stand side by side with my Washington and his heroes, or my Longfellow and his colleagues. These men, oppressed, overlorded at home, come here unprepared to bear even the lordship of popular law. They must be taught that it exists, and that they must respect it, and ply unreservedly before it. Such are not the immigrants who go to the agricultural districts, or to the little farms their savings may purchase, where fair crops shall repay their industry, and where Heaven's blessing shall rest upon their homesteads. But those of whom we speak are the idle, vicious, and worthless, who prefer to remain in large cities because there, with cunning, labor may be dispensed with; because they find an easy carelessness in alms-givings, quick forgetfulness of ingratitude, heedlessness of beggars' faces, and so intense a habit of occupation, on the part of the respectable, that the worthless and the vagabond alone have leisure to wander throughout the whole city, and lazily to gather alms more than sufficient for their sustenance. Besides the difficulties presented by this class of people, there are also those presented by the honorable and worthy emigrants from Ireland, Germany, etc., who, whatsoever may be their feelings towards this country, can not so intimately learn the habits of this people; nor, with their natural love for their fatherlands, be so undividedly loyal as is here required of them. We have mentioned the old Dutch and the English, a very, very few of whom remain in the city, having been al most blotted out by the rush of good and bad immigration, and by the immense over-running of the city by the people of the Eastern States. Consider, then, that New-York is Dutch, English, powerfully Yankee, Irish, and German, considerably Scotch, French, Italian, and Spanish; consider also that each of these nationalities has, from birth and education, its own peculiar ideas of municipal government; would like to see its idea carried out; is uproariously joyful when it is carried out, and uproariously angry when it is not. With this mixture of nationalities, predispositions, hopes, fears and desires, intentions and efforts at the ballot-box, existing to a ten-fold greater degree than as here exhibited, tell us, O our friends! whether it be a hard or an easy thing to govern New-York? The government of New-York possesses, as New-Amsterdam did two centuries ago, a mayor, aldermen, and sheriff. Only in the good old Dutch times, these worthies smoked and slept away their terms of office, leaving the Governor and Captain-General of New-Netherlands to do all their duty. A gradual unwillingness to be so patient has appeared in our day, and Mayor and Commonalty are absolutely expected to do something. But under the accumulation of time and legal enactments, the "heat and burden" of all the executive functions fall upon the shoulders of the Mayor. If a fight occurs in the street, the Mayor is expected to quell it. If the side-walks are encumbered by garbage or nuisances, he has to direct their removal. If a policeman is to be tried, he has to preside. But this is only a moiety of his duties. By the anomalous character of the existing charter, the Mayor of NewYork is the highest criminal magistrate known to the law. He can sit as Judge in the Oyer and Terminer and in the petty sessions; and although the State Legislature has frittered away some of the municipal powers, it has left intact all the magisterial powers that were held and exercised, when the office of Recorder and Mayor were one. But, independently of this, he has legislative functions to perform. He is President of the Board of Supervisors and of the Sinking Fund Commissioners -is charged with the custody of the real estate and liabilities of the city is President of the Board of Health and of the Health Commissioners-is ex-officio member of the Commissioners of Emigration-of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, the Sailors' Snug Harbor, the Asylum for the Reclamation of Juvenile Delinquents-of the Seamen's Retreat, and the Astor Library. One would think that the weight of these responsibilities is quite enough to "crush out" the energies of a regiment of mayors; but the requirements of the office do not stop here. The Mayor is charged with the regulation of the stage lines, hacks, and carts; the licensing of junk-shops, pawnbrokers, auctioneers, second-hand furniture dealers, emigrant runners, and boarding-house keepers. He is expected to supervise the condition of the streets-to guard the public healthto look after the regulation and grading of the avenues, the Croton Aqueduct Department, the sewerage of the city, wharves and piers, side-walks and paving, the collection of the city revenue, the condition of the public parks and buildings; and to have an eye to the system of public education. Of course, he is, at the same time, expected to find leisure to countersign every check which is drawn upon the City Trea sury. Such, in brief, are the duties of the chief municipal magistrate of New-York-duties ten times more onerous than those of the President and all his heads of departments. Such, in brief, are the obligations which devolve upon the executive officer of a municipal government in the United States; and the impartial reader must admit that he who is competent to such a task is competent for any other the people may ask at his hands. OUR TREE OF LIBERTY. AMID Columbia's forests fair All that noble brotherhood Their souls to God have given. Keep its foliage ever bright; Darkened by the birds of night. Long the struggle-hard the toil- Ever hallowed be the soil Which such glorious fruit doth bear. Noble spirits with their blood Have enriched each valley-bed Poured it in a copious flood- By their sufferings and death, R. D. P. LITERARY NOTICES. With a portrait, and fac-simile The Life and Choice Writings of George Lippard. of a portion of a letter written during his illness. THIS book, however well intentioned, is a very indifferent memorial to Lippard. It will not commend itself to the library, and will only serve the purposes of a transitory half-hour. It is very little, if any thing more than a kind of review article with disjointed extracts from his writings-episodes, to be sure, of much power, and evincing great poetic prose capacity, much passionate denunciation of wrong, much philosophical meditation on right; but still there is a feeling of dissatisfaction predominant after you have closed the book. This feeling is not with the subject, but the matter and manner of the work. It is floridly, though at some points very effectively, and at all points good-naturedly and appreciatively written. When such a book was on the tapis, why did not his friends in Philadelphia and New-York contribute the necessary sketches of various points of his life passed in their society, as Margaret Fuller's friends did, and some one edit and weave them into a judicious and sterling biography? Thus a gratifying testimonial to his literary and social hours would have been raised worthy alike his friends and the subject. It was announced some time since that Mr. Chauncey Burr would publish the life and letters of the deceased romancist, and we are disappointed that this disjointed series of papers is given us instead. Augustus Duganne, John Savage, Ross Wallace, R. H. Stoddard, and others could fill pleasant spaces in the NewYork story of his literary labors and social conversations. It might yet be done. Where is Mr. Burr's volume ? Had George Lippard been born in Germany, he would be talked of as a Hoffmann or Wieland for the wierd and metaphysical character of some of his romances. In addition to those idiosyncracies, he had another, to which his style, plots, and dramatis persona were but the tools; and that was his patriotism. The writer of the book before us says truly: "No man living has done more to vindicate the glory of our early statesmen and soldiers, and awake a spirit of patriotism in the popular heart. Many men have stirred up a temporary excitement more tempestuous, perhaps, than Lippard ever did. He worked silently. He was in heart and soul an author. * * * Lippard wrote and spoke because his deep, earnest soul was in his work. He adored his country. He hated, passionately hated, whomsoever raised his parricidal hand against it." It is impossible in this notice to sketch the life of that remarkable man; his youthful dreams and startling struggles; his early journalistic career on the Philadelphia Daily Spirit of the Times, under I. S. Du Solle's editorship; his wit, sarcasm, and readiness there; his plunge into authorship, and the wonderful success of his books. We can not dwell upon those points, and can barely indicate the domestic misfortunes in the death of those dear to him, his continued struggles, amiability, fearlessness, and devotion to the cause of labor and the poor, until, wrecked in body, he drifted into the next world in February, 1854. When, in his last illness, two “spiritualists" called on him, one of them brought a bottle of medicine, which she said had been presented by the spirit for him. Lippard, pointing to a small bust of Christ on the mantel-piece, said: "That's the Spirit I believe in." This was thoroughly characteristic of the life and the labors of the man. The reader who is not acquainted with Lippard's life will find much to interest him in this book, which, if it scarcely does justice to Lippard, will not do him injustice, save in the wretched wood-cut prefixed to it. Olie; or, the Old West Room. By L. M. M. New-York: Mason Brothers, 23 Park Row. 525 pp. WE are in unhappy ignorance of the authorship of the pleasant volume before us; we are nevertheless confident that "Olie" must add to the estimation in which he or she is held by the public. The writer who can lure a few of his fellow-mortals from the bustle and the strife, and the wear and tear of restless existence; who can plant them in his own quiet arm-chair, and think a little for them so easily and so cosily that they shall fancy his thoughts to be their own soliloquies; who can carry them off from the engrossing present to the "old farmhouse" and the "sky-parlor," carrying them back meanwhile to the fullness of youth, or forward to the repose of age; who can peel off, here and there, the rind that grows ever thickening over the human heart; the writer who can do this -L. M. M. does it-shall be welcomed to a place in our regards, and cordially recommended to our readers' bookshelves. The Papal Conspiracy Exposed, and Protestantism Defended in the Light of History, Reason, and Scripture. New-York: M. W. Dodd. IN the book before us, Mr. Beecher arraigns the Papacy as a conspiracy against God and the most precious interests of man. He summons her before the enlightened public of America. He calls on history to testify; and every sentence on the silent lips of her history, according to this writer, is eloquent of her wrongs. He calls on reason; and reason, he affirms, condemns her. He calls on Scripture; and Scripture, according to Mr. Beecher, anathematizes her. The book is just what its title implies. It aims to show that the Papacy has been, and is at this hour, the most bitter, the most subtle, merciless, and unrelenting foe, Argus-eyed and Briarian-armed-ever struggling against the advancement of the race. It claims that it is a virus, which is gradually permeating the veins of our social system; quiet, that its progress may be the more certain; and soothing only that it may the more effectually destroy. It destroys the true foundation of virtue, in |