their delights. The hour of eleven had arrived, and he was about to glide unobserved from the scene, when a voice near his elbow uttered a single word which went like an ice-bolt to his heart, and in an instant froze the current of his youthful blood. He paused, and listened in terror. It was repeated. "NATHAN!"

In a low, sarcastic tone, that single word rung like a death-knell on his ear. The name which it pronounced was his own-the voice that uttered it was that of the tory, COBRA!

"I know you," he said, laying his hand upon his arm, for the youth had not yet turned to meet him. "I know you--you are NATHAN HALE, and you are here as a spy from the rebel camp. Nothing else would have brought you in this company."

“Well?" responded the other, in a tone of inquiry, but without changing his position. "Your plan shall be defeated. I will denounce you to General Howe."

"No! Cobra, no, you will not do that!" “I will, by G—! and you shall hang for this piece of knavery.”

"Cobra," said the young man, deigning for the first time to look the wretch in the face"Cobra, you are the son of my mother's brother -you will not betray me-or if you must, I pray you do it not here, at the festival."

Nathan Hale, for it was indeed he, well knew that no appeal to patriotism could move the breast of the tory, and for that reason he tried the force of consanguinity. But even that availed not with his base and heartless kinsman. Hale was denounced, and when dragged before General Howe, and in his presence accused with the object of his mission, he boldly and frankly avowed it, and without further trial was ordered to be executed on the following day!

the consummation of that brief and terrible sentence, he entreated the common privilege of conference with a clergyman, to aid in preparing his mind for death. In reply to this, he was told that he would "hang just as well without a priest as with one;" and the request was denied. He then asked that they would at least furnish him with a Bible, by the perusal of which to lighten his last moments. Thie also was refused. When taunted with his ignominious fate, he replied:

"The death that I shall die, will be a proud one. I shall die for my Country."

was,

At daylight, on the morning of his execution, he began writing letters to his mother and friends, and thus occupied the time until called out for execution. All his letters were destroyed, and when afterwards the inquiry was made, why this had been done, the answer "that the rebels should not know they had a man in their army who could die with so much firmness." The grim visage of death daunted him not. He approached the fatal moment, as one proud in the consciousness of integrity to his country, and his sole regret was that the object of his mission had been unfulfilled.

Thus died NATHAN HALE, as brave a patriot, and as pure a martyr, as ever gave a life in the cause of Civil Liberty. But what has Civil Liberty done for his name? Where rest his ashes? Where is the monument to record alike the virtues of the dead, and the sympathies of a grateful nation? Alas! the highest honor that his country has conferred upon his memory, was the privilege of mingling his dust with her own free soil, while Andre, the spy of her oppressor, lies gorgeously entombed by the side of England's Kings, heroes, and sages, in Westminster Abbey.*

The following extract from a valuable work, called "The Artist, Merchant and Statesman," by our fellow

*Captain Cunningham, the Provost Marshal, was the same that had charge of the prisoners at the old jail in New-York. This wretch was executed in London for forgery in 1791, and in his dying confession uttered the following words

"I shudder to think of the murders I have been accessory to, both with and without orders from government, especially while in New-York, during which time there were more than two thousand prisoners starved in the churches, by stopping their rations, which I sold. There were also two hundred and seventy-five American prisoners and obnoxious persons executed."

"Even Andre the spy was brought across the Atlantic, by a solemn Act of Parliament, and entombed by the side of heroes, and over him breathes the marble of a great sculptor.

"And where does Hale, the American spy, a loftier and a nobler character, sleep? Nobody appears to know, except a few fair, brave women of Connecticut, who are building his monument with their needles; and I need not say that every stitch is to our government a stitch of shame! When another General Washington wants another spy, he will be found, in spite of the treatment the generous Hale has had from our hands; but the commander who sends him will have had too much experience of the gratitude of our country to tell him: If worse comes to worst, my brave fellow, you will have a grave in your na tive soil, and a monument from your country.'"

MUSICAL TASTE does not, in the general acceptation of the term, comprehend the different orders into which music is divided. It is usually understood to be merely a judgment displayed in favor of, or against some particular composition whether sublime or beautiful, solemn or gay, melancholy or animated. Defined truly, Taste is a manifest sensibility to all the beauties of the higher orders of music, both as regards the descriptions of loveliness and grandeur in Nature, and the magnificence and omnipotence of God, its Creator.

Among professors, there is a commonly received idea, which includes all the essentials of music; a highly elaborated style, and this applied to either sacred or secular writings. If a composition of the simple-classic order, having some religious subject for its theme, does not display excessive originality, the seal of censure is by them attached to it, and it accordingly lingers in obscurity till finally forgotten. But if a work of the same sacred cast is treated elaborately, and is capable of describing, by the grandeur or exquisite sweetness of its harmonious combinations, every sentiment suggested in the theme, the stamp of approval is by them placed upon it, and it is presented to the world as a work with which to adorn some shelf in the school of high-classic music. With respect to secular writings, the decisions of these professors are the same: does simplicity characterize the one, it is thrown aside, and becomes a nonentity; does sublimity mark the style of the other, that receives their encomiums, and is placed among those which are considered the school to which the student or amateur must turn for the acquisition of a perfect musical education. I presume no one will question that there is a Taste connected with music, as well as with all others of those sciences from whose beauties we derive so many pleasurable emotions. It will not be my province to "investigate the nature of those qualities that produce the emotions of Taste;" nor "to investigate the nature of that faculty by which these emotions are received." I shall endeavor, however, to impress upon the mind of those who peruse this

I shall propose two points for my discussion: first, What is not Taste; and second, What is Taste.

To proceed with the first question: The feeling often called forth by a simple air, does not decide that the person in whose breast such feeling has being, possesses this faculty. How many are there who are delighted alone by the consumptive ballads of the day, or the comic minstrelsy which has, for a long time past, overran our country? The melancholy pleasure derived from the ballad, "I'm sitting on the stile, Mary," and the vivacity of spirits caused by the performance of "See that old gray goose sitting over yonder," are feelings which exist but temporarily. The style of music of the former may sometimes act as a means of placing one in an attitude of the character often described in novels: the head resting romantically upon the hand, the eyes peering obliviously into the flickering light of the taper. The latter kind, among those who are not imbued with the true spirit of music, causes a desire to almost turn somersets for very laughter. What benefit results from such songs as these? Do they leave any good behind them? do they gratify any intellectual quality of the soul? No, neither; they satisfy only a feeling that may be uppermost at the time-romantic this moment; that, jocose. We frequently hear persons remark, that such an individual has no taste for music, or such a one has no ear for anything really fine. Now, what do these observers mean by fine? The music of Handel's "Messiah?" of Haydn's "Creation?" of Beethoven's "Mount of Olives?" of Mozart's "Requiem ?" of Mendellsohn's "Elijah ?” these are far, far away from their thoughts: they look much lower than the splendor of such musical scriptures. What remains for them to deduce as examples of the fine? "Come, oh, come with me," Carry me back to old Virginny," and similar manufactures. These daubings of musical painting (to which recourse might be had occasionally, if it was not a settled fact that we are too prone to indulge in anything superficial or nonsensical) are deficient in the true object to which music was

No;

evidently intended by our beneficent Creator. I do not mean to prefer the idea, that man should devote himself exclusively to the sacred order of music; but I do desire to see his faculties which raise him so far above all else in creation-directed in the healthy channel of moral songs, lower than which man should not allow them to descend, and out of which, it is indubitable, can spring powers to cheer him on through life, though misfortune and sorrow hang their shadowy clouds incessantly over him. He could find no solace from his cares by recourse to love ballads, nor could he be cheered through the drollery of comic minstrelsy; on the contrary, they would awaken in him disgust rather than pleasure, and tend to deepen the gloom with which he might be surrounded.

Again; what a curious species of music is affixed to the end of the numerous monthly magazines. It would seem to be understood by itinerant professors, that the more senseless music is, the better will it succeed with the public. Though this idea is entertained by some, it does not obtain with the majority of those writers; for the latter do consider that such works can be written by themselves alone, and through great study and trouble, simple as they are. Their sense of the glory of the science is drowned in their extraordinary appreciation of themselves, and their supposed talent—a talent thus far evinced by them, wonderful for its superficiality. The very abandoned taste they adopt, or which they, at least, seem to cultivate, indicates the absence from them of true genius. Their sphere is generally confined to what is termed secular music; and,

with few exceptions, our periodicals teem with their nonsensical compositions-compositions which, if much noticed, will deteriorate the advancement some few Americans are at present making in the noble art. Many persons who have neglected to cultivate their musical abilities, and upon whose tables these periodicals find a place, imagine that, as the literary talents displayed by their editors or editresses are of a high order, they must possess excellent judgment in the choice of music for their pages. With this conception the subscriber feels content, and concludes that it is unexceptionable. But I venture the assertion, that not one out of fifty editors or editresses can play a tune, sing a note, or exhibit any actual musical taste. Love for a class of music, such as these writers bestow upon the world, does not denote that intellectual faculty by which the good or bad is determined. It is a class productive, through weak causes, of futile and transient effects.It is composed, usually, of chains of notes sufficiently juxtapositious to create an air, but if examined artistically, even artificially so, it will be observed how little genuine melody or intrinsic harmony is employed and combined to exhibit that beauty of proportion which, above all others, the science of music so imperatively demands. Even the choice and application of music are often foreign to the sentiment of the words which they accompany: a rondo soothes the broken spirit of some wo-begone lover; a dead-march attests the joyfulness of meeting between long-absent and long-separated friends. Neither of the species of music to which I have thus far referred, contains the least of that essence which Taste dictates.

WHAT! put her in daguerreotype,

And victimize the pet!

Those ruby lips, so cherry-ripe,

On lifeless silver set!

The frisking, laughing, bouncing thing,
So full of life and glee-

A restless bird upon the wing-
A sunbeam on the sea!

Put shadows on that forehead fair-
That look of quick surprise-
And give a dull unmeaning stare
To those blue laughing eyes!

Now, do you think a chance you've got?
Out with the colors quick;

She's screaming at the very thought
Of such a shabby trick.

Now she is still-fly to the stand;
The smiling features trace!
In vain-up goes her tiny hand,
And covers half her face.

Give up the task-let childhood be
Nature's own blooming rose !
You cannot catch the spirit free,
Which only childhood knows.

Earth's shadows o'er that brow will pass,
Then paint her as you will;

When time shall make her wish, alas

She were a baby still.

JULIUS CESAR, according to William Shakspeare, proved himself, by the utterance of the sentiment above quoted, to have been a man of shrewdness and wisdom. There are no men so deserving to be shunned, or so dangerous as associates, as your cloud-covered, vinegarvisaged, calculating creatures, who are always plodding with their noses to the ground, and, eschewing all pleasure themselves, grunt and groan when they witness the enjoyment which others partake of. Sometimes this spirit is evinced through an ostentatious exhibition of mock-morality; sometimes through a sordid, heart-eating, miserly canker; and again, from an inborn, a natural incapacity, to appreciate that which belongs to the beautiful and the good.

You shall go with us to the concerts of the two nightingales, or to Barnum's, or Christy's, or Fellows', or, indeed, to any of the various places of rational amusement in the metropolis, and we will show you a crowd of happier, aye, and better people, than you will find at the money-mart any day of the week—and there is many a good and happy fellow on 'change, too, but he is one of those who partake, rationally, at the feast of popular amusement.

It is a fixed principle in man's nature, that to be happy, his mind must undergo a process of relaxation from the toil and thought which the every-day duties of life impose upon him. Is he a merchant? He goes from his countingroom at night, not to enjoy the sweets of the domestic circle, but to fret over losses by bankruptcy, to speculate upon the prospects of tomorrow, or at best, to calculate the profits of

to-day. Is he a mechanic? When he reaches home, the sudden transition from labor to the quiet of his own household, produces a transient dullness-he plays a little with the children, kisses his wife, tries to read a little, and then with the remark that he must be "up early in the morning," he goes early to bed, weary with nothing to do. Now, an occasional evening given to public amusement by these good people, breaks up the insipid monotony. The exercise of going forth-the preparation-the anticipation-the crowd of people into which they are thrown, and the performances which they witness-are all powerful solvents of those glued up crannies of the mind, which, when loosened, pour forth a flood of topics, each affording of its kind-food for the finest and best sensibilities-instruction-or, perchance, mere merriment. A play has been known to convert a rogue into an honest man; a night at Christy's has kept many a family in gayety for a month; even the quaint monkey that follows the organ-grinder about the streets, with his tricks and grimace, has shook the wrinkles out of many a dried up spleen, and brought a warm grin to the frozen and austere visage. We are no advocates of mere frivolity, or licentiousness; but the axiom that

"All work and no play

Makes Jack a dull boy,"

holds good in our estimation. "Men are but children of a larger growth," and grown-up children require relaxation as much as those who are "only little." Music, Dancing and the Stage, have all been largely employed as accessories to religion; in fact, the latter found its origin in the Church, and was for a long period employed as the most powerful auxiliary that could be used to fix religious impressions upon the minds of the people. These things, therefore, in their legitimate sense, cannot be called profane-it is only their perversion that is condemnable.

Private amusements, such as family parties, where music, dancing, and convivial conversation are employed, albeit a little harmless flir