board, and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish-in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks-a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families. The tea was served out of a majestic delft tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs -with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup-and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth-an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany; but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting-no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones—no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets -nor amusing conceits, and monkey divertisements, of smart young gentlemen, with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings; nor ever opened their lips excepting to say yah Mynheer, or yah ya Vrouw, to any question that was asked them; behaving, in all things, like decent, well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed-Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet, and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion. They were carried home by their own carriages, that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to

their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door: which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it at the present-if our great-grandfathers approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to say a word against it.

From "Knickerbocker's History of New York."

SHERIDAN'S CLASSICAL POWERS.

ANONYMOUS.

SHERIDAN Commanded the whole Anthology; and was not always satisfied with that. On one occasion, his antagonist on the Treasury bench had made a quotation from a Greek dramatist that quite startled from its aptness. It was the end of a peroration, too, and the house was on the point of dividing, when Sheridan started up, with apparent warmth, and taxed the right honorable gentleman opposite with having uncandidly stopped short in his quotation; for that, if he had continued it to the close, he must have announced a principle and an illustration wholly subversive of the first proposition-a pernicious hypothesis, merely put forward in order to be demolished by the sequel. He then delivered a number of Greek lines, without any apparent effort of memory; and so perfectly in accordance with his assertion, that the minister admitted the application, and declared that he really had forgotten the solution which Mr. Sheridan supplied. This incident balked the expectation of the ministry on division; and being questioned by some classical friend, who had vainly referred to his library for the lines, Sheridan confessed that he had improvisated the verses he professed to supply in continuation.

IRVING'S WASHINGTON.

G. W. GREENE.

WE regard the brilliant success of these volumes as an occasion of joyful congratulation to the citizens of our republic. Irving's Life of Washington is eminently a national work, upon which they can all look with unmingled pride. It has not merely enriched our literature with a production of rare beauty, but has given new force to those local associations which bind us, as with hallowed ties, to the spots where great men lived and great things were done. Few will now cross the Delaware without remembering that Christmas night of tempest and victory. Who can look upon the heights of Brooklyn without

fancying that, as he gazes, the spires and streets fade from his view, while in their stead stern and anxious faces rise through the misty air, and amid them the majestic form of Washington, with a smile of triumph just lighting for a moment his care-worn features, at the thought of the prize he has snatched from the grasp of a proud and exulting enemy? And Princeton, and Valley Forge, and Monmouth, and the crowning glory of Yorktown,-how do they live anew for us! With what perennial freshness will their names descend to posterity! And those two noble streams that flow to the sea through alternations of pastoral beauty and rugged grandeur,-the lovely Potomac, the majestic Hudson,-how have they become blended by these magic pages in ́indissoluble association! The one the cherished home of Washington, the seat of his domestic joys, his rural delights; looked to with eager yearning from the din of camps and battle-fields; sighed for with weary longing amid the pomp and pageantry of official greatness; to which he returned so gladly when his task had been accomplished; and which, dying with the serenity of Christian resignation, he consecrated by the holiest of all associations, the patriot's grave;-the other the scene of cares and triumphs; on whose banks he had passed slow days of hope deferred; whose waters had borne him to and fro through checkered years of dubious fortune; and had witnessed the touching sublimity of his farewell to his companions in arms, and the simple grandeur of his reception as first President of the country he had saved! How meet was it that, while his ashes repose beside the waters of the Potomac, his life should have been written on the banks of the Hudson!

From "Biographical Studies.”

COMMON CONVERSATION.

BULWER.

HESITATING, Humming, and Drawling, are the three Graces of our conversation.

We are at dinner: a gentleman," a man about town,"-is informing us of a misfortune that has befallen his friend: No-I assure you-now-er-er-that-er-it was the most shocking accident possible-er-poor Chester was riding in the park-er-you know that gray-er-(substantive dropped, hand a little flourished instead),—of his-splendid creature !-er-well, sir, and by Jove-er-the-er— (no substantive,-flourish again),—took fright, and—e—er”—here the gentleman throws up his chin and eyes, sinks back, exhausted, into his chair, and, after a pause, adds, "Well, they took him into-the shop -there-you know-with the mahogany sashes-just by the park— er—and the—er--man there-set his-what d'ye call it-er—collar

The

bone; but he was-er-ter-ri-bly-terribly"-a full stop. gentleman shakes his head; and the sentence is suspended to eternity. Another gentleman takes up the wondrous tale, thus, logically: "Ah! shocking, shocking!—but poor Chester was a very agreeableer"-full stop.

"Oh! very gentlemanlike fellow!-quite shocking!-quite-did you go into the-er--to-day ?"

'No, indeed; the day was so un-er-May I take some wine with you?"

The ladies usually resort to some pet phrases that, after the fashion of short-hand, express as much as possible in a word: What do you think of Lady --'s last novel?"

"Oh! they say 'tis not very natural. The characters, to be sure, are a little overdrawn ; and then the style-so-so—I don't know what -you understand me;-but it's a dear book altogether! Do you know Lady —— ?”

"Oh dear! yes; nice creature she is!"

"What a dear little horse that is of poor Lord -'s!"

"He is very vicious."

"Is he really?-nice little thing!"

"Ah! you must not abuse poor Mrs.

; to be sure, she is very

ill-natured, and they say she's so stingy! but then she really is such a dear"

"Nice" and "dear" are the great To Prepon and To Kalon of feminine conversational moralities.

But, perhaps, the genius of our conversation is most shown in the art of explaining.

66

66

Were you in the House last night?"

Yes-er-Sir Robert Peel made a splendid speech!"

"Ah! and how did he justify his vote? I've not seen the papers." "Oh, I can tell you exactly-ahem-he said, you see, that he disliked the ministers, and so forth-you understand-but that-er-in these times, and so forth,-and with this river of blood--oh! he was very fine there!—you must read it—well, sir; and then he was very good against O'Connell-capital!-and all this agitation going onand murder, and so forth;—and then, sir, he told a capital story about a man and his wife being murdered, and putting a child in the fireplace-you see-I forget now-but it was capital: and then he wound up with-a--with-a--in his usual way, in short. Oh! he quite justified himself you understand-in short, you see, he could not do otherwise."

Caricatured as this may seem to others, it is a picture from actual life: the explainer, too, is reckoned a very sensible man; and the listener saw nothing inconclusive in the elucidation.

THE COUNSEL OF QUEEN CAROLINE.

DR. DORAN.

MR. BROUGHAM entered on the queen's defence in a speech of great boldness and power. The sentiments put forth in that oration would probably not be endorsed now by Lord Brougham. He declared, too, that nothing should prevent him from fulfilling his duty, and that he would recriminate upon the king if he found it necessary to do so. The threat gave some uneasiness to ministers, but they trusted, nevertheless, to the learned counsel's discretion. He would have been justified in the public mind if he had realized his promise. The popular opinion, however, hardly supported him in what followed, when he declared that an English advocate could look to nothing but the rights of his client, and that even if the country itself should suffer, his feelings as a patriot must give way to his professional obligations. This was only one of many instances of the abuse of the very extensively abused, and widely misunderstood maxim of Fiat justitia ruat cœlum.

Mr. Denman, the queen's solicitor-general, was not less legally audacious, if one may so speak, than his great leader. In a voice of thunder, and in presence of the assembled peerage of the realm, he denounced one of the king's brothers as a calumniator. Mr. Rush, who was present on the occasion, says, "the words were 'Come forth, THOU SLANDERER!'--a denunciation," he goes on to say, "the more severe from the sarcasm with which it was done, and the turn of his eye towards its object." That object was the Duke of Clarence; and in reference to the exclamation, and the fierce spirit of the hour, generally, Mr. Rush says:-" Even after the whole trial had ended, Sir Francis Burdett, just out of prison for one libel, proclaimed aloud to his constituents, and had it printed in all the papers, that the ministers ALL DESERVED TO BE HANGED. This tempest of abuse, incessantly directed against the king and all who stood by him, was borne during several months, without the slightest attempt to check or punish it; and it is too prominent a fact to be left unnoticed, that the same advocate, who so fearlessly uttered the above denunciation, was made attorney-general when the prince of the blood who was the OBJECT OF IT, sat upon the throne; and was subsequently raised to the still higher dignity of lord chief justice."

From "Lives of the Queens of England."