not rise, nor did she quit her seat during any part of the ceremony. Another person of distinction was the French Minister. This great military character is distinguished by the uncommon size of his whiskers, which cover the greater part of his cheeks, and also by the profusion of lace covering his full dress coat. The British Minister and lady were there; they have lately succeeded Mr. and Mrs. Merry, and being newly arrived they attracted a good deal of notice, particularly the lady, who is a pretty Philadelphian.

The greater part of the Senators were there, and the few whose wives were in town brought them hither to partake of this great exhibition. So were present the principal heads of the Executive departments, with their help-mates. They came forth on this grand occasion to pay the homage of their respects to the Chief Magistrate of the nation. The members of the House of Representatives, the respectable resident inhabitants, the officers of the army and navy, the strangers of consideration who happened to be in the city, and the Osage Indians, men and women, little and big, crowded into the President's house to share in the festivities of the morning.

The day was very favorable, and the assembly brilliant, as you may suppose. Great mirth and humor prevailed, and you may easily conceive wherefore, when it is computed that, besides the smiles, cordiality and welcome which the company received from their generous entertainer, they consumed for him a quarter cask of wine, a barrel of punch and a hundred weight of cake, beside other nick-nacks to a considerable amount. While the refreshments were passing around and the company were helping themselves, a band of music entertained them with martial and enlivening airs. Before the hour of dinner, the assemblage of people dispersed, well pleased with their manner of spending the morning, and in high hope that Mr. Jefferson might long continue in the Presidential chair. The ladies in particular were charmed with his handsome way of doing things.

The dancing assemblies are conducted very much as they have been for several years. Minuets are quite out of fashion,

but contre dances and cotillions are as

much in vogue as ever. The ball opens with the former, and after a few sets the dancers generally enter upon the cotillion. The ladies, generally speaking, dress in gay colors, and with a great er display of finery than our New Yorkers; they therefore appear to advantage on the floor. I think the rooms this year contain a greater proportion of beauty, but the belles are less numerous than

heretofore. Still, as you know, the scarcity of the commodity makes it the more dear and valuable. Private parties. are frequent. I have told you before that there is a great deal of high life in Washington; there are a number of families here who delight in gay, fashionable displays; the succession of these renders the place agreeable enough for polite strangers of all sorts, and particularly for ladies. A woman of quality, who is fond of racketing and carousing, need be at no loss of occupation in Washington during the session of Congress.

At these gatherings the individuals assembled amuse themselves in the customary way. Tea and coffee, cakes, fruits, lemonade and wines and other refreshments are offered. Talking parties, loo parties, music and dancing parties, are formed in the several chambers thrown open on the occasion, according to the humor of the guests, and other circumstances. Many of the ladies refuse to gamble, but with others, cards are almost the necessaries of life, and some of the fair creatures have acquired remarkable skill in their use. Pockets are not yet restored to their places, while reticules and bags are quite in disuse. The nudity of dress which has prevailed for the several past years is still in fashion, and the shape appears through the transparencies as plain as ever.

The President of the Senate is much more indulgent to the ladies than his predecessor was. Col. Burr excluded them from the fires and floor where the Senators sit, and confined them to the gallery, but Clinton admits them to the places they before occupied in the lobby. The consequence is, that the presiding officer, who is a man of gallant spirit and feeling, has the fair full in his eye and enlivens himself with the prospect during a tedious debate. The Senators, too, can now and then leave their scarlet arm-chairs, and relieve their weary limbs while they saunter about the lobby, and pay their adorations to the sovereigns of the land.

unfortunate man who was recently shot According to the New York Times, the in Washington City, Philip Barton Key, inherited a portion of his father's poetiof a Spanish song will prove. cal ability, as the following translation

This lyric possesses a very mournful count, an interesting and curious prointerest, and is, on another obvious acduction:

"One eve of beauty, when the sun

Was on the stream of Guadalquiver, To gold converting, one by one,

The ripples of that mighty river,

We have before alluded, in this Magazine, to "Owen Meredith," the nom de plume of young Edward Bulwer Lytton, the son of the great English novelist, who has just completed, in "Blackwood," one of the finest tales ever contributed to that brilliant and classical monthly. Young Lytton (who is certainly not more than twenty-five years of age,) has published two remarkable volumes of poetry, from the last of which we extract this strange but (in parts) very musical and suggestive piece :

WARNINGS.

Beware, beware of witchery!
And fall not in the snare

That lurks and lies in wanton eyes,
Or hides in golden hair:

For the Witch has sworn to catch thee,
And her spells are on the air.
"Thou art fair, fair, fatal fair,
O, Irene!"

What is it, what is it,

In the whisper of the leaves? In the night-wind, when its bosom, With the shower in it, grieves? In the breaking of the breaker, As it breaks upon the beach Thro' the silence of the night? Cordelia Cordelia!

A warning in my ear

Not here! not here! not here! But seek her yet, and seek her,

The Pleasures of Piety, and other Poems. By Richard Furman. S. G. Courtenay & Co: Broad street. 1859.

This admirably printed volume of poems, written by a clergyman of Greenville, S. C., who is connected with one of our most honourable southern families, commends itself to our particular attention, as the work of a Carolina mind, handsomely issued by Carolina publishers. These reasons make it proper for us to review it at greater length than the character of the volume might otherwise justify us in doing. We shall advance no opinion of the poems, unsustained by illustration; nor shall we permit ourselves, because the work is the performance of a native of our own State, to speak of it in any other terms than its merits or demerits as a production of Art seem to us to demand.

The first, and most elaborate poem, entitled the "Pleasures of Piety," is chiefly composed in the heroic measure-not the heroic measure of the Elizabethan writers, nor of Keats, and Hunt, and Tennyson, in the present century, but in that measure as interpreted by Pope and his contemporaries.

The difference will at once suggest itself to every English scholar; but, in order to show how wonderfully a metre the same in the number of feet may be made to vary in its musical effects by a particular disposition of the Casura and secondary stops, we select the following passages, the first from Pope's "Messiah," and the second from Keats' piece, called "Sleep and Poetry."

"From Jesse's root behold a branch arise,

Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies,

Th' Etherial spirit o'er its leaves shall

move,

And on its top descends the mystic Dove:

Ye Heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour,

And in soft silence shed the kingly shower!

like its products, are among the few solid and real delights of man on earth; it is more than this: "Imagination," as one of the deep thinkers of our age expresses it, "is also a power of the heart," with quite as much moral and spiritual as intellectual vitality in it.

Surely, "Piety," or the sacred union of the soul with God, resulting in practical Christianity here, and eternal salvation hereafter needs no exaltation of its dignity and awfulness at the expense, or through the depreciation of the imaginative faculty. The sense in which Mr. Furman employs the word is as narrow as it is erroneous; and, altogether, it would seem, conformed to certain popular misapprehensions in regard to its proper signification. True, the term has been so used, or misused rather, a thousand times before, and that, too, by writers of distinction; but the attention recently bestowed upon psychological questions, and the philosophy of the Coleridge, and others like him, have renMind, and its operations, especially by dered an adherence to the old vague generalities, on such a topic as the imagination, and its functions, wholly untenable.

Having referred, as we have shown, to Memory, Imagination and Hope, our Piety," as exemplified in "the primeval author sings the "Sacred Pleasures of innocence of man." What follows is a fair specimen of his powers of fancy and description:

"Near to the throne there was a spot

That Sua whose rays in ceaseless splendour sent,

Illumed and blessed the wide-spread fir

mament

Dispelled the mists that rose from earth, and poured

On all around the glory of the Lord."

If, in the opening portions of this Poem, the mind immediately reverts to Campbell, Akenside, and Rogers, the comparison, (instinctively, and by a necessity of association,) called out by the preceding passages, is further sustained. Beside Mr. Furman's picture of

"A garden fair, a place of God beloved," Milton's picture of the garden rises, and "Beneath us, with new wonder now we view

To all delights of human sense exposed, In narrow room--) n-Nature's whole wealth,

and more,

A Heaven on Earth, for blissful Paradise

Of God the garden was, by Him i' th' East Of Eden planted-" &c.

Again, instead of

Mr. Furman having finished with Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and primeval innocence," descends to the "Pleasures of Christian Piety, beginning with repentance,-pleasures which "largely accompany"-as he shows"the exercise of faith." At this point, he

grove,"

taste;

And all amid them stood the tree of life, High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold," &c.

Again, instead of the exceedingly pretty lines

"A crystal stream of living waters wound

Its way through Eden's consecrated ground,"

We have this magnificent description rolling on the ear of the fancy like the

swell of many waters,

"Southward through Eden went a River large,

Nor changed its course, but through the shaggy hill,

Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown

That mountain as his garden-mould high raised,

of the "home and pursuits of the pious peasant!"

"In yonder copse, secluded from mankind,

To Heaven's appointments patiently resign'd,

The pious peasant of the valley dwells: A stranger to inconstant fortune's spells, His home a cottage neat embowered in green,

Commands the soft enchantment of the

scene,

A limpid lake sleeps near, fed by a rill, That pours its murmurs from a neighbouring hill.

In distance dim, gigantic mountains rise, And lose their verdant summits in the skies,

While fragrance fresh, such as Arcadia yields

In every zephyr breathes along the fields;

The swain, unoccupied with common cares,

Calmly descends the deepening vale of years.

The dear companion of his lonely hours Bestrews his path with love's unfading flowers,

While a young circle, innocent and fair,
Reflect the virtues of the honest pair.
No hopes of glory agitate his breast,
No thoughts of wealth disturb his hours

of rest.

The day in meditative toil he spends, And when the sable reign of night des

cends,