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By Mrs.

Mrs. Jameson's children are brought up in a rational manner. kind and judicious treatment the rod is rendered unnecessary. Grimalkin has different notions of education, and thinks these little ones all going to ruin. She visits Mrs. Jameson, and, instead of openly avowing her object, gives a sly lecture over another's shoulders. My cousin has a pack of unruly children, and it is right enough they should be so. She is so mighty tender-hearted, that I do n't believe she ever struck one of them in her life. Now, for my part, I can't endure such silly fondness. Spare the rod, spoil the child, I say; and I told her last week, that, when my children did wrong, I whipped them. But she could n't find it in her soul to touch the poor things. And many is the one that's just like her." This, with the accompanying looks and nods, could only disgust a sensible woman.

“Mr. G————, how did you like them are apples, I brought you?" said a dirty boy to a gentleman, who had bought a bushel of apples of him the week before. "I beg your pardon, James; but really I have done wrong not to pay you before." "O, I was n't thinking any thing about that," says James, sheepishly, with a lie in his mouth. "It is exceedingly warm, to-day," says Miss C, on a morning call, one cool day, while half suffocated by the close hot room, in which she found herself. "Is not the room too hot?" asks the lady of the house -"I will open the window." "Not on my account. I am not too warm. I did not think of the room when I spoke." This is not a lie; it is politeness. "Those jewels are very beautiful. Do you know how much they cost?" The lover takes the hint and buys them. "I am very much obliged to you; but hope you did not buy them on account of any thing that I said. I did n't once think of your purchasing them." There is no lying in this! "I wish my brother was Will you allow me that pleas

here to ride with me this afternoon." "6 ure, madam?" "I thank you-shall be very happy-but fear that I have forced you to make the offer." "No, no. Nothing could be more agreeable." The gentleman, however, takes good care not to be in the way of such a hint a second time. There is a great want of ingenuousness in all this, and a mournful lack of honesty. It is low, paltry, groveling. Hints can never be used with propriety except as preconcerted signals.

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66

I do not like to hear the importance of any one thing magnified beyond all bounds. "Intemperance," says one, "is the cause of nine tenths of the poverty, wretchedness, and crime in the world." War," says another, "is the source of every evil under heaven." "Slavery," says a third, "is the mighty incubus, that paralyzes the nation's efforts." "The Tariff," cries one, "The Bank," cries another, "will be the ruin of our government." Mercy on us," cries an old lady, on board a steam-boat, her eyes filled with tears, and her whole frame tremulous with agitation; mercy on us; we shall all perish." "Why, good woman? What makes you think so?" "O, we shall surely be blown up. The day of judgement is coming." A trifling derangement in the machinery had caused the alarm. "We are all ruined, horse and foot," cries the miser, when he misses fifty cents that have been taken from his hoard. "La," ejaculates a lovely creature, as she finds the pink ribbon of her bonnet slightly stained, "what shall I do? I am the most unfortunate creature living. Every thing, that I

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value, is ruined. Life is full of misery." And Venus, weeping over her fallen Daphnis, presented not a more moving spectacle. "What! is the devil in you, and no good?" cries a choleric old man to a boy in the act of climbing one of his favorite trees. "You will mount the gallows, unless your course is changed. Get down, you little imp." "Our government cannot continue ten years longer," exclaims a disheartened politician. "Hoot, toot, toot," cries an impatient beldam, "at this rate we shall have nothing to eat or wear. The very house will come down about our ears. Don't you see the turkeys eating the cabbage, boys?" Gentlemen, unless this bill shall pass, the prospects of liberty are forever shrouded in impenetrable darkness." So says a Congressional speaker. "Shall we suffer ourselves to be trampled into the dust? Shall we tamely yield and permit the government to impose upon us three pages at a lesson, when no class before ever got more than two and a half, or, at the utmost, two and three quarters? If so, farewell liberty, farewell independence." Thus declaims the embryo orator of national rebellions."Gentlemen, the amount in this cause is not great. Twenty shillings are not much. But the principle is much-is every thing. Once admit the right to take twenty shillings unjustly, and you admit the right to take forty, eighty, any amount. So, gentlemen, upon your decision of this cause, will dedepend the security not only of your fortunes, but your lives. Were it not for this, I should not, I could not, so far degrade myself, and the honorable profession to which I belong, as to engage in this matter." So pleads the man of law in an obscure corner of the state. "I remember," says the puppet-show man, to Tom Jones, "when I first took to the business, there was a great deal of low stuff, that did very well to make folks laugh, but was never calculated to improve the morals of young people, which certainly ought to be principally aimed at in every puppet-show." "But," replied Jones, "I should have been. glad to see my old acquaintance, Master Punch, for all that; and so far from improving, I think, by leaving out him, and his merry wife Joan, you have spoiled your puppet-show." "Very probably, sir," replies the dancer of wires, "that may be your opinion; but let others do as they will, a little matter shall never bribe me to degrade my own profession."

"Our country will stand. Our liberties will be preserved. Such a glorious review as we have had! Every man in his place. I am willing now to lay down my commission, as did the great Washington, when the war of independence was over. Soldiers, remember that our fathers did but acquire liberty; on you devolves the more arduous duty of preserving it." Thus the colonel exhorts his regiment. "A glorious muster!" cries a candy-merchant, as he retires full of patriotism from the exhibition; a glorious muster! I never saw the like of it. It was calculated, that there were ten thousand sticks of candy on the field."

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My readers undoubtedly remember the story, with which Sir Philip Sidney, as true a knight as ever lived, begins his "Defence of Poesy." It relates to the groom, who instructed him in the art of horsemanship, and whose arguments, in favor of his own profession, were so strong and so plausible, that, says Sir Philip, " if I had not been a piece of a

logician, before I came to him, I think he would have persuaded me to wish myself a horse. But thus much, at least, with his no few words, he drove into me, that self-love is better than any gilding, to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties." Who, that has been conversant with man, does not feel as well as see, the truth of this? Why does the fop spend four hours in adjusting his cravat, and the rest of the day in adorning the rest of his person, but that he is sure that all eyes will be turned upon him? It has never occurred to him, that his life is more useless, and his pursuits more trifling, than those of a painted butterfly. He and his companions will spend hours -I have heard them-in discussing the advantages of this or that cut for the shirt collar; whether a bow should be made in this or that manner; whether the hat should be left in the entry or taken into the parlor; and then the momentous question, whether it shall be put upon the floor, held behind the back, or used as a fan? These

"Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu',

Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu","

or at least nauseating to a sober mind, are subjects, which engross the thoughts-if thoughts they have-of young men, who feel that they are perched too high to be amenable to the common laws of justice and humanity, and who, whatever proofs they may show to the contrary, have minds, to which is annexed the fearful attribute of immortality! And their counterpart-the ladies whom they fascinate, who practise, and are practised upon by, the same arts-but I am losing my temper, and it were useless to spend labor upon them. There is a chapter in Proverbs [xxvi.] written expressly for their benefit. To that I would refer them.

Reader, if you here find your likeness drawn without flattery, be not like the dog and the fool. Think a moment, before you return to your folly. I write not for fools, (a rod for the fool's back ;) but for those who have sometimes been imposed upon by them, even for you, lector benevole, unless you have escaped the common lot of mortality. Farewell. H. J.

LA FAYETTE.

THERE was a sound of wo,

A spirit-stirring shock,

A new-born nation strove for life,

And a monarch came down to the bannered strife,

As the lion meets the flock.

A youthful hero crossed

The raging of the sea,

The blood of France was in his heart,

And it glowed, as he took the infant's part,

Who struggled to be free.

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126

CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE.

THERE is no subject of inquiry, so deeply interesting to society, or one which has so completely baffled the efforts of statesmen and legislators, as the discovery of an efficient method of preventing crime, and what is the best disposition which can be made of offenders. From the time of Moses, until a very recent period, the only attempts, for abating the evils of vice, were by moral or physical inflictions; not so much for the purpose of guarding against the recurrence of offences, by the terror of example, or for the reformation of the malefactor, who was compelled to suffer the horrors of remorse, the poignancy of degradation, or the agonies of torture, but as a retribution to the wronged, or as a penalty to the government, and still more often, as an expiatory punishment,- —an atonement by blood,-the offering up of a sacrifice, not on the altar of outraged justice, but of implacable vengeance. To punish, appears to have been deemed the chief, if not the only object, and province of judicial tribunals; while the prevention of crime, and the reformation of offenders were scarcely considered, in forming codes of jurisprudence, and when, in fact, they should constitute the very basis, on which all criminal legislation should be founded.

The right to punish, is an attribute, which belongs exclusively to the Almighty; and man cannot exercise it, in any manner, in the true and emphatic meaning of the term; for who shall presume to prejudge the deeds of his fellow-man, with the intention of demanding an atonement, and measure out the degree and duration of his suffering on earth, when he has to answer for all his transgressions, at the awful tribunal of the Most High. Nations have declared many acts criminal, and chastised the delinquents in the most cruel and appalling manner,—even unto death, which may be deemed impeccable by the God of our creation, and render the perpetrators of such dreadful punishments rightfully obnoxious to his retributive justice.

Punishment, as a technical term, has been wrongfully used, in our correctional laws; for, when to maintain the peace of society and render all secure in their persons and their property, it becomes necessary to restrain the vicious, individuals must be deprived of their liberty, to a certain extent, and possibly of their lives; but this should not be done as a punishment; for so far as it may have that appearance or effect, such should not be the intention, but rather results, as an incident, from the impossibility of protecting private rights, and maintaining public tranquility, without abridging the freedom of those, who disregard the laws; but even this corrective must be administered in mercy, and no greater suffering inflicted, than is indispensable, in precluding the refractory, from the means of disturbing the peace and safety of the state. It must, therefore, be constantly kept in mind, that the chief objects to be attained are, to place the vicious beyond the power of doing wrong, to attempt their future reformation, and to render the influence of example as salutary as is practicable, on the morals of the whole people, by inducing every citizen to be virtuous in conduct, at least, from an apprehension of being visited by the like degradation, into which the convicted felon has fallen.

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