All this feeling, which we have here perhaps exaggerated, makes us distrust ful when we hear French novels cried up as great, pure, deep, and the like. Yet we fancy it does not operate so strongly as to blind us to real merit; it only throws the burden of proof on the novels. Good has come out of Nazareth, notwithstanding the proverb, and France may yet give the world a Shak

speare.

But that a female Shakspeare has now arisen in the person of Madame Sand, we do not believe. We have read, we are happy to say, only one of her novels, and are therefore better qualified to speak of them than if we had read more, as hands that are but a little soiled are fitter to lay on white paper than those that have been washed in mire. Perhaps if we had read more we should condescend to argue against them, which now appears absurd; our common sense might have become obscured. We read only the one where a woman of the most exalted virtue aggravates a green young man through a reasonably sized volume, and never gives him any satisfaction; but when she has fooled him to the top of his bent, turns him off forever. Consuelo we are yet innocent of, and from the work we read, and all that we have heard of this, we feel almost so strong in resolution as not to need to pray to be preserved from it. When an inexperienced youth first comes to the city, he takes every man he meets who goes unshorn and wears frogs on his coat, for a foreign marquis, but by and by, he learns that one whom he thought most high in rank, is nothing but a poor barber, and his illusion vanishes forever. Whiskers and frogs have, with him, lost their charm. So it is with these high transcendental novels, that are so crammed with poetry, philosophy, and chastity. A man of sense, accustomed to our grand old poets, and our better novels, needs to read but one of them cannot read more. For with his mind stored with images of real natural beauty, how shall he find room for the false and halfmade creations of Parisian debauchees and harlots, that write they care not what, so it gives them the means to support their luxury or pamper their vanity?

How can he please himself with glitter of words, and tedious questionings of great truths that it goes against the stomach of his sense to doubt? If these writers would only leave us alone in our simple religious faith, in our common views of God, ourselves, and the world, their mere horrors and licentiousness would not be so bad, though still bad enough. But they muddle the mind, and make the voice of reason and conscience 66 an uncertain sound." Observe the admirers of Sand. Are they not Sand-blind? yea, "high gravel blind," most of them? Can they understand Shakspeare? Do they relish anything in him after the manner of those that can see? No! they are all wildered; nothing is too daring for them in speculation; little common thoughts that have been thought over and over by every soul that lives, they seize upon as discoveries; whatever subject they take up, they discuss with equal irreverence and defiance of sense; there is no teaching them, and the more you argue with them the plainer it appears that they are incapable of being convinced by reasons; and you are forced to the conclusion that either there is, and ever has been, nothing settled in the world or that they are crazy.

We trust

The number of poor young gentlemen and ladies all over the country that are already in this deplorable condition, it is frightful to contemplate. They tell us "there is a good time coming!" But we don't believe it. We have yet hope that what they understand by the "good time," will never come. We believe that virtue will be virtue, and vice, vice, in the next generation as now. too that the Bible, and the Christian religion, will be left so that simple-minded people may still rest secure in faith and hope, however much they that are compelled to choose a belief, may be at the mercy of indifference. confidence in the Saxon blood, in the reality of knowledge, and in the mercy of Heaven. In a word, we have firm faith, that however these vagaries, and fevers, and fashions, may hinder growth and interrupt true progress, they will all yield in time to the silent influence of Truth and the invincible power of COMMON SENSE.

We have yet

TOTSVANIM in quadrigemina creates infinite sense of smelling. Then can a man smell radishes in the moon, and tell the odor of Alexander's breeches, though he be dead two thousand years. By smelling, you may then distinguish a knave from a fool-a cat from a kitten; conclude on the immortality of new poems, by smelling at their leaves; tell the age of an old belle, the wealth of a millionaire, the soundness of a horse, the truth of a doctrine, the right of a cause, by smell. Neither in heaven nor in hades, in the earth nor on it, in sun nor planets, in sea nor air, shall anything escape your

nose.

I must not omit to tell you how deeply Slawkenberg smelt on one occasion; for it is no ordinary nose that could do as much. Having hired himself to a prime minister to smell out conspiracies, he detected four at a sniff, and the ringleaders were immediately seized and executed, so great confidence did he inspire by his trick of showing the whites of his eyes. He could criticise a volume by the smell of the binding, and by smelling the outsides of letters, concluded infallibly on the character of their writers. Sniffing at a volume of Goethe's Elegies, he said they not only smelt of the lamp, but had very much the scent of a Luci na Cordial, and would probably produce a similar effect upon their imitators.

Yet this is but an exaltation of a power that is natural. For, as there is a physical so is there a spiritual smell. Does not the lawyer smell out his suit, and the lover his mistress? The judge claps his nose to the books; the divine to his sermon; you pull your enemy's

nose to try his spirit-you turn up your own, if he fails to resent it; which, to my thinking, are proofs from the common belief of men, now taken to be the strongest of all proofs, that there is a spiritual. nose and a spiritual smell; and not only that, but even a spiritual odor apperceivable by them; concluding by the great organon of analogons.

I know there are certain skin-deep philosophers, who affect to deny this, on the ground that the spirit does but use and employ the senses, without sharing in their specific nature, as men use tweezers and snuff-boxes, without having analogical tweezers and snuff-boxes in their ears or noses. That if there be a nose within a nose, and an eye within an eye, and an ear within an ear, the soul itself, in its high tabernacle, is but a convocation of representative eyes, ears, and noses, and no real or absolute essence; that the mystery of creation lies in the multitude of the material objects, and the simplicity of the spiritual power which controls them; and that if reason controls the appetites and passions, it is because in itself it has nothing of their specific nature, and is by that difference made king and lord over them all; as being that out of which they proceed but not that which they specially are; and the like, concluding, in fine, that neither the universe nor the soul of man is a nest of boxes; nor Deity a jumble of the ghosts of analogons; with other irrelevant stuff, very obscure and hypermetaphysical, with which neither you nor Ï, being persons practical, have the least concern, my dear doctor.

EXHAUSTED.

able to my fancy to entertain and cherish such a faith. Could anything be more entertaining than to talk with some wise and observant person, just returned from the invisible world, where he had seen all the wonders of the place?

Yet, notwithstanding the irresistible force, and entire sufficiency of this argument, I will venture to add a few more; not so much to convince, as merely to exercise and confirm your docile, but as yet weak and wavering belief.

Revelation and reason teach us that there are spiritual beings; ourselves, for example, our guardian angels, and our evil geniuses. Of these existences we entertain not a doubt, no, not the shadow of one. Why then deny that Slawkenberg held intercourse with good and evil angels? The argument is conclusive, but if you do not like it, you can pass on to my next, which is: that as it is impossible in the nature of things, to prove that our venerable sage did not hold intercourse with spirits, it would be idle and unphilosophical, and therefore unbecoming your wisdom, to deny that he did.

My fourth argument is more complicated. To understand it you must first admit that if you and I were spirits, (which we undoubtedly are,) we should do as spirits do, in the body; and if out of the body, then, as they do out of the body. This is rather subtle and difficult, but you will undoubtedly master it. Now, because it is essential to my argument, aud therefore necessary to be conceded by you, I assume that spirits out of the body do what spirits out of the body do, and nothing more nor less: i. e. they converse, which is perfectly evident, on the principle of sufficient reason; in a word, I defy you to prove the contrary. Having these points established, it remains only to inquire upon what grounds we rest our opinion of Slawkenberg's honesty. Can we accept his simple affirmation? No! that were an extravagant folly; it is by our knowledge of our own internal constitution we are

to judge him. If our own experience agrees with his assertions, all objections à priori, or from improbability, may be

set aside.

A relater of supernatural events is either a veracious chronicler, or a knave or an insane enthusiast. That Slawkenberg was no insane enthusiast I hold evident from his rational account of himself, his way of life, which was prudent on the whole, and,

lastly, his knowledge of mental science; which last I find, by comparison with my own, to have been very great. It remains only to determine whether he was a knave or no; and this is at once answered by the fact that he was made, at several periods of his life, a deacon of a church, a doctor of laws, a privy counsellor, and a professor of obstetrics; which puts his honesty above suspicion; beside which I have to add, that he was never once in his life detected in an absolute lie; which are, severally and together, quite enough to raise any man above the suspicion of being a rogue.

It is at least certain that he was neither mad nor foolish, having so profound a knowledge of the sciences; and as for his dishonesty, the proofs already given are, or ought to be, sufficient.

I will not pretend to deny that, for reasons known to himself, a great physiologist or a learned metaphysician may choose to be a great deceiver; for there are many examples of antiquity to show the possibility of the thing. Appollonius of Tyana pretended to raise the dead; and there have been, in all ages, persons of unquestionable piety weak enough to employ ridiculous frauds and delusions to convince and terrify the ignorant; nor am I perfectly satisfied in my mind of the injustice of such a proceeding. Let it be supposed, for example, that the pious Slawkenberg could think of no better method of rousing the attention of the world to his doctrines, than by affirming that he learned them by conversation with spirits? What then? did he not know that his doctrines were true, and that if spirits had conversed with him they would have admitted their truth? and was not the absolute certainty of that event a sufficient ground for asserting that it happened?-to say nothing of the excellency of the end in view, namely, the drawing of men's attention to the doctrines?

The one sole idea prevailing throughout the whole of Slawkenberg's folios, is that of the analogons, or of things within things; as, for example, of the nose within the nose, the hand within the hand, the leg within the leg, and so forth, of the whole organism. So perfectly is this idea elaborated by our author, there is nothing in heaven, earth or hades, left unexamined by him with reference to it.

That

"Everything is like everything else,"

is the first axiom of his philosophy; the second, that

"In everything, everything is;" and the third, that

"Everything is in everything else;" or, as a certain ancient philosopher expressed it, "all is in each, and each is in all the bag is as much in the pudding as the pudding is in the bag; the man is as much in need of money as need of money is in the man, neither more nor less; which tallies subtilely with that other dogma of the same philosophy, that "nothing can act where it is not;" which is as much as to say, for example, put physic in your stomach and not in your shoe, and money in my neighbor's purse, leaves me neither bett nor worse."

"Such being the doctrine," remarked Pantol to me," you will instantly perceive that no sacrifice nor martyrdom could be thought of too extravagant or terrible to be suffered for it. Now the worst of all martyrdoms is to suffer in the opinion of posterity; and the greatest of all sacrifices is the sacrifice of conscience and reputation. How immense, therefore, should be our admiration for the venerable metaphysician, who, for the promulgation of his doctrine, and the theological notions springing out of it, was ready to lay down his reputation at the feet of truth, and sacrifice his conscience for the sake of piety."

You will now understand with great ease what I am about to communicate respecting Slawkenberg's conversations with spirits; knowing his design in recording them, and never forgetting that everything is said with a view to establish the mighty doctrine of the analogons; a doctrine which, notwithstanding Pantol's sceptical sneers, is undoubtedly to be esteemed the most mysterious and remarkable of modern psychological discoveries.

He relates that, for years previous to his descent into hades, he had held intercourse with spirits. By fasting a week," says he, "on bread and water, I acquired a power of conversing with the souls of the dead, who would appear in the anterior lobe of my brain and inform me of what was passing in hades, or in the seven heavens."

They addressed themselves to the spiritual eye and ear, and not to the external sense.

There is no difficulty in understanding this if you will but remember the analo

gons; nay, I will assure you by a better means even than that. If, for the sake of argument, you have a dear friend who is in England, while you are in America, you will sometimes have a vivid recollection of him, and will, in a manner, behold him, by your spiritual senses. If his body were actually present, then, the several impressions of shape, color, size, touch, and the like, which you received from him, entering your senses, would create in you an image of him, which is a spiritual image; for it is by this image, and not by color or shape, that you know your friend. Now please observe, that the image once planted in your brain by the joint effect of all the senses, it remains when the object is taken away. When, therefore, we speak to each other about our friends, absent or present, it is of these spiritual images we speak, and not of their color, smell, touch, or other external qualities.

Every man's brain is occupied with a crowd of these spiritual images which he calls "friends,” “enemies,” “acquaintances," &c. They lie dark until occasion calls them up. Now, to prove to you that these images, and not the sensuous objects, are the real things meant, let me try an experiment. Do you place yourself behind a screen or partition, I myself being supposed-take notice that I said supposed to remain on the other side, and a thin partition only between us, but quite impervious to sight. Now do you, fully supposing as I said, talk with me through the partition. The conversation is going on. Some person comes to you and says, "Who are you talking with " You reply, with a smile of satisfaction, "With my virtuous friend Yorick"—just loud enough for me to hear. "Ah!" cries the other, in a rapture, is it possible I find myself at last within so short a distance of the truly singular and agreeable Mr. Philip Yorick?" "I have the happiness," you answer, "to assure you of it." With an exclamation of joy, the stranger throws down the partition, and behold Herr Dertuyfle, the ventriloquist, sitting very much at his ease, imitating my voice and manner! Now, to carry the deception still farther, imagine the ingenious Dertuyfle assuming not only my voice, but my countenance and manner, with such a skill as absolutely to deceive yourself, who have known me this ten years-would you not immediately after have sworn that you saw and conversed with me? "Certainly." Very well, then,

how many times may you not have been deceived on less important occasions in the voices and faces of your friends and acquaintances? Their outsides are perpetually varying; but in that spiritual image of them which you carry in your brain, there can be no deception; and these, consequently, are the TRUE, the outsides false and fleeting. Not only fashionable people but all persons indiscriminately are, in the language of melancholy Burton, "a company of outsides." Having convinced you by this simple illustration, I may now go on to enlighten you farther concerning Slawkenberg's conversations with the spirits of the

dead.

They appeared" in the anterior part of his brain," in the lobe appropriated to the imaginative powers. By which we are to understand not a visible but a spiritual appearance as when we see a person with the mind's eye. Now, as we all have this power, it were idle to deny it to the intelligent Von Slawkenberg.

Whatever we have asserted, agreeably to our own knowledge of nature and the properties of things, we ought to admit as true, until the contrary appears. If I am told that the Rev. Silas Slug's election sermon will be sunk out of memory in a week, I am bound to believe it; for it is the nature of heavy matter to sink. If I am told that Professor Postzh pronounced a certain metaphysical treatise of mine to be heavy, I am bound to believe that too; for it is a common error of weak hands to call that heavy which they cannot handle. And so when I hear many professing disbelief in Von Slawkenberg's revelations, I am not astonished, considering his use of analogy and symbolism, by which the plainest truths, as well as the most profound, are hidden under an almost impenetrable veil of mystery.

I hold it unquestionable that our learned author did really see and converse with the spirits of the dead, and with devils: the manner of that seeing has been ex plained; but now let us consider what is meant by a devil. First, then, as a devil is a spirit, and spirits may be incarnate, devils may be incarnate; which I hold certain. Consider whether a creature composed altogether of pride, lies, dishonesty, impurity, ferocity and drunkenness is not a real devil incarnate, or devil in the flesh? If you ever saw such a creature you will know my meaning. Like a devil, it is cruel, usurping, weak, mischievous and full of treachery; like

a devil, it is damned, both for this life and the next. In one particular only does it differ from a purely spiritual demon, and that is in having a body to abuse. What think you of an Iago? Imaginary, do you say? Live longer, then, and learn that there are such creatures.

In the old time it was said of a mischievous madman, or impostor, "He has a devil;" now we say, "A devil has him,” which is the same thing.

Everything that interrupts the peace and harmony of the world is said to be diabolical, or, in vulgar parlance, "Devilish bad"-the original Greek word, diaBaλw signifying to destroy, or throw into confusion;-everything that destroys or confuses the beautiful order of the world is therefore the work of Diabolus. Thus, after vainly attempting to unravel a skein, to convince an opinionated ninny, to pick a burr from hair, or meet the slanders of a dull knave, we mentally ejaculate a phrase consigning each to the father of confusion, where they belong.

There is great doubt among speculative persons, though none at all among poets and Slawkenbergians, whether Diabolus and his imps are real persons or not. I, for my part, hold them to be so, for reasons that seem to me the most satisfactory conceivable-I myself having actually

seen and conversed with several of them

at different periods of my life. Like the spirits of the dead, they appeared only to my spiritual eyes, as they did also to Von Slawkenberg's, whose experience was, however, far more minute and extended than my own.

And now, a word respecting the language used in conversations with imps and departed spirits.

You are probably aware that what is called empirical, or experimental knowledge, is a knowledge of particulars only, and does not convey ideas directly, but merely furnishes materials for thought. Thus, for example, lapdogs have often as perfect an empirical knowledge of fashionable life as the most D'Israelitish dandy could desire; but, lacking a soul, they draw no ideas from their experience; that is to say, they acquire no spiritual knowledge from it, which is their misfortune.

But if there are two kinds of knowledge, so there are two kinds of expression for these kinds, the physical, namely, and the spiritual. When Miss recites her lesson out of Paley, you have an intense example of the physical, or empirical kind, both in the matter and the manner. When,