We unhesitatingly commend these remarks to the general attention of all who may hereafter be called into such a position. Too often the editor seems to imagine himself required to do duty as the showman. Seeming to consider the deceased whose works he has been empowered or takes it upon himself, to offer to the public, as some wild beast, he volunteers to dilate upon the marvellous habits and singular structure which are possessed by it, and disgusts the reader with his notes instead of increasing his attention or attracting his study. It is with no common degree of pleasure that we congratulate Mr. H. A. Washington on not having fallen into this error.

TO NAPOLEON: AFTER MARENGO.

He was a giant, cast in Titan mould,
A new Alcides sent by Him on high,
To cleanse the Augean den of Tyranny,

Through which a mighty stream of blood he rolled:
Tyrant and Anarch stood alike aghast,

As o'er their heads the fierce tornado passed—
The prostrate nations heard his voice, and broke
Their ancient fetters, smiting with their chains
The banded Kings, who on Marengo's plains,
Themselves were doomed to stoop beneath the yoke;
Immortal deed, the memory remains

A guiding law, which nothing can revoke;
Then Anarchy, its work of vengeance done,
Died in the grasp of great Napoleon!

ODE TO MY PIPE.

DEAR H: The accompanying lines were thrown off with the smoke from my "meerschaum," and no doubt will be as evanescent; the associations connected with the pipe are, however, not so transitory. It was the gift of your contributor, the late William North. The "Slave of the Lamp" could not, like him of the "Arabian Nights," call up at will the favors of fortune; and in a despondent moment he sought refuge in another world. It was a bright Sabbath morning a year gone by, that I visited North's room to look over some MSS. and "join our judgments" on some articles in the "Review" of his own composition: he invited me to take a puff at his pipe, and gave me a brief biography of it from its birth at Constantinople. "Now," said he, "keep it, and as you sometimes seek solace from the world's cares, think of me." He insisted on my keeping it, and here it is before me now, looking as stoical as the turbaned Turk it represents, whilst the hand that generously proffered it in friendship, is mouldering away. With my best wishes, yours truly,

And through thy smoke I seem to trace,
Restored with more than mortal grace,
Each old familiar, well-loved face

Long passed away

But, ah! I know thou canst not place
Them here to-day.

No longer now thy fire doth burn,
Nor floats the smoke with sylph-like turn
From out thy empty head. I spurn
Thy counsel old!

Emblem of Memory's buried urn,
Thy heart is cold.

Ay! cold as he, whose generous heart
Prompted the wish with thee to part-
Say hast thou the Promethean art,
The heavenly fire,

To wake his soul, and bid him start
Again the lyre?

Thou hast; for now thy fire returns,
A nobler spirit in thee burns-

No emblem now of buried urns

Seem'st thou to me;

But like a soul that bondage spurns

And would be free.

Hence! shadows, hence! these are but dreams;

The fitful momentary gleams

With which the care-wrought brain oft teems,

As if in joke:

Mere "Meerschaum" visions, which, it seems,

All end in smoke!

LITERARY LION

HUNTING.

COTERIES AND PETTI-COTERIES.

BY J. F. C.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULT has had his admirers since he said. "l'hipocrisie est un homage que la vice rend à la vertu." And on the bald and unflattened crust of the ever-revolving sphere of fashion, that proverb always commands a premium in adjusting the balance with manhood, not unfrequently essaying to discharge the (conventionally) more onerous obligations of finance. But over us there has come of late, no dearth of hard times; for the blessing of poverty we are compelled to "stub" the paper instead of "penning our thoughts;" and above all, we are lamentably unable to imitate divers cotemporary bards and philosophers by offering generous gratuities along with fragrant manuscripts, for the purpose of seeing our name in print; hence we demand absolution from all those great moral obligations which may be discharged by any such rare medium of social exchange.

Others may flourish with hyperperrennial prosperity while "brass" continues to be the currency of custom. But for ourselves, the "cod-fish" revenue has done nothing for us, and we will do nothing for it. Thus we have progressed from Rochefoucault to Rousseau, who holds an entirely different opinion.

Nevertheless, hypocrisy is a barbarous circumstance of our over-civilization; and polite philosophers may tell us, he

Who does the best his circumstance allows,
Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more ;-

which we must pass for the present, as a fiction of rhetoric,

in order to deal with rhetorical facts-in pantaloons and petti

coats.

Anglers in Helicon rhyme and extemporize so much upon "unwritten poetry" that it would be temerity to deny it as a thing in esse. It is matter of regret, however, that so terrible an infatuation should exist among men and women as is manifest in the fearfully prevalent conceit that doggerel in esse, becomes poetry in existere. But so it is; and we fancy we hear the poet laureate of the one-idea school singing to us a song pertinent to the occasion, the whole of which consists of the following Davy-Crockett line in continuando—the only variation being that of punctuation:

Go on, go on, go on; go on, go on ;

and the inevitability of what is yet to come will doubtless commend the sentiment to the reader. But wait a moment, let us go right. Here is a rule of procedure which possesses the advantage of two ideas, one of which is lofty as heaven, and the other unmentionably deep; and besides, it is sound philosophy:

He that would be high, high, highest,

Must first go down to the low, low, lowest,
And then ascend to the high, high, highest.

Imagine that gem of the pen performed with the severest gesticulating accompaniments, by a congregation clothed in the weird and wizard garments of male and female Shakerdom, and you have a lesson of life brought home to your understanding with a force slightly marvellous and severely irresistible. It will stand against criticism too, or he lied who said,

All the critics on earth can not crush with their ban,
One word that's in tune with the nature of man.

Perhaps this isn't truth, however; as it is very evident that the author's love of book-making had exhausted not only his poetry, but his truth also, about the time this couplet was written. Nor is this last supposition extravagant, either; since it is proverbially "easier to preach than to practise;" and though the truth remains that

The proper study of mankind is man,