way, though he flourishes no outstretched lancet before him. It is his manner they regard. poor, Who does not recognize,-and to recognize is to pity,—the sedentary, half-starved author? Meet him where you will,-in the busy mart, or, by the silent lake, or, in his own ill-furnished garret,his gait bewrayeth him. You see in his cramped and wayward walk, that, for long, long, sad hours, he has sat in his solitude, torturing his mind that he may keep his body,-miserable as it is,-in being. And too,-as said crazy John Dennis,-" many disorders come by criticism." Spare him, then. There parades a man," with hair on end, like quills of porcupine," every muscle strained to its utmost degree of tension, his fists clenched, his feet moving, nor fast, nor slow, he stands, a Napoleon! he sits, a Cæsar!! he reclines, an Alexander!!! he walks, a god!!!! Who does not recognize the schoolmaster? That useful class of citizens, the tailors, who pass their own lives in making other men, have, from time immemorial, been known by their habitual postures. Says the facetious Lamb,-" Observe the suspicious gravity of their gait. The peacock is not more tender, from a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, than a gentleman of this profession is of being known by the same infallible testimonies of his Occupation. 'Walk, that I may know thee.'" The same writer remarks, that, "the legs transversed thus X crosswise, or decussated, was, among the ancients, the posture of malediction." Individual character may be always determined by the posture. With what effect does Sterne make use of this fact, in his delineations! "It was one of those heads that Guido might have painted,— mild, pale, penetrating, free from all common-place ideas of fat, contented ignorance, looking downwards upon the earth it looked forwards; but looked as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows; but it would have suited a Brahmin ; and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it." And again, what could be more expressive of the sadness, yet placid meekness of that poor monk's soul, than his movements, when his petition is rejected?" letting his staff fall within his arm, he pressed both his hands with resignation upon his breast, and retired." Hail to the theory of that cold and mildewed philosopher, who has abstracted his soul away from all communion with material grace and beauty-all hail! Say you, why is it that the blood dances so joyously and the deep affections so eagerly gush forth, when the beautiful face of childhood swims in the joy of his early sports, and we gaze upon the free and bounding movements of his unfettered limbs? Is there no meaning in the soft up-raising of that gentle eye? Is there no eloquence in that smile? Is there nothing in the rich and varied expression of that beautiful, yet saddened, face to move the soul, to rouse the intellect, yea, even to purify the deepest and most venomous of earthly passions? Man! gaze upon that heavenly countenance, "Before decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers," and ask thyself, if God has not directed its creation, to reprove thee, who delightest to sully His noblest works! Whose "lyre would lightly breathe," when the beautiful and the beloved is taken away? Who does not then recall the past, as though the present were not? "And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon, Hail to thy theory, most discreet, most prudent, most judicious, most cool, most frigid philosopher! "Hark you, Guildenstern ;-and you, too;-at each ear a hearer: That great baby you see there is not HAMLET. BACKBITING. THE best comedy of modern times, is the School for Scandal, because every one admits it to be a picture of real life and fashionable conversation. Is there no remote corner of the world for an honest man or woman to live in, where their actions will not be misrepre sented and their motives misconstrued?-truly, such a spot would be colonized by willing emigrants, from cities and villages. In our cities, no man lives, who is not amenable to a self-constituted irresponsible court, in which the judges act as jurors and witnesses, and where proof is not necessary to support a grievous charge. If the charge be bad enough, the judges are ever ready to condemn. There is no way to oppose this evil, but as men oppose intemperance, by acting on the belief (and a reasonable one it is,) that each one may himself be a victim,—unless he prefer that the evil should remain, willing to incur the risk, that has at least the attraction of bearing as hard upon his enemies, or friends, as upon himself. Were societies formed to abstain from scandal as from spirits, what a blessed time it would be when their principles became general. At present, when two or more parties meet, after the established inquiries for each other's welfare, the second question is upon the misfortunes or faults of their neighbors, which regale them as the losses of Antonio delighted Shylock. In cities and in villages, there is a struggle for precedence,though it may be vested under a love of equality, which it is not,-for all are more anxious to bring down others to their own level, than to lift up any to it. Rumor or slander, according to the poets, walks on the earth, though she hides her head in the clouds. Her source is unknown;it is easier to trace that of the Niger or the Nile. Would any one try the experiment, let him listen to conversation,where it is free,-and write it down; he will find that at least half of his manuscript, if printed, would subject him to the law of libel. "No thief e'er felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law;" and no wolf or fox would have a better estimate of a trap;-but an honest man may, nevertheless, without impeachment of motive, write homilies against slander, when the evil is so great that it poisons the purest springs of social life,-making us distrustful of enemies and friends, destroying benevolence, and prompting to revenge. The evil is great, and has many ramifications. In New-England, to speak the truth of our respectable mother, scandal is as deeply rooted as bigotry in Spain; and we must try to account for it in way the least mortifying to a good patriot. It has been said that there is more slander here than in Europe, because there is more virtue. In Italy, for instance, where there are no hypocrites or pretenders to virtue, nor any to regard it, there are none to assail the reputation, which is the shadow of virtue; so that, with all the other evils, the Italians have little slander. We, however, have enough and to spare. If it is a measure of our virtue, we are the most virtuous as well as enlightened people. The Scripture says, that out of the mouth comes what defileth a man; and a slander is surely more disgraceful to the utterer than to the subject—that is, when it is found out or admitted to be such-perhaps after both parties have gone to a juster judgement. By the account that a person gives of others we can judge of his estimation of himself. The uncharitable man condemns himself. Words are things-at least, they show the bent of the heart as much as actions. In the fairy tale, the words of the good damsel turned into pearls and diamonds as they fell from her lips, while those of her bad sister were converted into toads and other reptiles. This is but an apologue, representing Charity and Slander. P. WHIG AND TORY. In Britain, whose language we speak, whose literature is in some sense ours, whose old ancestral fame belongs in part to us, whose political and historical records are also for many purposes our records, -in Britain, the party-names of Whig and Tory have acquired a fixed meaning, transmitted through the various political controversies of a century and a half, and established, at length, by universal consent. At the close of the War of Independence, that distinction of party disappeared from this country, simultaneously with the utter extinguishment and merger of all political opinions whatsoever, in the single appellation of Whig, borne by every man, who adhered to the cause of the colonies. Its revival, at the present time, is a curious and interesting event, respecting which we propose to make some few explanations, pertinent to the occasion and the subject. The origin of the words Whig and Tory,-their signification as deduced from British and Anglo-American history, and the propriety of the application recently given to them in the United States,-are the points we design to examine. What are the facts, which constitute the ground-work of our inquiry? Stripped of all incidental matter, and presented in their plain indisputable substance, they are simply these :-The President of the United States performs an act-the removal of the public treasure from its legal place of deposite-which, in the fact itself, and the mode of performing it, a majority of the Senate, nearly one half of the House of Representatives, and a vast majority of the whole people of the United States, so far as by petition or address they have pronounced any opinion, deny to be within the legal and constitutional function of the president. The President deliberately, elaborately, and upon a review of the whole matter, asserts the entire legality and constitutionality of the act, in a solemn Protest addressed to the Senate. Setting out of view all consideration of the consequences of the removal of the deposites, and the merits or demerits of the measure on the score of public expediency, the question arising upon that, and upon the Protest, is clearly a question of the extent of the executive power. So it is admitted on all hands in debate, so it is expressly assumed and argued throughout the Protest. The President claims that "the custody of the public property, the "public money" included, "always has been, and always must be, unless the Constitution be changed, intrusted to the Executive Department;" that "Congress cannot, therefore, take out of the hands of the Executive Department the custody of the public property or money, without an assumption of executive power, and a subversion of the first principles of the Constitution ;" that in him is vested "the WHOLE executive power;" that all officers of government, except judges, are his "agents," for whose acts he is "responsible;" that the power to remove all such officers is "an original executive power," which is left unchecked by the Constitution ;" and that "the President is the direct representative of the American people." All these propositions, and others, which might be cited from the Protest, are novel assertions of executive power, no where set down in the Constitution, and never claimed or uttered before in any state-paper or other writing published in the United States. The President undertakes to deduce these things from the Constitution by construction; his adherents maintain that it is true construction, his opponents, that it is false construction; whether true or false, it is, on the one side, an ascription of certain powers to the executive, and, on the other, a denial of certain powers to the executive. Now, following in point of time upon the removal of the deposites, and, as the Opposition say, having that for its main cause, came a most disastrous shock to the commercial exchanges of the whole country, spreading dismay and ruin from Maine to Louisiana. Thereupon, thousands of freemen, in various parts of the Union, setting forth the extreme and universal distress of the commercial and industrious classes, petitioned the President or Congress to interpose for the common relief, by restoring the public deposites to their former place of custody; and some, but comparatively few in number, addressed Congress in approbation of the act of the President. Under these circumstances, the name of Whig, all at once, came into use, to designate the petitioners for relief; and that of Tory, to designate the addressers, who denied the public distress, and defended the conduct of the executive. And, it may be added, as a passing memorandum, that this new application of the old party-names of the Revolution was first suggested in the Salem Gazette, a newspaper published in the State of Massachusetts. And it is a coincidence, worthy to be noted, that the word Tory has obtained currency at the present time, under circumstances strikingly similar to those attending its original application. The facts are narrated substantially to the same effect, by all the historians. We copy them from the pages of Hume, partly because he is the standard historian of his country; partly because he is the Tory historian of his country, and cannot be called a partial witness, biassed in favor of Whigs. * an "Notwithstanding several marks of displeasure, and even a menacing proclamation from the King, petitions came from all parts, earnestly insisting on a session of Parliament. Tumultuous petitioning was one of the chief artifices by which the malecontents, in the last reign, had attacked the Crown; and though the manner of subscribing and delivering petitions was now somewhat regulated by act of Parliament, the thing itself still remained, and was admirable expedient for infesting the court, for spreading discontent, and for uniting the nation in any popular clamor. As the King found no law, by which he could punish those importunate, and, as he deemed them, undutiful solicitations, he was obliged to encounter them by popular application of a contrary tendency. Whenever the church and court party prescribed, addresses were passed, containing expressions of the highest regard to his majesty, the most entire acquiescence in his wisdom, the most dutiful submission to his prerogative, and the deepest abhorrence of those who endeavored to encroach upon it, by prescribing to him any time for assembling the Parliament. Thus the nation came to be distinguished into PETITIONERS and ABHORRERS. Factions, indeed, were at this time extremely animated against each other. The very names, by which each party denominated its antagonist, discover the virulence and rancor which prevailed. For, besides petitioners and abhorrers, appellations which were soon forgotten, this year (1680) is remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of WHIG and TORY, by which, and sometimes without any material difference, this island has been so long divided. The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of Whigs: the country party found a resemblance between the courtiers and the Popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the appellation of Tory was affixed." Thus far Hume. Each of these appellations, it will be perceived, was originally a term of reproach. That of Tory clung to the high prerogative party, in spite, says Defoe, of all their efforts to shake it off. That of Whig, being soon afterwards immortalized in the expulsion of James Stuart, effected by the men who bore it, came to be admitted by the anti-prerogative party, as implying their identity with the friends of liberty and just government, and as, therefore, a term of honor rather than offence. And although, in subsequent times, each of the parties occasionally found itself in a false position, yet, in the main, they represented settled differences of opinion, growing out of "the diversities of condition and of moral temperament generally subsisting among mankind." The Tories of 1680, like the Tories of 1776, and the Tories of 1834, were, as a Tory himself describes it, they who professed "the highest regard" for the Executive, "the most entire acquiescence in his wisdom, the most dutiful submission to his prerogative, and the deepest abhorrence of those who endeavored to encroach upon it;" whilst the Whigs were they, who distrusted the Executive, and at all times relied upon the Legislature as the means of checking and balancing his power. This distinction is, also, pointedly stated by Hallam, who says, "The Whig had a natural tendency to political improvement; the Tory an aversion to it. The one loved to descant on liberty and the rights of mankind, |