best souchong tea. Oh! they loved their tea!

It was their nectar,

their chief good,' their ambrosial food. To this delicious beverage, all other viands yielded up the palm.

How well do I remember them, grouped about the tea-table, on a winter's evening, starched and prim, waiting for the moving of the waters.' A genial fire burnt brightly on the hearth; the tidy bricks were painted of a flaming redness; the brazen andirons were like refined gold. In those days, grates, Franklins, and other paraphernalia, had not possessed the ample jambs, nor dissipated those feelings of greater sociability, which rallied around the ancient hearth, like an altar. There was no intense and sulphur-breathing coal, to clog the free atmosphere of the apartment; but gay and brilliant flames shot upward, with an agreeable crackling, diffusing the double luxury of light and heat. A tabby-cat, that requisite appendage to a picture of domestic comfort, lay wrapped up in perfect quiescence on the rug. She was a beautifully-tortoised creature, and would have graced a painter's canvass. The mantel was not crowded with shell temples, and other gimcrackry of a vulgar school, but with four substantial brazen candlesticks, with china vases between, and at the ends two polished conch-shells, which made a dreary sound when applied to the ear, like the distant roaring of the surge. The family Bible occupied a conspicuous place in the apartment, and was reverentially supported by a polished walnut stand. The walls were adorned with needle-work, in excellent preservation, enclosed in narrow gilded frames, and protected from dust, dirt, and close inspection; the enduring monuments of Miss Patty's early taste and ingenuity. In order to save the trouble of answering questions, they were severally inscribed, basket of flowers,' 'fruit,' robin red breast,' etc., etc., and underneath, in legible characters, 'PATTY JONES.'

The

In fact, every thing about the apartment looked 'so nice.' carpet was most cleanly swept; the sideboard was polished to the last degree; the mahogany table in the centre reflected a plate of very desirable toast. The tea-urn, that honored receptacle, was worthy of its pure ambrosia. Non cedebat honori.' It raised itself in silvery whiteness, above all the minor utensils of the table, while the steam ascending from it, like a rich incense, made a shadowy undulation on the wall. Around its circumference, was an embossed representation of a fox-chase. Reynard was flying for his life; the huntsmen were winding their horns; the horses were dashing over the hedge; the hounds were in full cry, over 'bush, brake, and scaur,' and pursuing the game unto the death. The milk-pot was a little model of classic elegance. The cream reposed in it like double refined snow of the Appenines. It seemed as pure as purity itself. It looked a cordial, as if it might be 'parmaceti for an inward bruise,' a balsam for the most deadly wound. And then the sugar! — rivalling the milk in whiteness!-glistening in the bright light; cracked into the most convenient lumps, and ready to be conveyed with tongs of silver for the grand amalgamation!

Does not a tear-like

Is not your mouth moistened, my reader? drop struggle and gush from its corners, and your inmost stomach yearn? The lip has its tears of sympathy from a yearning stomach,

eyes,

as well as the eye from the 'burning crucible of the brain.' Oh! delightful banquets, noctes cenæque Deum !'-superior to all other banquets, and worthy the sweetest inspiration of the muse. Dinner, with its viands, is a gross, brutish, animal enjoyment. Teeth, muscles, eyes, heart, soul, must be engrossed in despatching its solid masses. But tea is a divine, ethereal, subtle symposium. It distils into the brain, it enliveneth the soul, it sharpeneth the tongue, it brighteneth the it smooths down wrinkles and cares; it is worthy of a god above the purple god Bacchus; worthier far of chased goblets, and to be crowned with flowers. Tea bringeth no redness of eyes, no defection of the wits, no grovelling obeisance to the earth, no mockery of the world, no melancholy abstractions. Tea clothes none with raggedness, shakes no man's credit, forfeits no friends, brings no gray hairs in sorrow to the grave,' makes no wives broken-hearted, no children beggars, no houses desolate. And can the bacchanal say as much, who steeps his soul in forgetfulness, and riots on the juice of the grape? Come with me to the garden of Rollo. He is a raving votary of the god. He revels in nocturnal orgies. Look around you, and behold the garden of the sluggard. How are these walks clogged with rubbish. These beds, once so redolent of fragrance, how vainly do they struggle against the dominion of weeds. How doth this tender plant droop for shelter. How doth that sweet flower struggle to bloom. How doth the bruised and trampled vine beg for thy training hand, heart-broken wife of his bosom! How even the birds do not pause upon the wing which once descended, and made these alleys vocal. Behold here a ruined arbor, a neglected grotto; there a fallen statue, and a fountain choked with leaves. The train of the serpent is over the 'flowers of loveliness;' the wild grass grows long and unheeded, and I gaze upon a waste and desert spot, which might have been a garden of paradise.

Direct your eyes to the old mansion, at the end of the avenue. The moss grows on the roof, the bricks drop from the chimney, the windows hang by a hinge, and the lintels are decayed. Does it bear about it any appearance of a HOME? Are there any altars around which the affections may gather in holy sacrifice? Alas, the golden censers have been broken, the sweet incense goeth up no more. And are these thy fruits, oh Bacchus! giver of joy? And is the danger sweet to follow the god whose temples are encircled with verdant leaves? Away with thee! I contemn thee, thou crowned god! We will tear down thy altars, and build others, even to new divinities. Behold a contrast. Come to the cheerful mansion of Miss Patty, and to her 'small domains.' Nightly she sips of her nectarean TEA. Do you see there aught of the elements of disorder? Is any thing apart from its own peculiar place? Are the walls unbrushed of cob-webs? Does the mantle harbor dust? The gauzy robe of Queen Mab might be trailed over those floors, and yet contract no soil. The spirit of comfort reigns within and without. The court-yard is blooming with prim roses, the weeded garden is sweet with herbs. This then is the spirit of tea!

Yet are there cavillers without number, despisers of God's blessings, setters forth of strange doctrines, who declare that even this harmless beverage is a poison. I abhor them I detest them! Keep your

Journals of Health,' gentlemen, your inane scribblings. More life has been sipped from a tea-spoon, than will ever be sucked through your quill. I wonder what next will be asserted; what new device to torture patience, or what new pledges will be required. Is tea a poison? Then is there ratsbane in a peach. Then call all things poison. Write poison on the flood of the rock, destruction in the air we breathe, or death upon the heavenly manna. Point me to the wretch who, being weary of life, seeks not the ordinary method of departure, and neither blows his brains out, nor leaps from the fourth story, and gasps out his life on an iron pale, nor tosses himself from some Milvian bridge into the sea, nor hangs like a dog in his own garret, nor draws his razor at right angles with his throat, and severs the vein jugular, but resorts to a more simple operation, and with all the coolness imaginable, tells cook to put the tea-kettle on a simmer, and mixing cream and sugar, drinks down the deadly hemlock, and departs to his fathers. Or have you ever known a coroner or a jury render a verdict in the words following, to wit: Poisoned by a cup of tea?'

'Ay, Sir, we grant you; but cause and effect are not always simultaneous. There be some things which loiter and lurk in the system, and the end of them is death. It is a slow poison.' Slow as a snail's pace, doubtless. It is a potion to be taken every day, and warranted to take effect' at the end of three score years and ten. Then, when the aged gentleman, with head like an almond tree, and well contented, goes to his long home, ye say, 'Behold the victim !'

It were a mockery to measure the depths of such shallow reasonings. Give me none of your TEA-total pledges.' I shall stand up for this 'ardent liquor,' be it green or be it black, without distinction of color.'

Is it not enough to cast away so many of God's good creatures,' and would you dry up this last drop of comfort also? Shall every upstart reformer be thrusting his pledge and statistics in the face of my conviction, and attenuate my already slender bill of fare,' dictating to me what I shall eat, and what I shall drink, and wherewithal I shall be clothed? Reining me within bounds, and saying 'hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther?' Shall my stomach never 'vaunt itself?' shall it never be 'puffed up? Truly, my poor judgment will have little to exercise itself upon, if it thus yields up its prerogative, but will be warped and twisted to suit the will of these moral charlatans. There is the Graham,' on the one hand, would starve me into a walking shadow,' and deprive me of those nutritious solids which make the man, substituting his own bran, worse than the broth of the Spartans. There is a host of zealots on the other, of whom we would not grumble a monosyllable, so long as they kept within modest bounds, and did not wax insolent in their might, but who, not contented with their inch,' but they must take an 'ell,' would banish from high days, and holidays all that can intoxicate,' pledging insipid healths in brimmers of water risum teneatis amici! vaunting philanthropists! Have ye yet to learn that it is not wine alone which can intoxicate? That there are other draughts, more delicious in the quaffing, and which make the brain reel and madden; love, beauty, flattery?

VOL. XIII.

20

Ye

bread. How happy and exhilarated am I after my two cups at breakfast! The world appears new and bright, after the night's refreshing slumbers, and casting aside slippers, I am ready to jump into boots, and to face the busy world. The Arab sips of it in the desert, and it imbues him with the spirit of his steed; and out of tiny and gilded cups, all spiced and fragrant, the houris of the harem drink it. IT IS GOOD. But shall I compare it with tea? As well compare the fountain, which sparkles in its vivacity, with the dull and sluggish pool. It does not claim eminence. But enough for the present. I shall be back to tea, and join the maiden drinkers in another dish,' anon.

LINES

TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE J. W. GOULD.

BY GRACE GRAFTON.

I.

THE South wind fanned his cheek, and ocean's wave
Whispered of health, to woo him from the grave,
As, launched once more upon the bounding main,
He left the land he ne'er might view again.
Painful his passage to that foreign shore,
Where lonely, sad, his sinking frame he bore;
And many a lingering sigh his fond heart gave,
For friends and kindred, as the gloomy wave
Bore him away, and sickness laid him low.
He prayed kind heaven to sanctify the blow;
But e'en in prayer, 'twixt him and heaven would come
Visions of love and home!

11.

'Twas passed, that voyage drear, and yet again
Helpless he floats upon the pathless main;
But homeward bound' the gallant vessel flew !
And bore within, kind, manly hearts, and true.
Gently they cheered his last sad hours of life,
And soothed the anguish of that mortal strife;
And through the solemn watches of the night,
Kept holy vigils; from the book of light
Shedding a halo round the brow of death:
As faintly ebbed the sufferer's parting breath,
'Spare me,' he cried, amid stern death's alarms,
'To reach my mother's arms!'

III.

It might not be; the conflict sad and sore
With christian patience, christian faith, he bore;
And nearer as the last dark moment came,
Ever he called upon his mother's name;
With filial fondness rare, and strong in death,
Bequeathed her blessings with his latest breath.
Still, still his spirit calls, from the blue sea,
Saying, 'Oh! mother loved, grieve not for me!
I do but wait thee on a happier shore,

The 'ebon gate' is passed; 't is o'er, 'tis o'er!
Of death the sting, of grave the victory:
Mother, I wait for thee!'

LITERARY NOTICES.

AN ADDRESS, DELIVERED BEFORE THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, at the Odeon in Boston, September 13, 1838. By EDWARD EVERETT. Boston: WILLIAM D. TICKNOR.

It is a pleasant sight, to see a high official personage, like Governor EVERETT, leaving the affairs of state for a time, to mingle with his young friends, as a familiar teacher, illustrating, as well by his example as his arguments, the influence of cultivated mind, and intellectual and moral enterprise, in a nation of freemen. The address before us is just such an one as might be expected from the pen of the refined and elegant scholar whence it emanates. It bears, throughout, those marks which ever distinguish the man of true genius from unimaginative, exploring writers, whom readers and public journals obliquely or explicitly praise, because in their long disquisitions to prove what is intuitively true or intuitively false, there is nothing which can be gainsayed, or which calls for reprehension. Here, on the contrary, interesting facts are reflected by lucid images, and expressed with singular beauty and terseness; yet there is an unambitious simplicity and plainness of style, remarkable no less for its energy and picturesqueness—a coincidence equally rare and fortunate. There is one great benefit resulting from this, which is of incalculable importance, but which is too often lost sight of. Truths, briefly illustrated, and felicitously enforced, will be remembered, by the hearer or reader, and be fruitful of good influences, long after the occasion of their delivery or publication has gone by. Interminable periods, and endless interlacings of diction, interspersed with labored classicalities, dragged in by ear and horn, with the spirit of a hide-bound pedant, are too often characteristics of some of our most prominent address and lecture writers, whose minds, however cultivated, are by no means fertile. Mr. VERPLANCK, whose literary repute (which may be mainly traced to this too ephemeral class of compotitions) may cause his manner to be emulated by some, is not unfrequently a delinquent in the characteristics we have commended; and we venture to affirm, what we have heard distinguished readers declare, that of the numerous productions of this nature, which have proceeded from his pen, no considerable sentence would be found to have been borne in mind by the hearer or reader, after the lapse of any length of time, however commendable its sentiments or inculcations. This is the error of a style which may be, and doubtless is, sufficiently correct, in a literal sense, perhaps laboriously so, but which nevertheless lacks ease, simplicity, and vivacity. The very reverse of these distinctive blemishes, are the prevailing characteristics of the address under notice, from which we proceed to select a few extracts, in proof of the justice of our encomiums. In some opening remarks upon commercial exchanges, we find the following:

"There are probably few individuals in this assembly, who took their morning's meal this day, without the use of articles brought from almost every part of the world. The table on which it was served was made from a tree which grew on the Spanish main