tempt to inculcate a specific moral in a work of fiction. The narrative abounds with stirring incidents, which keep alive the curiosity of the reader; and the approach to the dénouement by means of a law-suit is managed with great acuteness and acquaintance with professional subtleties. The scene opens in one of the Western cities, and is afterward transferred to the camp of General TAYLOR, in Mexico. With a quick eye for the beauties of nature, the author introduces many agreeable descriptions of the Mexican landscape, following the course of the Mexican troops to the decisive battle of Buena Vista. We have little doubt, from the excellent promise of this production, that we shall hear of the unknown author in still more successful contributions to the literature of his country.' . . . 'Ir chanced some time since,' writes a friend, ' during an exhibition of POWERS' 'Greek Slave,' that a particularly ungainly and verdant specimen of a Yankee, who longed to have some definite basis whereon to build his ideas of sculpture, reluctantly paid his 'quarter,' and guiltily debouched into the sanctuary of high art. At the outset the mysterious twilight and hushed voices of the figures moving about the room, in strong contrast to the roar and bustle of Broadway, from which he had just emerged, half bewildered, completed his confusion; and after nervously crushing his wool hat into the compass of an egg, and vainly endeavoring to thrust both his huge hands simultaneously into the same pocket, the brilliant 'Slave,' in all her virgin purity and wondrous beauty, burst upon his horror-stricken gaze. His first impulse seemed to be to fairly 'turn tail' and run; but his 'quarter' was gone, and his native 'prudence' getting the better of his impulse, he evidently determined to have his 'money's worth:' so after gazing with outstretched neck and onion-eyed, open-mouthed wonder, at the slowly revolving statute for some time, he cautiously approached, until he stood among the circle of visitors; here he came to a stand, and after 'drinking in' the figure from head to foot, his eye rested upon the inscription on the pedestal, 'POWERS sculpsit,' and he broke out into soliloquy, as follows: 'PE-ÖWERS sculps it! does he? Waāl, I should raäther 'spect he did! he's sculp'd that critter strong enough, anyhow, 'pears to me; he's gone and sculp'd every darned thing off from her! I had a kind o' an idee o' gittin' sculp'd myself, but I'm afraid I should be done up raäther brown with sich a powerful sculp as that 'ere! 'Pon the hull, guess I wunt! And he left 'the presence,' greatly dubitating. 'The American Portrait Gallery,' by Goupil, Vibert and Company, is truly a superb work, exceeding any thing of the kind yet attempted in this country. The publishers, in their prospectus, remark: 'The Gallery which we propose to publish is a work whose utility must be manifest to every one. Although contemplated for a long while, yet the want of historical material has forced us to wait the time when we could lay before the American public a work worthy of its past and its future. It is enough to say that the past and the present will be treated with a legitimate equality. We wish to give our work the seal of historical truth that the future shall not gainsay. The portraits which enrich our Gallery will be drawn from the most authentic sources. Preeminent talent, of whatever kind, will find a place in the American Portrait Gallery. It will be confined to no party nor sect. It is intended for the people. Doubtful talent, or uncertain merit, will not cross the threshhold of this sanctum. We wish that every American, as he regards each portrait with patriotic pride, may say: 'Behold what our ancestors have done; behold what we are!' - that every father may point to them as examples worthy of the imitation of his sons.' Three superb portraits, all excellent likenesses, have already appeared: namely, DANIEL WEBSTER, WILLIAM C. BRYANT,

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and WILLIAM S. MOUNT, the latter from a painting by ELLIOTT, and nine others are already prepared for publication. The office of Messrs. GOUPIL, VIBERT AND COMPANY is at Number 289, Broadway. . . . 'Boy,' asked a traveller of a lad in an inn on the Mississippi, 'what 's the matter with that sick man in the next room?' 'He's got a majestic chill, Sir.' 'Great country on the banks of these rivers!' responded the interrogator. THE following Literary Record of New Publications' was crowded out of our last number: PUTNAM has recently published a volume of essays upon subjects of every-day life and literature, entitled 'The Optimist.' Mr. HENRY T. TUCKERMAN, the author, has an established reputation as a contemplative and tasteful essayist; and the series before us will add not a little to his previous fame. If he has not the power to startle, he has the grace to win the admiration of his readers. WORKS upon CALIFORNIA are thickening upon the public, and commanding a wide sale. One of the most graphic and picturesque of these is a volume from the press of our friends H. LONG AND BROTHER, entitled 'Notes on California and the Placers: How to Get there and What to Do Afterwards.' It is written with spirit, by One who has been There,' and describes that which he saw, and part of which he was.' It is evidently an authentic record, and is written in a natural, manly style. And here too is another work, on the same general theme, from the press of the Messrs. APPLETON: the 'Diary of a Physician in California;' being the results of actual experience; including notes of the journey by land and water, and observations on the climate, soil, resources of the country, etc. By JAMES L. TYSON, M. D. We have not as yet found leisure for its perusal. MR. RUDOLPH GARRIGUE, at Number Two, Barclay-street, Astor House, continues the regular issues, in monthly parts, of the Iconograph-Encyclopædia of Science, Literature and Art,' heretofore noticed in these pages. The great value and beauty of the illustrative engravings are even more apparent than in the preceding numbers. The work is one of rare and various merit, as we have before demonstrated. CAN'T you take off my baird here?' said a grave, tall, slab-sided Yankee to an Albany barber, feeling at the same time his chin with a noise like a grater; 'it's a light baird: what d' you tax? Three cents for a light baird, aint it?' 'Yes.' 'Waäl, go ahead then.' While the barber was rasping 'three cents worth' from his chin, his 'sitter' saw an assistant putting cologne upon a customer's hair, through a quill in the cork of a bottle. 'Look o' here, 'Square,' said the Yankee, can't you squirt some o' that pepper-saäse onto my head tew? Say, can't you throw a leetle o' that in, for the three cents?... A NOTICE of the death of the late JOHN C. CALHOUN was, among several other subsections in this department, crowded out of our last number. Since the departure of this great intellect, so honored and mourned by his state and his country, a letter, supposed to be almost the last which he ever penned, has appeared in some of the public prints. It was addressed to a young friend in the law-school at Ballston Springs, in this state, and contains much sound and judicious advice. We annex the closing passage. The conclusion strikes us, under the circumstances in which it was written, as being very touching:

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I WOULD have you remember that you will be beset with constant temptations to swerve from the standard of high moral integrity. The very obligations of the lawyer to defend his client, right or wrong, tend to familiarize him with error, and to blunt his natural abhorrence of depravity; and by obligations, I mean such only as would lead him to seek the great ends of justice. Beyond this, even though it should result in your own aggrandizement, I would not have you put forth a single exertion. In the defence of one whom you believe to be guilty, proceed no farther than is necessary to elicit the truth by an even balance of testimony. I am aware that it will often be difficult in this respect to draw a precise line between the duties you will owe to your client, and those due to yourself

and community. But a cultivated and refined moral sense the basis of all that is grand and beautiful in human character, and which I trust, above all things else, you will seek to incorporate into your own will generally be a safe and accurate guide.

But I must close. This may be the last of my communications to you. I feel myself sinking under the wasting power of disease. My end is probably near-perhaps very near. Before I reach it, I have but one serious wish to gratify; it is to see my country quieted under some arrangement — alas! I know not what ― that will be satisfactory to all, and safe to the South.'

An old friend and frequent correspondent of this Magazine publishes the following 'Sonnet on the death of John C. Calhoun' in the Washington 'Union' daily journal:

Washington, April, 1850.

THE great go from us, but they leave behind

The memory of deeds that cannot die,
In which they live forever: grief may blind

With its regretful tears the watcher's eye,

Who, through the gloom shrouding the bed of death,

Sees the loved light of home grow dim and dark;

But greatness dwells not in the fleeting breath —

Its star survives life's evanescent spark.

Honor and praise be his, who stood so long,
Firm on the ramparts of his country's rights,
Watching, with jealous gaze, the shade of wrong
Whose words still live and glow, like beacon-lights
Though the stern sentry sleeps in quiet now,
From the set foot-sole to the swerveless brow.

R. S. CHILTON.

An esteemed friend, writing to us from the national capital soon after the death of this eminent statesman, gave us the following brief yet graphic picture of his funeral : 'At one o'clock, the services in the Senate chamber being concluded, the body, encased in a metallic coffin, (an admirable substitute, it seems to me, for those hideous mahogany affairs,) was borne amid a dense crowd of spectators through the rotunda to the eastern portico of the capital, preceded by the pall-bearers and followed by the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, Judges of the Supreme Court, members of the Cabinet, and other distinguished persons. The procession then moved slowly toward the Congressional Burying-Ground, some two miles distant. Here the ordinary funeral service of the Episcopal church was effectively read by Mr. BUTLER, Chaplain of the Senate, and the body temporarily deposited in the congressional vault. Among the pall-bearers, who were all old and distinguished members of the Senate, WEBSTER particularly arrested my attention. His appearance was funereal in the extreme. He is the most magnificent mourner I ever saw. His very soul seemed shrouded in mourning. The scene was rendered quite picturesque by the appearance, among the crowd of 'sad-garbed whites,' of a Cherokee Indian; a tall, lithe, fine-looking fellow, dressed in the full costume of his tribe. I learned afterward that he had known the illustrious Carolinian, for whom he entertained great admiration and regard.'. . . Is N'T there a great deal of truth in the following from 'The Lorgnette,' a journal elsewhere noticed in this department: Dress, equipages, perfumery, and the opera, will always have native city teachers; but the Pulpit, the Exchange, Journalism, and the Bar, are drawing in recruits from the rough sons of hard country study, and of old-fashioned, rigid, academical education, whose energy, spirit, and influence, will one day make the hot-house progeny of the town quiver in their shoes. Show me an influential journalist, a rising man at our bar, a preacher at once profound and practical, a physician eminent in his profession, a merchant who is fertile in enterprise, and successful by honest industry, and I will show one who knew little or nothing of the fashionable life of the town, until his mental and moral character was already formed. On the other hand, show me a lawyer rich in political intrigue, a doctor distinguished by nostrums, a conversationalist fertile in equivoques, a poetaster, fatiguing the language with his poverty, a merchant who is rich by suc

cessive bankruptcies, or defalcations, and twenty to one, he has been dandled in the arms of Fashion, and while yet in his teens, has converted his feeble art of the grammar, to the crowning arts of the boudoir.' . . . 'The Van Cortlandt Institute' is the name of a select boarding-school for boys, at Van CortlaNDT's Landing, at Peekskill, just at the opening of the Highlands. We hear 'good exclamation' of the qualifications of the principals and proprietors; their locale is very beautiful and accessible, and their numerous references are of the first order. A FEW clerical worthies have

put their heads together to improve the BIBLE, by getting up a new version of the same. From the specimens of these 'improvements' which we have seen, we should say the reverend tinkers had made sad work of it. We annex a 'sample :'

AUTHORISED VERSION.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth!

Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye when the LORD shall bring again Zion. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastise ment of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

Fools make a mock at sin; but among the righteous there is favor.

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

He that despiseth his neighbor sinneth; but he that hath mercy on the poor happy is he. Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.

NEW VERSION.

How wished for are the feet that bringeth tidings over the mountains, proclaiming peace and good tidings; that publish salvation, saying unto Zion, thy God reigneth!

The voice of thy guards raiseth a sound of praise in unison; for surely they shall be eye witnesses when the LORD shall reinstate Zion.

He is despised and withholden from men; a man of sorrows, and has experienced grief; and appears as it were to hide his face from us; despised, and we did not notice him.

But he has been disregarded, such were our transgressions; he was depressed, such were our iniquities; our peaceable instructions were his means, and in his association we receive salvation.

Evil doers cloak over their trespasses; but among the righteous there is reconciliation.

There is a way which seemeth to be satisfactory to a man, yet the end thereof leads sometimes to destruction.

He that despiseth his neighbor sinneth ; and he that favors the meek is praiseworthy.

Equity exalteth a nation; but generosity of nations is a sin.

'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings' is erased for the purpose of substituting the platitude of 'How wished-for are the feet,' etc.; and that most beautiful and touching of sentences, 'He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,' gives way to 'a man of sorrows and has experienced grief!' Our friend Major NOAH, an excellent Hebrew scholar, well observes: 'The circulation of the BIBLE without note or comment throughout the world, has been one of the greatest blessings bestowed on man. It has taught him a true knowledge of God and the performance of his own duties. It is his great consolation, and properly understood, his greater hope of an hereafter. To apply the pruning-knife to this divine work to answer immediate objects is dangerous and improper. He who reads and understands can correct errors for himself if they are known to exist. The BIBLE appeals to the understanding, and those selected as witnesses of its truth by DIVINE PROVIDENCE should be and will be the last to change its character and import.' . . . 'IF you will throw away that cigar,' said a friend of ours to a man who was puffing a villanous long-nine' in the bar-room of a hotel in a western village, 'I'll give you a quarter of a dollar.' 'Well, I'll do it,' said the smoker. He threw away his cigar, took his quarter, and then, stepping up to the bar, said: 'Here, give me a brandytoddy and four more o' them cigars! When he had lighted one, our friend 'departed straightway from that house.' PUTNAM has published, in his usual neat

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style,' Letters of a Traveller, or Notes of Things seen in Europe and America,' by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. The work is a collection of letters, the greater part of which have already appeared in the Evening Post,' written at various times, during the last sixteen years, and during journeys made in England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Cuba, and the United States. They contain many lively sketches of natural scenery, descriptions of celebrated localities, pictures of domestic society, and criticisms on important works of art. A great mass of interesting information is here embodied, composing a work of permanent and more than ordinary value. The style is remarkable for its chasteness, precision, and condensed energy.' . . . SPEAKING of the difference between the present world and the world to come, some modern poet observes:

THAT clime is not like this dull clime of ours,
All, all is brightness there;

A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers,
And a far milder air:

No calm below is like that calm above;
No region here is like that realm of love;
Earth's softest spring ne'er shed so soft a light;
Earth's brightest summer never shone so bright.

That sky is not like this sad sky of ours,
Tinged with earth's change and care;
No shadow dims it, and no rain-cloud lowers;
No broken sunshine there!

One everlasting stretch of azure pours
Its stainless splendor o'er those sinless shores;
For there JEHOVAH shines with heavenly ray,
There JESUS reigns, dispensing endless day.

We remember crossing to Hoboken one mellow autumn evening with an esteemed friend, one among the most vigorous and popular of our American poets. There was such a pomp of golden and many-colored clouds in the track of the setting sun as we had never seen before. Oh!' exclaimed our companion, 'what a beautiful world this is! They tell us of the balmy airs and the 'cloudless skies' of Paradise; then,' he added, pointing to the infinitely beautiful and glowing west, 'then they have not that there; and what can a scene be worth that has not clouds? How can we truly appreciate the light of the blessed sun without them? And how gloriously they illustrate the brightness of his beams! It has always seemed to us that Heaven should seldom be compared, in its 'physical features,' if we may so speak, with the earth; but rather depicted as a place where the redeemed soul, in a new sphere of righteousness and love, shall 'look for the restoration of the old ruined earth and heaven, from which beauty and life shall have departed, and from which planets and stars have vanished away.' And this, when the fires of the resurrection morning shall redden the last day, this shall be witnessed. " 'These eyes,' says a rapt master of sacred song:

THESE eyes shall see them fall,
Mountains and stars and skies;

These eyes shall see them all
Out of their ashes rise:

These lips shall then His praise rehearse
Whose nod restores the universe!'

We must not forget to say a word concerning that superb steamer, of COLLINS's Liverpool line, The Atlantic ;' of its immense capacity, its beautiful model, its vast machinery, and over and above all, the most tasteful, admirable, gorgeous decorations and upholstery of its matchless cabins and saloons, under the direction of our old friend, Mr. GEORGE PLATT. Nothing at all comparable with these, for richness and exquisite taste, has ever been seen in any steamer that ever left this port, nor, we venture to say, any other in the world. Mr. PLATT has vindicated his claim to be justly considered an artist of the highest order of genius in his beautiful and chaste profession. -SINCE the above was penned, The Pacific,' the second of the four which are to constitute the 'COLLINS line,' has reached her station at the foot of Canalstreet. The praise awarded to the 'Atlantic,' in all respects, may be awarded to her.