ness stopped suddenly to enquire of the lawyer if all that he might say in explaining these matters would be considered as upon oath, and having been answered affirmatively, he remarked, that he should be nation particular what he said.) "Now boys," said the old one, when we get to the squire's you must lay it on the old major pretty slick and thick. I know the squire fancies himself the 'cutest man in the settlement; and though he does not care two corn-cobs what becomes of the major in the long-run, yet, as he be a trying to get run in for a county commissioner, he cannot very well dispense with the major's electioneering until after the election time. So my boys, you see, in order to wind up the 'hol of the sneck-snarled circumstances snug and slick on our own spindle, we must not be over particular as to the simplicity of the matter; in fact, we have now got so far that we must for'ard any how. Now, Mr. Streakit, you know what you're about, I reckon; and you know what 'ill be what, if so be as we kennel the old major. Now listen,-I'll tell what you should know before the squire, and I expect you 're bright scholar enough to get a short lesson by heart at once hearing. The major butchered a hog about the 28th of October that had a couple of under-slits in the right ear, and an upper slit in the left, which you know is the way I mark my hogs. That one day when you were boarding your school-spell at the major's, you remarked that it was considerable sweet nice pork you were eating, but rather sparelike; upon which the major replied unpremeditatedly, that stolen things are sweet,' as Amos Snubbins said when he bussed his grandmother in the dark and thought it had been Polly Prudence his sweetheart; and that when you asked him if he alluded to the pork, he winked his left eye and said, Dead hogs never tell no secrets.' And you, Sam'l, my son, mind that you look straight a-head, and make affidavit, that you was in the woods a-looking for chestnuts, on or about the 26th day of October, that you saw the major and his oldest boy dragging a hog along down by the creek towards his sawmill, and that from its size and colour you are bodily confirmed in your belief, that it was one of the three hogs we turned into the woods. And mind boys, both on ye, that whenever you do not see clear through the business, just give me a 'what's-next look,' and if I dont finally make out the balance of the matter, why my name's no longer Ichabod Sweeny. So now we'll go a-head to the squire's, in order to give him time to hear our allegations, and afterwards to make out a States' Warrant, which I will take to Constable Whops; and if he's about hom' there will be plenty of time for him to pop it on the old major before sun-down.' When Mr. Sweeny had got thus far, the others jumped up and said, We be ready, we know quite enough to limit the major; so off they all went, and I guess I see'd no more on 'em." Mr. Drinkwater having said all he wished, and quite enough as he supposed to clear the major, was seating himself very composedly, when Mr. Sweeny's lawyer begged to ask him a question or two. "Pray, Mr. Drinkwater, what might be the distance between the spot where Mr. Sweeny was sitting on the log and your lurking-place, that you heard the whole so distinctly?" "One rod, five feet, seven inches and a half," replied the witness exultingly; which, in English measure, is twenty-one feet and an eighth of a foot. Here the old associate judge shook his head at Drinkwater, and the president apparently made a memorandum upon the sheet of paper before him. "Well, and pray what prevented the party from seeing you, if you were so near them ?" asked the cross-questioner. "I say, Mr., can you tell me, what prevented Saul from seeing David when he cut off the skirts of his garment?" The lawyer asserted that this was not a direct answer to his question, so Drinkwater appealed to the court, which decided that it was direct and to the point,' when a long and general buzz of applause followed. The lawyer then proceeded: "I expect, Mr. Drinkwater, you are the major's downright particular friend; will you take upon you to swear, that should the major be acquitted that you are neither in expectation of, nor already in the possession of, some fee or reward ?" Here the court interfered, and told the witness that he need not answer that, nor any other question of a personal nature; but he begged that he might be allowed to answer it, for particular reasons,' and a short consultation having taken place between the two judges who were awake, he was allowed to proceed. "I am free to confess," said Drinkwater, " that at one individual period of this business, the major offered to send me up a barrel of whiskey from his distillery, when he got out of this here affair, if I would promise to tell all I knew about the matter, and expose the insinuations of neighbour Sweeny, his boy, and Streakit the school-teacher. But I told him that I guessed he was a-trying to insult my feelings, seeing as how I was secretary of the Grindstonville Temperance Society; but at the same time I told him that I would bring him off, royal quick, on one condition, namely, that afore his trial came on he should sign the Temperance Pledge; which, after a tarnation deal of chaffering, he finally consented to do; and here I have got his name, the last on the pledge, for all as cares to examine it. I expect it might be just as convenient to mention, that should Mr. Sweeny set about fitting up a distillery after the major has shut his'n up, the major reserves the qualification of opening his'n again, which I agreed to on the part of the Society, for it is quite unnatural hard to witness our worst enemies growing wealthy on what might have been ours." David Drinkwater having explained to his own satisfaction, more than to the major's, how matters stood between them, the examination of witnesses closed. The States' Attorney then proceeded to make the following remarks, as prosecutor in this cause, I shall not attempt to follow him through the various intricacies of a "lengthy" harangue, which was addressed more to the feelings of the jury, than to the evidence of the case, the law, and the facts. He was peculiarly eloquent in referring to the high respectability of the accused, with whom he said he had been intimately acquainted for many years. reasoning was something of this nature, but his style and manner I can neither imitate nor describe accurately. He commenced nearly in this way. "Often has it been my painful duty,-a duty which nothing short of the love I bear, and the obligations I owe to my native and beloved country, should ever have imposed upon His me, to solicit at the bar of even-handed justice an infliction of penalties, and of condign punishment, commensurate with the offended majesty of those righteous and equal laws, by which the favoured citizens of this great, powerful, free, and independent nation have agreed and submitted to be ruled and governed. Theft, in every possible shape and bearing, is one of the worst and meanest of vices; but where two great moral, and national I may say, principles are involved, as in the case before this honourable court, and so respectable a jury,-I cannot find epithets sufficiently degrading and soul-subduing to apply to the individual who could be guilty of so monstrous a crime. The fellow who steals a horse-though, probably, a lazy rogue and vagabond,-possesses, it is very clear, a certain ambition to rise in the world, and to leave behind him his humbler walk of life; while he who is tempted to steal an ox or a sheep commits the theft for the sake of the leather and the wool-and consequently supplies himself with shoes and woollen clothing, both highly necessary during our long and severe winter, and not for the sake of gratifying a hungry stomach (a god which few of us Americans worship),-for beef and mutton, I am rejoiced to say, never instigate the moral American to the breaking of the law. But alas! it must be admitted, that the temptation is too powerful when pork falls in the way of an easyprincipled citizen. The passion for pork is national! and I rejoice that it is so-because it demonstrates, beyond all doubt, the superlatively-refined taste of our people. In consequence of this admitted noble partiality, our sages and legislators have found it necessary to make those laws bearing upon it terrifically severe. Therefore, he who steals a hog, under any circumstances, is guilty of an offence of a most henious character; but when one neighbour steals another neighbour's hog, why another great and vital moral principle is forfeited, namely, the duty we all owe to our neighbour, as recorded in that book from which there is no appeal." It would be vain to attempt to follow the learned gentleman through all the changes he was pleased to ring upon the atrocity of that crime whereof his acquaintance, the major, had been accused; and he wound up his remarks more strangely than ingeniouslyby insinuating that the evidence was of such a nature, "that hardly a shadow of suspicion could attach to the gentleman's repu tation and character." The judges seemed of the same opinion; for when the president summed up the evidence in the half-dozen sentences he had taken the trouble to commit to paper, he told the jury that he entertained precisely the same views that the States' Attorney had so forcibly elucidated and explained; wherefore, he did not consider it necessary to press upon their attention any remarks of his own. It was clear to him, he said, that Mr. Sweeny had lost a hog, and whether it had been taken by Major Snodgrass, which he did not believe, or by a black bear which he did believe, still the loss was precisely of the same extent to Mr. Sweeny. There had, he admitted, been considerable powerful swearing on both sides; but it was clear to him, and he presumed it would be obvious to the jury, that there was a large balance in the major's favour. He then said that he would not detain them longer; and he begged to suggest, that they should be as smart as possible in giving in their verdict, as the gouging case had yet to come on, and it was already half-past four o'clock, and consequently wanted but two hours to supper-time. Without leaving their seats the jury returned a verdict of not guilty; whereupon the major got upon his legs, shook hands with the States' Attorney and president judge; and without waiting for any formal dismissal, invited all his friends and witnesses to accompany him down to Colonel Longbore's tavern to take some bitters;" in the excitement of the moment totally forgetting his agreement with David Drinkwater, and his having put his name to the Temperance pledge. TO THE SORCERER MEMORY. GREAT Magician! Wizard dread! I implore thy aid for me; Who from life and me have fled, Bid them hasten by thy spell, Back to this small, misty earth, All the Spirits floating there, But those forms I've lov'd in vain, Cloth'd in frail mortality! Use thy magic, I implore, For The Dead thou canst restore! Let me see and love again! They come they gaze!-they speak!-they move! May I not clasp these Beings?—No! They fade away!-they melt !--they go! Then let me follow those I love! H. D. 276 A PRAISE OF NONSENSE. (WITH A SPECIMEN.) BY CORNELIUS WEBB E. SENSIBLE Reader,-if you are not a sensible reader (ask yourself that leading question, as the lawyers call those grave impertinencies which come home to your bosoms, and point blank to your business) give an honest verdict against yourself (which jurors sometimes do when they intend it not), and lay down this paper as a thing with which you have nothing to do if you are sensible, and you can speak to your own character in that respect, read on, and read out. Sensible Reader-for so you are- -"I read it in those eyes"-did you never enjoy, luxuriate in, abandon yourself to Nonsense for a little hour-for a season—while a man might count sixty minutes as they beat timely, with regular pulsations; and was not your enjoyment, your luxuriation, and self-abandonment sweet, and pleasant, and delectable?-When your mind was a-weary of the abstruser studies; or you were sinking under the waking night-mare of some great worldly care; or shrinking fearfully from fearful anticipations of slow-coming, but coming miseries; or prostrate, soul and body, under the heavy pressure of true, positive sorrows, was it not, in such hard hours as these, like letting a bow, long-strained, relax— or like giving slackness to a lute-string, to throw off the bit and bridle of serious restraints, and give a loose to sense, till it grew antic, and behaved itself like Nonsense?-Was not Nonsense then to Sense-(to your released Mind)—what shade is unto light, making the light more beautiful by contrast? Was it not like a discord in a delicious melody, making the next concord all the sweeter? Or like silent slumbering after sorrowful wakefulness? Or like the calm that follows up the storm? Or like a cheerful smile upon a face of care? Or like condescension after pride? Or the freedom of a night-gown and old easy slippers after the cramping fashionabilities and outward-man conformities of boots, tightfitting, Hoby-made, and a confining coat, Stultz-constructed, and bursting at all its button-holes, you are so "cribbed and cabined" in by its extreme fitness?-Was it not as pleasant as a night's dancing after a month's gout?-An indulgence, like the brow-beaten schoolboy's giggle when the harsh, task-compelling usher turns his back?- An easement, like the laugh which your politeness has suppressed till some wearying blockhead, or pedantic dullhead, or perfumed puppy has left the room, and set you at your ease again? If ever your sensible indulgence in delicious nonsense was like, or at all like, any of these exquisite enjoyments, then I pray you pardon me, dear reader, while I indulge myself (and you, if you are wise enough sometimes to play the fool)—with this short saturnalium of folly! Sensible as you are, you cannot but agree with me" that that same word" Nonsense," which greybeards call" unmeaning, is the most misunderstood substantive in our many-tongued language. Fools do not understand it-how should they ?-though they affect to be very knowing upon the what is, and the what is not. "The wisest man the world e'er saw" knew it, and called it vanity. If you would come to the proper |