourish. The Ritual breathes a divine calm. You think of the people walking through ripening fields on a mild day to their church-door. It is the work of a nation sitting in peace, possessing their land. It is the work of a wealthy nation, that, by dedicating a part of its wealth, consecrates the remainder; that acknowledges the Fountain from which all flows. The prayers are devout, humble, fervent. They are not impassioned. A wonderful temperance and sobriety of discretion, that which in worldly things would be called good sense, prevails in them; but you must name it better in things spiritual. The framers evidently bore in mind the continual consciousness of writing for ALL. That is the guiding, tempering, calming spirit that keeps in the Whole one tone; that and the hallowing, chastening awe which subdues vehemence, even in the asking for the Infinite, by those who have nothing but that which they earnestly ask, and who know that unless they ask infinitely they ask nothing. In every word, the whole congregation, the whole nation prays; not the Individual Minister; the officiating Divine Functionary, not the Man. Nor must it be forgotten that the received Version and the Book of Common Prayer (observe the word COMMON, expressing exactly what I affirm,) are beautiful by the words; that there is no other such English; simple, touching, apt, venerable; hued as the thoughts are; musical; the most English English that is known; of a Hebraic strength and antiquity, yet lucid and gracious, as if of and for to-day.'

'Something too much of this,' perhaps; seeing that, in justice to our readers, we are bound, as a general thing, to give polemics a 'wide berth.' But we don't often trespass in this kind, do we? In the second number, that for July, CHRISTOPHER has drawn a capital picture of a sulky boy; a bit of autobiography that is well worth quoting:

'I HEREBY authorize the Boys of this Empire to have what tempers they choose, with one sole exception-THE SULKY. Once, and once only, during one of the longest and best-spent lives on record, was I in the mood proscribed; and it endured most part of a whole day. The anniversary of that day I observe, in severest solitude, with a salutary horror. And it is my birth-day. Ask me not, my friends, to reveal the cause. Aloof from confession before man, we must keep to ourselves, as JOHN FOSTER says, a corner of our own souls. A black corner it is; and enter it with or without a light, you see, here and there, something dismal, hideous, shapeless, nameless; each lying in its own place on the floor. There lies the CAUSE. It was the morning of my ninth year. As I kept sitting high up-stairs by myself, one familiar face after another kept ever and anon looking in upon me, all with one expression. And one familiar voice after another, all with one tone, kept muttering at me: 'He's still in the sulks !' How I hated them with an intenser hatred, and chief them I before had loved best, at each opening and each shutting of that door! How I hated myself, as my blubbered face felt hotter and hotter; and I knew how ugly I must be, with my fixed fiery eyes! It was painful to sit on such a chair for hours in one posture, and to have so chained a child would have been great cruelty; but I was resolved to die rather than change it; and had I been told by any one under an angel to get up and go to play, I would have spat in his face. It was a lonesome attic, and I had the fear of ghosts; but not then; my superstitious fancy was quelled by my troubled heart. Had I not deserved to be allowed to go? Did they not all know that all my happiness in this life depended on my being allowed to go? Could any one of them give a reason for not allowing me to go? What right had they to say that if I did go I should never be able to find my way, by myself, back? What right had they to say that ROUNDY was a blackguard, and that he would lead me to the gallows? Never before, in all the world, had a good boy been used so on his birth-day. They pretend to be sorry when I am sick; and when I say my prayers, they say theirs too; but I am sicker now, and they are not sorry, but angry; there's no use in prayers, and I won't read one verse in the Bible this night, should my aunt go down on her knees!' And in the midst of such unworded soliloquies did the young blasphemer fall asleep.

'I know not how long I slept; but on awaking, I saw an angel with a most beautiful face and most beautiful hair-a little young angel-about the same size as myself, sitting on a stool by my feet. 'Are you quite well now, CHRISTOPHER? Let us go to the meadows and gather flowers.' Shame, sorrow, remorse, contrition, came to me with those innocent words; we wept together, and I was comforted. I have been sinful!' 'But you are forgiven l' Down all the stairs hand in hand we glided, and there was no longer anger in any eyes; the

whole house was happy. All voices were kinder, if that were possible, than they had been when I rose in the morning, a Boy in his Ninth Year. Parental hands smoothed my hair, parental lips kissed it, and parental greetings, only a little more cheerful than prayers, restored me to the Love I had never lost, and which I felt now had animated that brief and just displeasure. Never has Christopher been in the sulks since that day. Beyond doubt I was that day possessed with a devil; and an angel it was, though human, that drove him out.'

Liberal as have been our extracts already, we cannot resist the inclination to quote the following eloquent remarks upon the evidences of GoD in nature :

'WE look upon Planets and Suns, and see Intelligence ruling them; on Seasons that succeed each other, and we apprehend Design; on plant and animal fitted to its place in the world, and furnished with its due means of existence, and repeated forever in its kind, and we admire Wisdom. Oh, Atheist or Skeptic! what a difference to Us if the marvellous Laws are here without a Lawgiver; if Design be here without a Designer; all the Order that wisdom could mean and effect, and not the Wisdom; if Chance, or Necessity, or Fate reigns here, and not Mind; if this Universe is matter of Astonishment merely, and not of adoration! Oh, my friends! if this winged and swift life be all our life, what a mournful taste have we had of possible happiness! We have, as it were, from some dark and cold edge of a bright world, Just looked in and been plucked away again! Have we come to experience pleasure by fits and glimpses, but intertwined with pain, burdensome labor, with weariness, and with indifference? Have we come to try the solace and joy of a warm, fearless, and confiding affection, to be then chilled or blighted by bitterness, by separation, by change of heart, or by the dread sunderer of loves, Death? Have we found the gladness and the strength of knowledge, when some rays of truth have flashed in upon our souls, in the midst of error and uncertainty, or amidst continuous, necessitated, uninstructive avocations of the Understanding-and is that all? Have we felt in fortunate hour the charm of the Beautiful, that invests as with a mantle this visible Creation, or have we found ourselves lifted above the earth by sudden apprehension of sublimity? Have we had the consciousness of such feelings, which have seemed to us as if they might themselves make up a life-almost an angel's life; and were they instant come and instant gone?' Have we known the consolation of DOING RIGHT, in the midst of much that we have done wrong? and was that also a coruscation of a transient sunshine? Have we lifted up our thoughts to see HIM who is Love, and Light, and Truth, and Bliss, to be in the next instant plunged into the darkness of annihilation? Have all these things been but flowers that we have pulled by the side of a hard and tedious way, and that, after gladdening us for a brief season with hue and odor, wither in our hands, and are like ourselves-nothing!" With these solemn thoughts pressed home upon the minds of his hearers, we leave Christopher under Canvass' until some future occasion.

'REVELATIONS ON CHOLERA, OR ITS CAUSES AND CURE,' is the title of a small volume by the eminent Dr. DICKSON, of London, edited by WILLIAM TURNER, M. D., ExHealth-Commissioner of New-York. It is a calm, sensible, well-reasoned pamphlet, and contains, among other valuable matters, these noteworthy remarks, by the American editor, on the effects of fear in disease:

'ALL medicines and remedial appliances are divided into those which aid the heart in propelling the blood onward, and those which retard its action; and all the various means and remedies which so perplex and vex the public mind as cures for the cholera, infinite as is their number, have just this one single object in view, namely, to assist the heart in throwing the blood into the arteries. This accomplished, by whatever means, the patient is considered safe. Action and reäction in the body form the great battle of life; and all the skill of the best phy. sician in the world hath this extent, no more:' the adjustment, if possible, of the equilibrium between those antagonistic powers in the human body which now force the blood into the arteries, now retain it in the veins. The battle may be compared with the conflicts of political parties in a single state, or between nations, ever controlled and regulated by the 'Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.' It is easy to see from this, how the continuous action of fear or panic, by retarding for a length of time the pulsation of the heart, opens the door for the invasion of diseases in general, and of epidemics in particular. An apt eastern apologue represents the cholera, on leaving a certain city, as being accused of having killed thirty thousand of the inhabitants. 'No,' was the answer; I killed but three thousand; Fear killed the rest!' One of the most effectual means of restoring warmth to the body by external applications, is by the use of some half-a-dozen pieces of quick-lime, the size of a hen's-egg, wrapped in as many coverings of flannel or other woollen stuff, which have been moistened and wrung out almost dry. The lime slakes under these circumstances, and throws out an intense heat, accompanied with vapor, which restores perspiration, as I have found, in an admirable manner. These heaters, when the patient is cold, may be deposited under the bed-clothes, at the feet, the sides, the arm-pits, to the stomach, and between the thighs.'

The 'Revelations' are published by H. LONG AND BROTHER, Number 43, Ann-street.

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GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. -If any of our readers should complain, as we admit they might, with good reason, that our own departments of the present number are not over-well sustained, we would ask them to consider our A semi-residence in town and country; weather for the most part oppressively hot and sultry; enervating influences, born of the airs which carry pestilence upon their wings; the daily cares of daily life, not to speak of other duties, and especially of those corrective literary labors not acknowledged, not congenial, and not connected with our own particular executive rôle; these, let us hope, will stand in some rank of excuse' in the minds of our readers. PUTNAM, pretty precise, pains-taking, punctual and popular publisher, has issued a very neat volume, entitled 'A Lift for the Lazy.' It is the very clever work of one whom our readers are not unacquainted with; a gentleman who could shake the superflux' of his information and humor to any six of our modern book-ling' makers, and set them up as authors, without being at all aware that he had spared any thing from the prolific source of their 'inspiration.' The book is printed in a novel style, and comprises comprehensive and original materials for Table Talk; such as literary anecdotes and statistics, origin of words, philological curiosities, quaint scraps from old authors, strange customs and old sayings in short, as a common-place book of an extensive reader and shrewd observer, it is a most acceptable 'lift' for those who are too lazy or too busy to read whole libraries for themselves.' We need do no more, to recommend the volume to the reader, than to quote from its pages a few marked passages. Let us begin with the picture of a 'Merchant-Prince Snob,' the counterpart of which many a metropolitan will suddenly call to mind as he peruses the sketch:

'WITH a palace for a residence, he occupies but the basement, the parlors being devoted to the four-times-a-year reception of dinner or ball-guests, unless a domestic funeral should put in its claim; with carriages and horses in plenty, yet riding in an omnibus, the fare of which, in the form of a sixpenny-piece, he generally pulls from his mouth, where he deposited it on entering the vehicle, that he might have it handy;' he pares and cleans his nails with a sharppointed pen-knife during the ride. With a library containing at least a dictionary, he writes to his saddler for a sett of harness, (but all snobs spell 'set' with a double t,) and he talks to his tailor about 'pants.' He stops at the Wall-street auction-room in company with another of the same species, and gazes through his hollowed hand at an undoubted original,' in the shape of a fourth-rate copy of a very bad master, and talks over his shoulder of tone' and 'fore-shortening' to his fellow, who pokes the ferule of his cane against the stomach of one of the figures in a brick-red cloak, and says it stands out.' He frequents wine-sales, and tastes every sample of Teneriffe madeira and Honduras-port, until he feels fine;' then he buys a dozen of stuff that would be poison to any but his own set. He says he thinks he has read all of Scorr's novels. When he hears, and haply comprehends, a witty remark, he approbates by saying that it is 'not so bad.' His classical knowledge extends to the calling of money 'rocks;' for indeed rupees would have so signified with the Romans. His historical facts are much confined to Queen ANNE farthings, of which, he states, there are but two, and the guillotine, by which, he tells you, the inventor was the first to perish. He carries his portmanteau from the steam-boat, through Broadway, (pushing aside the hungry boy who applies for the office,) that people may see he is not proud; contriving, however, to hold it in a very awkward manner, to indicate that he has not been accustomed to such work; nor has he, for his father was a journeyman bricklayer, and he himself commenced by selling old junk. He sometimes suffers the hair to grow on his upper lip, but is discouraged on overhearing a person say he looks like a billiard-marker. He tries on your glove, and considers it no stretch of familiarity. He reads the newspaper silently, yet moving his lips, and pours vinegar on his oysters. When he goes to the country for a week in the month of August, he assumes the negligé dress, which looks sufficiently well on a thorough-bred, but knocks him back at once into the bricklayer's son, assisting him to an air of rather more dissipation perhaps than would be likely to insure him an eligible situation as hodsman. His salutation is, Sir, your most.' He has a great fund of humor in the barber's shop, and runs' the boy while he is putting much grease on his hair. He compares fineness of fabric with a brother snob, who, like himself, has just mounted a new pair of pants.' He quotes, and says he is but a looker-on in Venice. To sum up, his constant aim is to cut a figure,' which indeed he does: he is a vulgar fraction.'

We hope we have few 'men-milliners' in this country, who retail what should only 12

VOL. XXXIV.

be chosen through the taste, and sold under the direction, of women: if we have, we commend to them the following:

'MILLINER.This term, supposed to be derived from Milan, is defined by JOHNSON as 'a seller of ribands and dresses for women.' There are men milliners in England, as well as in the United States, and the adoption of such a trade by the male sex has been strongly and justly censured. SOUTHEY says: I look upon a man-milliner not only as one of the most unworthy members of society, but as one of the most injurious. When I hear one of those personsTM haranguing upon the merits of muslin, or the becoming color of a riband, anger will mingle itself with the feeling of contempt; for the employment that degrades this man might have preserved a woman from prostitution.''

A single distinctive anecdote must close our present reference to this matter-full book; but we counsel the reader to obtain more of the same sort' from the source whence the foregoing were taken:

TIME WORKS WONDERS.'- NORTHCOTE, in one of his 'Conversations,' to illustrate the credulity of mankind in general, and the gullibility of the Londoners in particular, related to HAZLITT an anecdote of a Sir GEORGE B. , who, when a young man, put an advertisement in the newspapers to say that a Mynheer -, lately arrived from Holland, had found out a method of taking a likeness much superior to any other, by the person's looking into a mirror, and having the glass heated so as to bake the impression! He stated this wonderful artist as living at a perfumer's shop in Bond-street, opposite the hotel where he lodged, and amused himself the next day by watching the numbers of people who flocked to have their likenesses taken in this surprising manner. DAGUERRE has spoiled the fun of the practical joke, and with it the point of NORTHCOTE's illustration.'

OUR young friend Bayard Taylor, author of Views Afoot,' has gone to the gold regions of California, as a correspondent of The Tribune' daily journal. His letters will be looked for with interest and perused with avidity. The following sweet and saponaceous sonnets were interchanged between our correspondent Mr. STODDARD and Mr. TAYLOR previous to his departure. To the latter 'thus' the former:

FAREWELL awhile, my friend, so lief and dear!
Stern duty bids us part; our paths diverge :
Thou must be borne o'er ocean's stormy surge,
To El Dorado; I must linger here:

A classic pilgrim, thou wilt range its meads,
And climb its mountain summits, stark and cold,
Bathe in its springs, bestride its tameless steeds,
And come to us again with hoards of gold.

Nor this alone: thy fiery heart will be

In Fancy's El Dorado, journeying on,

Climbing Parnassian summits wild and vast,

Bathing in haunted springs of Helicon,

Mounting APOLLO's coursers, and at last

Thou wilt return with mines of golden poesy.

Whereto, with equal unction, thus then' the Chevalier BAYARD:

WE part our paths awhile, my more than friend;

My brother in the lonely world of Thought:

Thou, by the solemn lips of Poesy taught,

Thy steps through many a fairy realm shall wend,
Where brightest fountains dash their diamond beads
On beds of amaranth, and thy mounting star

Tops the imperial hills that rise afar;

I with the desert and its tameless steeds

Shall mated be; shall start the eagle's flight

On stormy crags, and when the star-lamps shine,

Sleep in the cradle of the chanting pine;

Yet the same goal is ever in our sight,

And we shall meet at last, though parted long,

Still climbing, side by side, the sacred peak of song.

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SIR WALTER SCOTT, who in Sir PIERCIE SHAFTON' has made Euphuism and Euphuists immortal, had, no doubt, previous to creating that graphic portrait, consulted a quaint volume by LILIE, an author of that period, entitled ' Euphues, his