brellas, band-boxes, and carpet-bags, to some such great hotel as the Irving House. Here the newlycome countryman's wonder is complete; he proposes to register his name in the bar-room; and being dispossessed of this intent, he indulges in an immense degree of wonder at the marvelous aptitude of the brisk young gentleman with a pen behind his ear, who assigns him rooms, listens to two bells, and gives three distinct orders in a breath.

THE national metropolis, the papers tell us, is thriving under the auspices of the new administra tion: the great city skeleton is taking on year by year a little of that fullness of development, which one day or other, will make the place gigantic. The Capitol is to be pushed forward under the auspices of the old architect, Mr. Walters; and the tower, commemorative of Washington, is rising with its motley compound of material. The grounds, too, are undergoing that process of education, which was planned by Mr. Downing; and which is to give us, in one city at least, some approach to the beauty of the Jardin Anglais.

The poor Ailanthus-tree, against which Mr. Down

The poor girls above (who has not seen such) are bewildered with our gilded parlors; they fancy the sister country ladies (now bedizened at the hands of some city Lawson) the undoubted leaders of ton; and they fairly shiver at the thought of the brown and white barèges, which make up their stock of holidaying had taken a freak of dislike, has we observe, attire. Then, from the window-such a bustle-such a palace of marble-such equipages—“Oh, la, suz !" But, unfortunately, the world of railroads, and the thickening profits of the country (for California gold is now showing its count on beef and grain) are dispelling fast these old-time characteristics. New York, and New York modes and glories are betalked under the shadow of the granite hills; and our President's country cousins are, we venture, as well posted at Stewart's and Wallack's, as they are in Tammany Hall'

Even our host of the Mountain House itself (for we stole a visit there not a year back) shocked us with his talk of "avenues" and Wall-street; and spoke with a ludicrous and painful familiarity of the Sixth-avenue Railroad, and the Canal-street station. Only one spot has been reached by us, in the course of our rural haunts for the last ten years, where New York seemed indeed distant, and where the townsfolk talked with a measurable and commendable veneration of that far away city, where the churches were higher than a whaler's mainmast; and where a great and august body of aldermen sat in council, and labored honestly (beautiful naweté), day after day, for the good of the commonwealth! It is needless to say that they were living in comparative ignorance.

The spot alluded to is Block Island. We commend it warmly to the retiring aldermen as a summer resort. We think they would there be treated with that attention and respect, which every man, however depraved may be his real character, is naturally supposed to desire.

been outlawed by Congress. In extensive grounds,
subject to nice cultivation, the outlawing may be
advisable; but we hope that its gaunt, weird limbs
may lift their pleading fingers still, in our cities.
For Heaven's sake, and for Nature's sake, let us
not carry our fashionable likes and dislikes into the
forest; as we carry them to the Opera, and the Lec-
ture Room, and - every where else! Let us not
turn our silver poplars, or our maples, or elms, or
any thing that has thus far escaped, into Kossuths,
and Jenny Linds, and Eleazer Williamses
do not let us lionize trees, as we do men and wo-
men; but suffer them to grow up quietly, and inno-
cently, in God's own sunshine away from dinner
parties, and newspaper puffs, and fétes champêtres!

Pray,

PARIS has seen a winter of gayety: not only the Emperor's marriage, and the talk of the new and crowning beauty of the court, has made gay the chat; but the carnival has been more brilliant than for years before. The placards of balls and theatres have assumed an English guise; and British and American adventurers have thronged the Saturday evening gatherings of the Salle de l'Opéra. Among other dainty attractions of the winter has been a magnificent ball given for the benefit of the poorer members of the dramatic corps: all the actresses of the capital, from the Opera Royal, to the ninepenny boards of Montmartre, were among the lady patronesses; and the adventures, and contretemps, and disappointments of the evening, give rich food for the inventive Paris journalists. The ease and plı. ancy, with which such trifles are worked over by by French paragraphists into the roundness of tragic or comic episodes, is wonderful. We can not but regret that our paragraphists of the daily papers should not possess the aptitude for making a pleasant joke of our city misfortunes. We commend the study to their care.

point to all manner of paragraphs.

THIS allusion brings us back pleasantly to a topic which has been alluded to, during the month of March, in several city papers-we mean dirty streets. We have observed quite a number of warm articles upon the subject-nearly as warm as those upon the Henry Clay catastrophe, or that of the Reindeer. The new Empress, in virtue of her position, is reThey have dropped off in piquancy, and in rhetor-ceiving all manner of gifts, and is serving as the ical display, after much the same fashion. We have a great respect for the press, and (spare our blushes) for editors. But we do heartily wish their indignation were longer lived, or more effective. Every year, to judge by the piquant paragraphs about dust, and mud, and rowdyism, we anticipate a delightful and salubrious change of policy. Every year we count upon the new Council as the offspring of a better feeling, and of an enlarged humanity. Every year we anticipate a delicious succession of clean shirt collars and passable side-walks. But, every year the same hum-drum mummery of old men droning at their hoes, mocks us in the street; every year adds to the reputation of the city foulness, and every year, our new cousins of the Council become "An offense to all sound society, And a stench in the nose of piety."

The spring has opened with gorgeous greenness upon the terraces of the Tuileries, and upon the parterres of St. Cloud. The flowers before the windows of the palace are in richest blossom; and every thing bespeaks a continued season of bloom. In contrast with this pleasant story of the blooming things in the Paris gardens, how ridiculous is our metropolitan show of trees and of flowers! Not an azalia, or a laurel, or a rhododendron is growing in all the city, under our city protection: the very plants which make the crowning glory of St. James and of the Luxembourg-American in origin, and of American luxuriance-are absolutely unknown to the frequenters of our squares and parks. Let the doubter look only for illustration at that skirting circlet of shabby bushes which surrounds the mag

nificent fountain of the Park! Was there ever a scurvier grouping of shabbier foliage, so shabbily tended? Consumptive pines with their shortened lives all exuded in nodules of resin;-a tawny English yew, scarce two feet high, sighing at the brim of the empty basin;-half-dead arbor-vitæs, shaking like diseased paralytics;-scrubby small shrubs struggling painfully between the dusty air, and the periodic dampness of our great fountain! Are the projectors, and tenders of these things to be reached by ridicule? Or are their sensibilities, and their tastes as dead out of them, as their dying trees? May we not hope that the step which has been taken in the direction of a scientific arboriculture, by the authorities at Washington, shall by-and-by have its emulators and patrons here?

To return to Paris: the papers tell us of the death of Madame Raspail, the wife of the eminent state prisoner. She has been little known, but the poor husband has lived a strange and troubled life. With high merit as a chemist, his ardent sympathies have led him into almost every mine of revolt which has been sprung in France, since the days of Charles the Tenth.

has so long thrown discredit upon our administrative action. So far from any approach toward moderation, each new executive is beset with accumulated difficulties; nor can any diminution of the annoyance be hoped for, until a radical change is effected in our system;-such change as would secure to competent and deserving officers permanent place. Economy, as well as justice, would dictate such plan; and we shall continue to hope for the advent of such reform as unremittingly as we hope for clean metropolitan streets, or honest members of Council, or a New York Park, or any other most improbable good.

It would be curious to compute the amount of time and temper which has been sacrificed by dis. appointed aspirants after official place. It would surely largely outweigh all the gratifications and all the emoluments which the successful enjoy. The atmosphere of Washington is not favorable to a modest bearing; and we know of no quarter of the world where retiring modesty will so soon grow brazen, or girlish bashfulness so soon slight the embarrassments of the saloon, as our noisy capital. A man has need there to wear his claims upon his tongue, and a lady to wear her modesty-in private. Presumption goes further, in a world of clamor, than any virtue of quietude; and delicacy of character is as much lost at our seat of government as it is among our City Fathers.

Suffering a long imprisonment for treason to the government of Louis Philippe, he gained liberty under the Republic of 1848, only to fall victim again to the unfortunate Polish revolt of the succeeding summer. His look (as we remember him) is noble; his hair white and flowing; his eloquence real and impassioned; and his sympathy for the poor un feigned and enthusiastic. With every inducement to maintain quiet, in the hope of most honorable maintenance, and high reputation in his profession, he has yet leaped into that tide of revolution which has borne him away from all the quiet shores of home-life, and drifted him cruelly against hard prison walls-from whose windows he now sees his wife, the model of maternal love and of conjugal devotion (as he says with thrilling plaintiveness) borne to her tomb, with thousands of people mourn-fice of Consul; and the old routine of shipments and

ers.

THE Bourbon matter, about which we dropped a hint a month ago, has created some speculations in Paris; and has been met, accidentally, but opportunely, by a true history of the lost Dauphin. Still, however, our valorous friend, Mr. Hanson, keeps by the old story of the genuine character of his royal friend and poor Eleazer remains a martyr to the American curiosity and the American paragraphists. Whatever may be the truth of the matter, we consider it a rare bit of misfortune, that the old gentleman could not have ended his life in his quiet Indian pulpit; and gone down to his grave with the simple epitaph of having done, in the regions of his Indian adoption, a good honest man's work!

Dreams of royalty can hardly quicken his blood now with any hopefulness: and his royally anxious friends will, with all their animated zeal, only thrust night-mare visions upon the old gentleman's brain, and perplex the serenity of his age, with the worst canker of life.

Has Mr. Brady secured his portrait for the National Daguerreotype Gallery? We have, thus far, remarked no unusual press of carriages at his door.

But while we talk thus recreantly of the national metropolis and its officials, let us record, with worshipful regard, those crumbs of favor which have been thrown out to members of the literary craft. It is pleasant to observe that some opposition journals have recognized the propriety of Mr. Hawthorne's appointment to a lucrative post; and have not condemned the friendly feeling which has made Mr. Pierce the worthy patron of a worthy friend.

The strong common sense which belongs to Mr. Hawthorne's character, will undoubtedly fit him for any unexpected duties which may fall upon his of

certificate-making goes on, under the hands of the old clerks, with the regularity of a parish clock. We can not doubt that the new incumbent will, during his consular period, make such forays int the border country of Lancashire, and mouldy Cheshire, and mountainous Wales, as will reveal themselves, by-and-by, glowingly upon the next duodecimo pages of Ticknor and Fields.

Mr. Fay, too, another denizen of the world of letters, has received the nomination to the post of resident Minister in Switzerland. He has served a long apprenticeship at diplomacy; and the tongue of political envy is silent, in view of the well-earned reward for his labors. Why are not these appointments, and such as these, both better and more graceful returns from a grateful people, than the British pensions from the Government? And while our diplomacy is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact dealing of man with man, liable at any moment to be revised and corrected by an inquisitive Congress, why should not scholarly attainments be permitted to adorn its office; and the country find honor in the name and the repute of its ministers ?

We must confess that we regard very fondly these repeated recognitions of the truth (so long doubted) that the pursuit of letters does not of necessity drive WE ventured a word or two, a month or two out strong, practical sense from a man's mental orsince, upon the office-seekers of the new adminis-ganization, and that good business capacity may, tration. The result has fully justified our observations; and the crowd and earnestness of the seekers has awakened public opinion to the sad policy which

after all, co-exist with the exercise of high imaginative powers, and the habits of the pen.

Akin to this subject matter, we may not pass by

silently the new stir in relation to an International Copyright. And, however the question may be finally settled, we welcome the discussion, and the interest in the discussion, as so many tokens of the increased consideration which is given, both by people and by Government, to the making and the printing of books. Twenty odd millions of people in our commonwealth are furnishing a host of readers; and it behoves Government and people to consider wisely, what sort of reading is to be furnished, and what sort of pay the furnishers are to receive. It is not a little curious to observe in this connections, the varying and contradictory reports, which find their way into the divided journals, in respect of the emoluments of authors. One newspaper gravely assures us, that American writers are a motley company of poor starving characters, grateful for the smallest crumbs of favor, living by hook and by crook, and dragging out a pitiful existence like the Scriptural Lazarus-at the tables of Mr. Publisher Dives!

Another, equally well informed, takes occasion to enumerate the beautiful country seats which have sprung into existence under the touch of industrious pens, and enumerates with a most excellent and worthy glow of feeling, the large estates which have been amassed at the hands of American writers.

finally taking their hand in just this chit-chat way, and saying, in a fatherly fashion-God bless you, dear Reader, and keep you safely for another month!

Editor's Drawer.

Ncountry," and on this, the first day thereof, they

OW is merry month of Maye" in the "old

are dancing around May-poles on many a soft and verdant sward, crowning "Queens of May" with garlands of flowers, and “making glad the air with the sound of the pipe and the tabor."

But May-day in Gotham! How different the scene! For, days and nights that are past-days fatigueful and nights restless-preparations have been made for the annual clearances. The air at night-fall has been murky with the smoke that hangs above the streets from ancient straw-beds, sepulchres of countless hordes of little vermin-people that till now had "possessed themselves in great contentment," in the enjoyment of sanguinary forage; and lo! to-day, in all the dusky thoroughfares, great and small, wide and narrow, short and long, move wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, litters, piled up and running over with chairs, bedsteads, bureaus, crockery, looking-glasses-an omnium-gatherum of every thing, in short, that would make up the intermingled compound that PUNCH once described as constituting chaos!

Between the two stories, we must confess that we are somewhat puzzled to get at the truth of the matter. We do not remember ever to have seen a bona fide statement of an author, over his own signature; He that has never "moved" in Gotham on the from which we infer that they are an exceedingly first of May, can not have the slightest conception cautious race; being ready (if the tide serves) to how much "personal property" he stands possessed live upon the credit of a large capital, and equally of! Things utterly forgotten "turn up" in so many ready to enlist sympathy for their neglected attain-out-of-the-way places; things, too, about which

ments.

quandaries arise, whether they shall be taken away or left behind; and things, above all, taken or left, that excite the same quandary in the house that you

is the double bother of moving ')-oh, who that has "moved" among the moving circles of New York on May-day, but has seen and understood all this?

Sir Bulwer Lytton is said to have remarked in the House of Commons, that under the existence of a Copyright law, he would have made some sixty thou-are going into as the one which you leave (and there sand pounds in this country; but it is very much easier (as every dealer in Erie knows) to say what one would have made, than to tell what one has made. It was, however, a pleasant fancy of the Baronet's; and, rich or poor, we could lay our hands on the heads of a great many American writers who would, we think, be rejoiced to entertain a prospect of even one-third less imaginative power!

We once knew a wag who, on the evening before the first of May, put up two "Number Eighteens" on two houses that were just alike, and that adjoined each other, in the same street. Two families were moving out, and two coming in; and, as he lived After all, twenty millions of reading people are opposite, in his own dwelling, the wicked joker sat making a market for books which the old world has at the front window and watched the inextricable never dreamed of. Good books are to be sold hence-"confusion worse confounded" that ensued when forth in the world's history by tens of thousands, as the two in-coming families piled their children and they once sold by hundreds. Take this magazine, furniture alternately into one another's houses; for instance, that your eye is resting on, rolled off looking occasionally at the number-then disputing from steam-engines, night and day (for the daylight-then putting one another's little "tow-heads" out is too short), until the issue has reached the once incredible number of one hundred and twenty thousand! And as they fall from the groaning press, gathered up, stitched, bound, packed, carted away by tens of hundreds, shipped on sea-going steamers by thousands more-filling whole express cars on every railway that stretches its iron lines across the country, and delivered, by tens of thousands, safely and promptly, upon the first day of the month, in a thousand towns, at distances a thousand miles asunder!

of each other's houses, pitching chairs and the like into the street; and finally, like two grimalkins, hanging by a string over a clothes-line, getting into a regular "catter-clawing!"

"Three removes," says "Poor Richard," in his old-time Almanac, "are as bad as a fire," and there are thousands this day in New York who can confirm the truth of the remark. And some day or other "moving," as an annual matter, will be found to be a custom more generally honored in the breach than in the observance.

WHAT are we coming to, in this enlightened era? Are we gradually turning into a nation of Spiritual Rappers, or believers in Spiritual Rappings? One

Is not this one of the miracles of the age? And for us-the ubiquitous Editor-lolling in our chair, is it not a pleasant contemplation, that we are feeling the pulse of so many patients? chatting with them showing them pictures-telling them the story of every country-cracking their sides with Punch-would think so, to hear of the hundreds of "spiritual giving laces and talmas to their daughters-cheering them with Chesney Wold-fighting all Napoleon's battles-bringing copper from Lake Superior, and

circles" that are forming, or have been formed, in different places, north, south, east, and west; of the distinguished men and "strong-minded women" who

are announcing their adhesion to all the alleged | rapping answers were satisfactory-to him; but not mysteries" of the delusion; and particularly to so to a keen-eyed, thin-visaged Yankee, who said: notice the fact that State Conventions of Rappers Look o' here! ask 'em to ask me something. and believers are called, to discuss the marvelous I should like to try 'em!' matters involved in this wonderful and supernatural 46 Ism."

A man in a sister city, "fond of amusement," and one who "would have his joke," explains the rap-itual manifestations!" ping phenomena in another way-one which he saw himself, and part of which he was.

Not quite so easily caught, however, was another friend of my acquaintance, who visited a 'circle' He was invited one evening to visit a "circle" at somewhere down-east,' not many weeks ago. The the house of a friend, who was himself a skeptic, usual formula, such as I have partly described, had but whose wife and two daughters had the firmest been gone through with, when the inquisitor' was belief in the existence and the extent of the spirit-placed in communication with the spirit-oracle. He ual manifestations.

"At length, the low hum of this general conversation gradually subsided; the persons who sat And in this way sundry other questions were silently around the table, began to look vaguely asked, all of which were answered with equal toward each other occasionally; and every now promptness. But when the operators' asked of and then a low sigh from some one of the invited the 'subject' whether his questions had been corguests, betokened the general desire that the spir-rectly answered, as the rapping replies were renits' should begin."

caustic, an article of commerce, is not derived from The silken monster, in a state of flabbiness, rolling