Such materials of imagination, the trophies and the master spirits of the present day. The conceptombs of departed greatness, are scattered over tions expand, the taste is softened, mellowed and Europe, and Asia, and Africa-but not in America. refined—the imagination is kindled and the judgVirginia is the oldest of the United States, yet ment invigorated. At home the quiver of subjects how short the thread of her history-not two cen- was soon exhausted; here it may be replenished turies and a half. And an elegant writer found in from an older and richer armory. the chronicles of his native state-the most flourishing in the union-materials so scanty and so inconsequential, that the Livy of New York descended to the burlesque of Knickerbocker. It is true, that although destitute of classic antiquity, we have nature in her fresh and lovely form-the river, the prairie, and the mountain, the lake and the cataract-but it is naked, solitary nature, devoid of association. No spot is shown where a Roman legion has encamped, or a knight errant slain a dragon or a giant. Here no tyrant has been slain-no conqueror has returned triumphant from the spoil of distant nations; here no poet has sung-no martyr died in "victorious agonies."

As to the Indians, after all that has been done to sublimate their character, it must be confessed, they are an uninteresting people. Their ideas are few, and for the most part connected with war or the animal necessities. The life of an Indian is a monotonous repetition of a few simple incidents. Their history is nothing but a detail of petty skirmishes" of no more consequence than," as Milton says, the "wars between the hawks and the crows of a neighboring wood." Their life is passed between the tomahawk and the pipe. A glimmer of reason, a touch of sentiment, a rare burst of generosity or eloquence, is all that the most extravagant poetaster can make out of these poor extolled and exterminated savages.

America abounds in incomparable scenery; but what is mere scenery unconnected with man? What is mere physical nature unconnected with moral existence? The Connecticut and the Hudson are picturesque-the Potomac and the Missouri majestic-but what are they, in a classic point of view, compared to the little yellow, muddy Tiber? Let us not then blame our artists and writers for repairing to Europe: they are migratory birds, flying where they can find their proper aliment, and rejoice in the influence of a genial sun.

Again, the stamp of original American character has not been as yet deeply impressed on the people of this country-they are hardly yet melted down in the crucible of time. Perhaps the time will come when the American face and the American genius will assume distinct and definite features. Added to this, of all people on earth, the Americans are the most restless and locomotive. The continual attrition of travel obliterates local originality and extinguishes provincial mother wit. The Revolution indeed is a topic worthy of a great mind, and we may wonder why some Homer has not arisen to celebrate a hero of higher virtue than Achilles. But the subject is too recent, perhaps, to compete with those that loom to a false magnitude through the mists of time. "Difficile est communia dicere." Centuries alone can cast a halo on a name. The time may come, when The Indian characters of Cooper's novels are America shall have her epic poet; when her remarkable for their sameness. The Trapper is rocks and fountains shall become classic; when only Hawk-eye in his old age. Like family por- the "chorded shell" shall be struck on the cliffs traits-see one, you see all. A writer may paint of the Hudson, and the harp resound at the foot of the hunt, the war-council, the fight, the dance-the Alleghanies.

"Westward the course of empire takes its way,

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

he may shift a few scenes, and ring a few changes, but the fountain of Indian story is shallow and will soon run dry. Poetical men have to lament that in this country there is no bastile, no "bridge of sighs," no "cloud-capped towers, nor gorgeous palaces ;" that with us every thing is fresh, modern and provincial: and if European writers, will lay aside the aids of antiquity, and put themselves, in this particular, on a footing with the writers of the western hemisphere, they will perhaps be less surprised at the paucity of pure, home-made, original American works. Stripped of the borrowed plumage of antiquity, the European peacock will be reduced to a level with the common barn-door fowl of America. Our artists and writers are apt to abandon their own country, for the kingdoms of Europe: there, in the schools and galleries, they find the noble Ignatius Loyola and Epictetus-lame. Coutusmodels of the most celebrated masters-the colla-off, Hannibal, Epictetus and Euler-one-eyed. ted wonders of an age; there, too, they may meet St. Paul, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar,

DEFORMITIES OF GREAT MEN.

Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron were both lame. Pope was called the ugly little wasp of Twickenham.

Lady Montague had a dirty looking face, and so had Dean Swift, who could never bring his to look clean though he washed with "oriental scrupulosity."

Appius Claudius, Timoleon, Tiresias, Democritus, Homer and Milton-blind.

Melancthon-short and hard-favored. Soame Jenyns on hearing that Gibbon had published his history, said he wondered how so ugly a man could write a book-which made the company smile, for he was himself remarkably ugly.

Cicero had a long neck—and Homer, according to Lucian, compares Helen's neck to a swan's; not because it was as white, but because it was as long.

The head of Pericles was shaped like an onion; that of the present king of the French is compared to a pear.

Horace, Bonaparte, Madison, General Charles | he rode out on his farm, he frequently carried one Lee, Chancellor Kent, John Quincy Adams and of them before and another behind him. Of his Santa Anna-small men. speeches she knew little or nothing. At that time she was young and gay, and cared more about balls than politics. Puffendorf, (she thought that was the name,) was one of his favorite authors. On Sunday he never failed to read a sermon to his family. He was in general inattentive to dress; but when equipping himself for court, he mounted a smart wig and was particularly fond of a red cloak. He had no taste for fine horses-having received several falls. When he appeared in the streets the people took off their hats to him, and showed him every mark of respect, to avoid which he oftentimes sneaked out of town by some private way. From the shabbiness of his dress he was sometimes mistaken for a clodpole, and greatly diverted at the questions propounded to him upon these occasions. John Randolph took up a strong dislike to him, for calling him one of the bobtail politicians. Patrick Henry and General Henry Lee were intimate friends at one time, but they afterwards fell out. Of her father's letters she retained fourteen. They were short, familiar, written on the spur of the moment, and some of them in a hurry— just such as any private gentleman would write to his family. They were written on small sheets, or half sheets of common paper; the hand writing good, the style occasionally inaccurate.

Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and black teeth; Cromwell a red face, and the aquiline hook and fiery color of his nose was a standing jest of the cavaliers.

It is thought by some philosophers that the smaller the body, the more active the soul, as being the less diffused. While on the other hand it is commonly believed, that the larger the body, the larger the soul. The better opinion perhaps is, that nature, in this particular, follows no uniform rule; and that there is no settled proportion between the material and immaterial man. Personal deformity is apt to modify in some way the character; it may create jealousy, or stimulate to counterbalance bodily inferiority by mental superiority, or may superinduce a gloomy melancholy. In regard to ugliness we may remember, that the best affections are of ten concealed under a homely exterior, and that the wisest heads are sometimes the most knotty.

PATRICK HENRY.

The following sentences, extracted from these letters, are of interest only as coming from the pen of

"the forest-born Demosthenes,

Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas." "His conduct is such as would surprise any body not acquainted with him. However, you will remember, that Providence hath ordered to all a portion of sufferings and uneasiness in this world, that we may think of preparing for a better. I hope my dear child will keep up her spirits, and rub through every tryal."

The word Christmas he spells Xmas.

In the course of my peregrinations, I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a daughter of Patrick Henry-a lady of the old school. She was entirely affable, and ready to communicate whatever she remembered of the "I have no doubt of my dear B's resignation to olden time. Yet I confess it was quite a damper the divine will, in the afflictive stroke she has to my antiquarian fervor to hear her say, she re- felt since last year. The same good sense and membered hardly anything of her father. Indeed piety which have placed you so high in my eswhat she knew on that head was so familiar to her teem and that of every one of your acquaintance, mind that she deemed it scarcely worth relating. will, I trust, bear you up cheerfully through life. Her reminiscences I will set down here, at ran-I do assure you the comfort I feel, from reflecting dom, as they were at different times mentioned to on your character and disposition, is very great.

me.

She had seen General Washington and Albert Gallatin in conversation with her father at his house. General Washington was grave and never laughed. Her father on the contrary was a hearty laugher. Gallatin talked broken English. Patrick Henry while governor of Virginia, often cut wood and made up his own fire. He was singularly fond of his children. When

"I hope God will bless my dear B., and be her support and protection, and carry you through life under the guidance of his good providence."

1798. "I find my own health and strength declining; but, on the whole, not more than my time of life might expect.”

"I hope she will sometimes see you, and learn of you everything that is praiseworthy." 1791. "I am obliged to be very industrious,

"I hear A. has lost her second son. Poor, dear cess. girl, I hope she bears it well."

"I wish you were with us to enjoy the agreeable society of your sisters, at this place, which is very retired; indeed so much so, as to disgust them. But as we go to Redhill in about five weeks, they will be relieved from their solitude, as that is a more public place.”

"I have lost my crop of tobacco on Staunton, from a great fresh, and was otherwise damaged." Postscript, by his wife: "My dear B. will be so good as to excuse my writing a few lines in her pappa's letter, as we are very scarce of paper."

"This will be delivered you by your brother, who, with his wife, will visit you. You will no doubt see that she is a genteel person, and one who has been bred in polite life; and as she has an amiable character, I doubt not you will think her a very agreeable connection."

and to take on me great fatigue, to clear myself] sentinels to convey all intelligence instantaneously of debt. I hope to be able to accomplish this in a to the brain. The stomach is like a mill-the year or two, if it please God to continue me in power failing, it grinds more feebly-so, in indihealth and strength." gestion, the stomach carries on a feeble, painful proNostrums, in this case, bring, if any, only temporary relief; such efforts are no better than to set a mill wheel in motion by the hand. Nothing less than a full tide of water will impel the one; nothing less than the spring-tide of health will set the machinery of digestion again into full play. The brain seems to be a counterpart of the stomach-the camera obscura," on which all the "I must give out the law and plague myself sensations are pictured. Indigestion, though in no more with business; sitting down on what I general engendered in the stomach, sometimes have. For it will be sufficient employment to originates in the brain. This is especially the see after my little flock and the management of case among students and literary men, in whom my plantation." the exciting cause of indigestion is undue exertion of the brain. Excessive exertion weakens this organ, diminishes the nervous influence (formerly called the animal spirits,) which is essential to digestion. Some writer affirms that every idea of the mind is produced by an expansion or contraction, or some other motion of the brain. If so, it may be readily imagined how study, which requires so many motions of the brain, should injure that "viscus," and bring on indigestion, melancholy, phrenitis, and "all the thousand other ills that studious men are heirs to.” It appears, however, to be a well established fact that authors and literary men whose cerebel organs have been continually exercised are healthy and long-lived. The brain, therefore, is strengthened by cultivation, just like any other organ of the body; and an Almighty Benefactor has not bestowed the desire of knowledge without the capacity of obtaining it. "We are fearfully and wonderfully made." There is a mysterious sympathy between mind and body. In strong cases this is quite palpable. Fear drives the blood back to the heart-anger and modesty fill the blood vessels of the face. Any extreme passion takes away the appetite-as fear, anger, anxiety, hope. These effects are manifest and admitted, but when brought about by a slow, gradual process, the source is apt to Goldsmith I think it is, that remarks, that it is escape observation. A sudden calamity, coming at surprising people should be so obstinate as to die an unexpected moment, may at once unhinge and in a world where there are so many infallible re-distort the mind; the same effect may be as effecmedies for every disease. Pill Garlick, laboring under indigestion, applied to Dr. Abstemio, who advised him to starve the enemy out. After the lapse of some months, however, finding himself reduced to a lean anatomy, he abjured bran-bread and Bohea tea, and laid his case before the famous Dr. Humbug. Dr Humbug put him upon a more generous regimen, and in a short while set a thousand more blue devils to work, hammering on the noddle of Pill Garlick.

1787. "At present your mama and all our family live at one fire, and have not one out-house that will assist."

"I am preparing for Charlotte court on Monday, for my necessity's oblige me to take up my old calling again."

--

HYPOCHONDRIA.

"A thousand miseries at once

My heavy heart and soul ensconce."

Burton.

It is remarked of hypochondriacs, that each one thinks his own the worst possible case; and that, notwithstanding every body they meet is able to cure them, they never get well.

tually induced by the silent touches of protracted care. As sudden fright may produce instant death, so continual fears and apprehensions will at length wear away a frame of adamant. A rock may be as completely dissolved by drops of rain, as by the inevitable blast of forked lightning.

DIET, &c.

The brain is head quarters of the body, and I wish some man of wit would take the trouble "rendezvous generale," of the sensations-the will, to collate all the multifarious, absurd and contracommander in chief; and the animal spirits, the dictory opinions of dietetical writers. There is

scarce a single article of diet which has not been intense than that of a healthy man; because moranathematised by some one of these authors. Like bid sensations are more vivid and intense than Sancho Panza's attendants in his island, they healthy ones. And as objects, beheld through snatch away one dish after another from the table, semi-vitrified glass, seem distorted and misshapen, under pretence that it is indigestible. The truth so are objects seen through the fallacious medium is that nothing agrees with the dyspeptic. "One of disordered nerves. The remedy, then, is to man's food is another man's poison." It all de- lessen the number of the conceptions as much as pends on the idiosyncrasy. Some men are of diffi- possible; to divert the current of the thoughts from cult digestion, others are polyphagous. Some are the abstract to the actual-from the imaginary to herbiverous, some carniverous, some omniverous. the real; from things which may or may not be, Nothing is more absurd than the vulgar notion to things that certainly are. From this considerathat all sorts of food are equally wholesome. And tion, we learn, that solitude in melancholy is not only is one man's food another man's poison, mainly to be avoided, and occupation to be but what is food at one time, may be poison at ano-sought for. ther to the same individual.