one Nicholas Gimcrack, who bequeaths to his "dear wife" one box of butterflies, one drawer of shells, a female skeleton, and a dried cockatrice; cuts off his eldest son with "a single cockle-shell," for his undutiful behavior in laughing at his little sister, whom his father kept preserved in spirits of wine; and bequeaths to another of his relations a collection of grasshoppers, as, in the testator's opinion, an adequate reward and acknowledgment due to his merit. Some collectors are of the miscellaneous order, and they have a maw for every thing that is "curious;" these are they who chip off the corners of stones in old abbeys, cut bits of wood from Herne's oak and such like, carry away in their pocket a portion of earth from the field of Waterloo, beg for a slice from the timbers of the Royal George, and are thrown into ecstasies by possessing the night-cap in which some great murderer was hanged. They are equally pleased by a hair from the Great Kahn's beard, or a boome-rang from New Holland, or a Hindoo god, or a patch of Rush's trowsers, or a cast-off glove of Jenny Lind. They will treasure a nettle brought from the ruins of Persepolis, or the nose of a recumbent knight chipped off a tombstone in a cathedral. Some collectors are more systematic-they confine themselves to special pursuits; one has bits of the ropes with which every great criminal has been hanged during the last half century; another has chips from Stonehenge, from York Minster, from Westminster, from St. Peter's, from the Pyramids, and from Petræa.

Then there are the real antiquarian collectors, great in old coins, old armor, old spitulas, old "parritchpats," old pans, old gullies, old armlets, old fibulas, old iron of all sorts. These are generally great at reading old inscriptions, though they are sometimes deceived, like Monkbarns in the Antiquary, who, after puzzling his brains about the capital letters, "A. D. L. L.," inscribed on a stone, found that after all they meant no more than "Aiken Drum's Lang Ladle."

Then there are the literary collectors: one collects illuminated manuscripts; another, caricatures; a third, homilies and prayer-books; while some, like the late Duke of Sussex, confine themselves to Bibles. The collection of that illustrious prince included a copy of nearly every edition of the Bible that had ever been printed, in all languages. Some collect books in peculiar departments of history; for instance, the late Sir Robert Peel prided himself on his collection of rare books illustrative of Irish history, which was perhaps the finest extant. Others collect works illustrative of the Commonwealth period; and some give themselves up entirely to collecting pamphlets.

The old picture collectors are a distinct class; an antique piece of smoked canvas-all shadow and no picture-provided it is ascertained to be "genuine," and bears on it the mark of some great artist, fetches an inconceivably high price. It is not patronage of art, or love of art, which actuates picture collectors generally, but the desire to accumulate curiosities. Most of them will pass by a picture fresh from the brush of the living artist, and fix their attention on some old smoked daub. The living artist may starve, while the dead artist is "patronized," and his veriest rubbish is largely bought up. Hence many living

artists find it to be their interest to paint "old pictures," and to cook them to suit the taste of the lovers of the rare and curious.

The autograph collector is a mighty hunter-up of curiosities; nothing will turn him aside from his pursuit, and no man is oftener voted a bore. Let a man publish a book or a poem, and he is forthwith written to from all quarters, with the same object. If the live man can be caught hold of, he is at once solicited to write in autograph-books of collectors, or in young ladies' albums.

There are collectors in numerous other departments, so numerous that they could scarcely be recited within a moderate compass. There are florists who collect auriculas, others cape heaths, and others tulips, while some are famous for their collections of leeks, cabbages, or artichokes. We have even known a collector of keys-keys of celebrated gaols, castles, dungeons, scrutoires, pigeon-houses, house-doors, and old iron safes. One man collects and pastes into a book all his tavern-bills for a half century; another collects old bones and pottery, dug out of antique barrows. Collectors of seals rival the collectors of autographs in ubiquity. The wine collector stores up in his cellar specimens of innumerable vintages, and several bishops of the Church pride themselves on their collection of beer. The stock of the late Archbishop of York was considered the most complete in the kingdom, and fetched a very high price at his death.

There are also national tastes for collection. Thus the German collects pipes, the Scotchman snuffboxes, the Englishman bank-notes, and the Frenchman specimen journals of the revolutionary era. In Italy and Spain they collect bits of the true cross, and remnants of other sacred objects from Palestine.

The inveterate and enthusiastic collector is a man whose honesty is to be suspected. The collector of engravings sometimes leaves an ugly gap in a valuable book, and the collector of old manuscripts not unfrequently leaves a hole in the shelves of a public library which can not be filled up. The collector overleaps all obstacles in his way; what would he not do to get at a Queen Anne's farthing? No stone coffin of defunct Saxon is secure against his intrusive pickax; no church spire is so lofty but he will scale it, no river so deep but he will gravel it, no wall so thick but he will penetrate it, no place so sacred but he will explore it. He grabs letters, skewers moths, pockets Roman tiles, carries off old bones, mutilates books, and apprehends engravings, with consummate nonchalance. He wants this, that, and the other thing for his collection. What is conscience to him? Is there not his scrap-book and his deadhouse to be filled? For these reasons we suspect the curiosity-collector, believing him to be a person of doubtful moral notions, and not at all to be trusted.

THE road on which ambition travels, the higher it ascends the more difficult it becomes, till at last it terminates on some elevation too steep for safety, too sharp for repose, and where the occupant, above the sympathy of man, and below the friendship of angel, resembles in the solitude, if not the depth of his sufferings, a Prometheus chained to the Caucasian rock.

New Books.

THE ONWARD AGE: an Anniversary Poem, recited before the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati, in honor of its Eighteenth Anniversary. By T. Buchanan Read. Cincinnati: Published by the Association.The Young Men's Mercantile Library Association of this city is one of the most enterprising and useful institutions in America. It is composed of generous-hearted, cheerful-spirited, liberal-minded, whole-souled young men, mostly in commercial business. They have a well-selected reading-room, and decidedly the most valuable library west of the Mountains. Indeed, one of the greatest inducements to a literary man for a residence in Cincinnati, one of the very first charms of the place, is the Mercantile Library. Access to it is of inestimable advantage to any man who desires to devote himself to literary pursuits. During the winter the Association provides for the benefit of its members a course of lectures from men of talent and distinction. These lectures are generally well attended, popular, and useful. At the anniversary of the Association, which is held in May, an address and a poem is usually delivered before the members. The poem of Mr. Read is a choice and beautiful production. The versification is remarkably easy and flowing, and the thought highly poetical. We present one specimen, that the reader may observe, not only the beauty of the conception, but the sweetness and melody of the verse. It is from the vision of the "City of God"-a vision which may often have burst on us in childhood:

"Ere the rose and the roseate hues of the dawn,
With the dews of my youth were all scattered and gone;
Ere the cloud, like the far-reaching wing of the night,
Had shut out the glory of God from my sight,

I saw a wide realm in the azure unfold,
Where the fields nodded toward me their flowers of gold;
And the soft airs sailed o'er them and dropt from above,
As if shed from innumerous pinions of love:

There were trees with broad boles steeped in perfume and dew,
While their full breasts forever leaned up to the blue,
And within their wide bosoms the winds seemed to rest
With a calm like the sleep of a soul that is blest;
Or, if any light rustle stole out from their limbs,

'Twas the murmurous music of delicate hymns-
As if some dear angel sat singing within

To a spirit just won from the regions of sin:

There were streams which seemed born but in slumberous bowers, Stealing down, like a dream, through the sleep of the flowersSo pure was the azure they won from the hight,

The blue hills seemed melting in rivers of light;

And within this fair realm where but angels have trod,

I beheld, as I thought, the great CITY OF GOD!"

HALF HOURS WITH OLD HUMPHREY. Revised by Daniel P. Kidder. New York: Lane & Scott.-Daniel P. Kidder is a most judicious and indefatigable worker in the cause of Christian instruction. He is the man for the times in which he lives, and for the very place he occupies. He has brought to bear on the Sunday school publications of the Church a spirit of enterprise and of efficiency, whose results must operate powerfully on the interests of the present and of the coming age. Long may he live to do good, and highly as he deserves may he be appreciated! "Half Hours with Old Humphrey " is a very interesting book. The old man talks about every subject in a quiet, good-natured style, never forgetting, when opportunity offers, to make a good moral impression on the mind of the reader.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOOD AND NUTRITION IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS. By Rev. E. Sidney, M. A. Revised by Daniel P. Kidder. New York: Lane & Scott.-This is one of the most useful of books. It explains, in language easy to read, matters which every human being should understand. If the knowl edge communicated in this book, and in others of similar character and tendency, was more generally diffused, men would be more religious and more healthy. Parents would also be better qualified to give proper instruction to their children on matters of deep interest to them.

Periodicals.

319

FROM LITTELL'S LIVING AGE, No. 421, we copy the following beautiful verses to the "Scabious, or Flower of Regret:" "Sweet, mournful flower, companion mine,

Come to my heart and cherished be;
The darksome hue of grief is thine,
But grief itself abides in me.
Receive my kiss, my cold, sad kiss,

Though melancholy's seal it prove;
It glows not with the warmth of bliss,
But yields the tenderness of love.
Far from the shade where oft to woo
Thee, zephyrs came from genial skies,
Thou feel'st, ah, not the summer dew,

But tears that rain from mourner's eyes." No. 422 of the same work contains the following choice table of contents: "Five Years' Residence in the West Indies. Campbell and the Danish Professor. Blind Rosa. Starvation of Patagonian Missionaries. Nursery Literature. Tea Dis tricts of China and India. Gretna Green. Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland. The Eclipse of Faith. How to settle Governments and Dynasties-Wait-The Future of Austria-Austrian Officers, and their English Victim-Arrival of an Ex-Dictator-Death of the Grand Duke of Baden. Rustication in a French Village. Poetry: Hope Deferred; The Parting-A Bachelor's Lay of the Olden Time; Allegory; The Violet; Those Days were Bright; Summer Days. Short Articles: Manufacture of Pemmican; Ireland-Unknown ShipsWild Animals in Confinement; Sources of the Nile; Anecdote of the Dog-Bonpland the Botanist; Pious Dogs-Deceit of Zeal; Shortening of Voyages; Silesia. New Book." We copy the following beautiful gem:

"THE VIOLET.

"No floweret with the lilies vying,

That deck thy chaplet, can I bring;
My life an arid waste is lying,
Where bud or blossom can not spring.
Or if it sprang, the tears of sorrow
Have fed its growth like vernal shower;
But thy young brow must never borrow,
In thy glad days, a tear-washed flower.

Yet when thine hour of grief comes o'er thee-
And who is there it comes not nigh?—
Young mourner, call me to deplore thee,
O, call me to thee with a sigh!
Then I, in sorrow skilled, will sing thee
A strain that shall console thy care,
And one dark flower, a violet, bring thee,
And twine it in thy garland there."

THE second number of the second volume of Dr. Latta's Chain of Sacred Wonders lies on our table. This work has been too often noticed and is too well known to need commendation from us.

THE GUIDE TO HOLINESS, with its descending dove and holy-opened book, is pointing us upward to the regions of perfect love and exquisite bliss.

THE SOUTHERN METHODIST PULPIT, for May and June, contains a sermon on God's Right in Man, by Rev. T. B. Russel, of Alabama, and the discourse delivered by Dr. Coke at the ordination of Bishop Asbury, in 1784.

HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE abounds in articles on law, banking, commerce, railroads, mining, and manufactures.

THE PHILADELPHIA MEDICAL EXAMINER is full of surgical, and clinical, and medical learning, with a slight sprinkling of the techinal language so congenial to medical writers.

THE AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW contains a due supply of politics and current literature.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, for May, has, among other arti cles, a fine one on Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, from which, had we room, we could make some capital extracts.

Editor's Cable.

WE commend, gentle reader, to your indulgent eye and kind heart the Ladies' Repository for August, 1852. It has now reached, in its onward progress, the eighth month of its twelfth year. Its being was conceived under the influence of strong desire, in noble and generous spirits, to produce a work devoted to literature and religion, that might meet the wants of the times, and be appropriate to the circumstances and congenial to the taste of the mothers, the wives, the sisters, and the daughters of the large, increasing, and widely diffused body of religious people, whose founders, both in Europe and America, were distinguished for the union of deep piety with the love of useful knowledge and the cultivation of good taste. In the hands of the worthy and able men, who have in honorable succession presided over its destinies, the work has not only met, but far excelled the most cheering hopes of its most sanguine friends. Its influence is felt every-where throughout our wide-extended domains. It is found on the prairies of the Wabash, and on the evergreen plains of the Kennebec; on the hills of the north, and in the valleys of the south. It is found in the city and in the country. It is received with equal welcome at the mansion of the rich and at the cottage of the poor. It mingles with equal grace in the society of the exalted or of the lowly.

It pays its regular monthly visits to you, gentle reader, with the same well-recognized countenance, whether your own heart be joyful or sad. It has come amid the joyous hopes of love and youth. It has come on your bridal morn. It has come amid the rejoicings that greeted with welcome your first-born. And it has come when your heart was sad. It has entered your dwelling when the light and graceful ornaments of rejoicing were giving place to the somber drapery of mourning. It has listened to the wail of woe that went up from your household at the departure from earth of the bright, the beau. teous, the cherished one of your heart. It may have accompanied you, on the bright spring morning, or the pleasant summer evening, to the sacred place, where sleeps beneath the flowers, under the green tree, your loved one. It there speaks to your heart in words of sympathy, of love, and of hope.

We would hope that the Repository may ever continue, as it ever has been, a welcome visitor to the homes and the hearts of the gentle, the pure, and the good. The Editor, as well as all others who have any thing to do with it, can, we are sure, have no interest, but to make it as useful and as acceptable as possible. We would have it the Repository of purity, truth, taste, and virtue. We would have admitted to its columns only articles of sterling merit. We would have the sentiments of its matter virtuous and truthful. We would have the style perspicuous, correct, and beautiful.

We would request our contributors to aid us in our efforts by favoring us with beautiful and well-written articles on subjects of utility and interest. Sketches of biography, of travel, and of various incidents, and descriptions of natural scenery, are usually acceptable. Commonplace essays on commonplace subjects we would not solicit; yet even such may sometimes contain flashes of wit, of thought, and of sentiment, which we may use in the Editor's Table or in some other form. We admire beautiful thoughts or touching sentiment clothed in beautiful language. And the English language contains exhaustless treasures of sublimity and of beauty. We need no foreign importations of words or phrases; no provincial dialects; nothing but pure Saxon, with a few thoroughly naturalized classic idioms. We never could tolerate the using in writings of taste those idioms which many writers use in describing scenes of sectional character or persons of lowly life. Most generally the language imputed to the sectional and the uneducated is an outrageous caricature. No native of New England, or New York, or Kentucky, or Indiana, or North Carolina, whom we have ever met, used the kind of language imputed to him in stories and humorous sketches. We even doubt whether even the most humble and degraded African in the free states of the north or on the plantations of the south uses habitually the language ascribed to him by most writers.

We consider, in fact, the using in writings of general circu

lation of words and phrases which can only be deemed corruptions of the English language as of decided evil tendency. It blunts the taste, mars the delicacy, and vitiates the moral sense of the reader. Then give us correct, neat, elegant, beantiful Anglo-Saxon, with such classic additions as may have become fully recognized denizens among us, and you will do good service to the cause of literature and morals.

We hardly need commend to the eye of taste and the lover of beauty the plates for this number. The landscape scene is beautiful. The tourist may look in vain over the wide world for more lovely views than often meet his eye as he roams over our western plains, or rambles along our beautiful valleys, or glides down our noble rivers. We have not in the west the romantic hills of the north, nor the evergreen plains of the east, nor the magnificent mountains of New York and Pennsylvania; nor have we the ocean stretching away illimitable in the calm sunshine, or dashing in stormy fury on the rock. bound coast. But we have scenes of quiet beauty, such as may not be excelled on earth. We have far-extended and lovely plains, waving with the long prairie grass, or the green corn, or the golden wheat. Come, gentle reader, and stand with us on our lovely Wabash plains. See on every side, far as the eye can reach, stretching away in summer beauty, a landscape of diversified prairie, woodland, and streamlet, fertile as was ever shined on by the sun or wet by the dew of heaven. Over all these plains the golden-haired Ceres has showered her choicest gifts.

Or stand with us on the elevated bank of the Ohio, or of the Miami, and look down on the thousand acres of corn, with its green leaves now gleaming in the sun. Or come ramble with us among these grand old forest trees. The old oaks seem venerable with years, and remind us of scenes of the past. The youthful beech throws over us its pendent branches, shutting out by its dense foliage the burning sunlight. The graceful elm stands with its long and slender branches drooping, as if in sorrow over the grave of the loved.

Or come and look with us on this more cheerful scene. We stand on the banks of the Ohio: the Ohio, fairest of rivers; the Ohio, whose fountains lie far sequestered among the glens of the Alleghanies; the Ohio, whose waters flow on amid fertile vales; the Ohio, on whose banks rise cities like the magic crea. tions of the lamp of Alladin; the Ohio, on whose surface are moving palaces, such as never crowned the cities of Persia or Hindostan; the Ohio, the scene of our childhood dreams and of our maturer fortunes, and by whose waters we may, when the day of life is over, lie down to sleep in the grave. Behind us is the city, the great, the busy, the magnificent city, the Queen of the West, sitting in grandeur and glory amid her exhaustless resources of enterprise and of wealth. Before us is one of those beautiful streams which pay the tribute of their waters to the Ohio. The Licking flows into the great river between the cities of Newport and Covington, and directly opposite Cincinnati. It is a beautiful stream, with verdant banks, and adorned at its mouth with two most pleasant little cities, perfect gems of places. It will do you good, reader, to look on such a scene.

We have met in days of yore, and held communion of soul with soul. Heart has vibrated to heart, and emotion has responded to emotion. We have met under the green tree, and by the bower, and on the hill-side, and by the streamlet bank. But never before have we met around the Editor's Table. How strange that we should meet here now! To us it is a mysterya deep, obscure, and at present insolvable mystery. Are we the child of Providence or the victim of destiny? We have followed for long years past the indications of Providence wherever they might lead. We have followed when we could but dimly see through the hazy, misty clouds of hopeless doubt. We have followed when the dark shadows of sorrow were falling sad and heavy on our heart. We have followed when the sunlight of hope was cheering our pathway.

But our space is full, and we must say, for a month at least, farewell. Yes, gentle one, farewell. Perhaps we meet again. Perhaps not. Who knoweth the changes a month, a single month may produce? But it matters not, if only we are found among the tried and faithful devotees of goodness and of truth.