soon perish from the pains of transplanting, if they were not carefully fostered.

As a bit of drift-wood warns the most unpractised eye of the direction which a current takes, so the light, ephemeral brochures of any epoch give a plain hint of the tendency of its thought. The librarian and historian know the value of newspapers and pamphlets, for in them can be found what big books and voluminous records do not contain. From pasquinades, caricatures, and bits of comedy or satire can be drawn an idea of the popular humor of any era, which the works of great authors fail to convey. They are spontaneous and unstudied, regardless alike of reputation already established, which must be maintained, and of that which may yet be won; for they come from unknown sources, and exist solely for their own sakes and by their own vitality. They are, therefore, trustworthy assistants to him who studies the spirit of any people or generation.

In this respect American humor has been ill represented. Comic publications have appeared only at rare intervals, and comic journals have soon degenerated into stupidity or coarseness. Yet this has not been for lack of material, but of a proper editorial faculty, and from the want of a habitude or a willingness on the part of those who conceive clever things to note them down and give them out in black and white. When " Vanity Fair" first appeared, we thought we saw in it the germ of a journal which might be an exponent of our national spirit of mirthfulness, and we took occasion to say so briefly. We have not been disappointed. The five volumes which have already been published in weekly numbers have been true to the honest purpose which the conductors proposed to themselves and the public in their prospectus, and are fair representatives of the wit and humor which are in their essence allied to the merriment and the satire of Hawthorne and Lowell, Holmes and Saxe, although, of course, they are not yet developed with like delicacy and brilliance.

There is in these pages a vast deal of genuine, hearty fun, and of sharp, stinging sarcasm; there are also hundreds of cleverly drawn and cleanly cut illustrations. Better than these, there is a fearlessness of consequences and of persons, when a wrong is to be combated, an error to be set right. And this Touchstone has been impartial as well as sturdy in his castigation; he has not been blind to the faults of his friends, or slow in bidding them imitate the excellences of his enemies; he had "a whip of scorpions" for the late Administration, when others, whose intuitions were less quick, saw nothing to chastise, and he has not hesitated to rebuke the official misdemeanors of these days, because officers have per contra done other portions of their duties well. According to his creed, a wrong cannot be palliated into a right, but must be reformed thereto; he has no tolerance for that evil whose cure is obvious and possible, and he treats boldly and severely the subjects of which the timid scarcely dare to speak.

It cannot, of course, be claimed for "Vanity Fair" that it is all clever. The brightest wit must say some dull things, and a comic journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to have met in its pages a doubleentendre or a foulness of speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared in the "Atlantic") never to allow his paper to descend to the level of the ignobile vulgus; and we are glad that in wishing "Vanity Fair" long life and prosperity we have to censure it only for some slight violations of good taste, not for any offence against modesty or decorum. It deserves admission to the library and the drawing-room, and will, we hope, long continue to be received there.

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WHAT kind of sword, do you think, was that which old Christian had in that famous fight of his with Apollyon, long ago? He cut the fiend to the marrow with it, you remember, at last; though the battle went hardly with him, too, for a time. Some of his blood, Bunyan says, is on the stones of the valley to this day. That is a vague record of the combat between the man and the dragon in that strange little valley, with its perpetual evening twilight and calm, its meadows crusted with lilies, its herd-boy with his quiet song, close upon the precincts of hell. It fades back, the valley and the battle, dim enough, from the sober freshness of this summer morning. Look out of the window here, at the hubbub of the early streets, the freckled children racing past to school, the dewy shimmer of yonder willows in the sunlight, like drifts of pale green vapor. Where is Apollyon? does he put himself into flesh and blood, as then, nowadays? And the sword

which Christian used, like a man, in his deed of derring-do?

Reading the quaint history, just now, I have a mind to tell you a modern story. It is not long: only how, a few months ago, a poor itinerant, and a young girl, (like these going by with baskets on their arms,) who lived up in these Virginia hills, met Evil in their lives, and how it fared with them: how they thought that they were in the Valley of Humiliation, that they were Christian, and Rebellion and Infidelity Apollyon; the different ways they chose to combat him; the weapons they used. I can tell you that; but you do not know do you? — what kind of sword old Christian used, or where it is, or whether its edge is rusted. I must not stop to ask more, for these war-days are short, and the story might be cold before you heard it.

--

A brick house, burrowed into the side of a hill, with red gleams of light wink

ing out of the windows in a jolly way into the winter's night: wishing, one might fancy, to cheer up the hearts of the freezing stables and barn and hen-house that snuggled about the square yard, trying to keep warm. The broad-backed old hill (Scofield's Hill, a famous place for papaws in summer) guards them tolerably well; but then, house and barn and hill lie up among the snowy peaks of the Virginian Alleghanies, and you know how they would chill and awe the air. People away down yonder in the river-bottoms see these peaks dim and far-shining, as though they cut through thick night; but we, up among them here, find the night wide, filled with a pale starlight that has softened for itself out of the darkness overhead a great space up towards heaven.

The snow lay deep, on this night of which I tell you,— a night somewhere near the first of January in this year. Two old men, a white and a black, who were rooting about the farm-yard from stable to fodder-rack, waded through deep drifts of it.

"Tell yer, Mars' Joe," said the negro, banging the stable-door, "dat hoss ort n't ter risk um's bones dis night. Ef yer go ter de Yankee meetin', Coly kern't tote yer."

tie up the farm, and the dead and live Scofields, and the Democratic party, with an ideal reverence for "Firginya" under all. As for the Otherwhere, outside of Virginia, he heeded it as much as a Hindoo does the turtle on which the earth rests. For which you shall not sneer at Joe Scofield, or the Pagan. How wide is your own "sacred soil"?- the creed, government, bit of truth, other human heart, self, perhaps, to which your soul roots itself vitally, like a cuttle-fish sucking to an inch of rock, — and drifts out palsied feelers of recognition into the ocean of God's universe, just as languid as the aforesaid Hindoo's hold upon the Kalpas of emptiness underneath the turtle ?

Joe Scofield sowed the fields and truckpatch, sold the crops down in Wheeling; every year he got some little, hardly earned snugness for the house (he and Bone had been born in it, their grandfathers had lived there together). Bone was his slave; of course, they thought, how should it be otherwise? The old man's daughter was Dode Scofield; his negro was Bone Scofield, in degree. Joe went to the Methodist church on Sundays; he hurrahed for the Democratic candidate it was a necessity for Whigs to be defeated; it was a necessity for Papists to go to hell. He had a tight grip on these truths, which were born, one might say, with his blood; his life grew out of them. So much of the world was certain, but outside? It was rather vague there: Yankeedom was a mean-soiled country, whence came clocks, teachers, peddlers, and infidelity; and the English, it was an American's birthright to jeer at the English.