The laborers in the field of literature are less generous than Boaz of Scriptural memory. They leave no handful here and there, through charity, to the humble gleaner. The passion for fame is more grasping than the love of money, and there is no avarice like the avarice of authorship. What would buy from a writer a tithe of his reputation for genius and originality? We have even known a thievish author, in his eagerness for renown, steal a fine thought from one of his own forgotten compositions, like the old skinflint in Plautus, who filched money from one of his pockets, and hid it in the other! What business had our predecessors to write so much, and so finely, leaving us, who know more, the necessity of saying less, and of saying that little ill? What right had they to compel their descendants to be either indolent, or dishonest, by leaving us so vast a funded capital of mental wealth, which we must either "bury in a napkin," or fraudulently display as our own earnings? With what pleasure could we distil the essence from their writings, and pass the sponge of oblivion over their names ! We look on Homer as umbraged by our own predestined laurels, and regard Milton as the occupant of our rightful throne. Are we not mixed of native goodness and of native pravity? Are we not a cross between the old Adam and the new Adam-we use the term in an untheological sense-between man in his primal innocence, and man after his mortal taste of the forbidden fruit? And are we not born of woman? Have we not loved the ladies, ever since our senses could discern their soft tones and sweet faces from the hoarse voices and parded chins of their lords? Has not the Devil often crept into our heart like a serpent, or, perching on our pillow" squat like a toad," shot his infernal venom into our sleeping ear? Could we not, then, from the promptings of our own nature, have painted a perfect Adam and a perfect Eve? Could we not have portrayed "our Destroyer, foe to God and man," in the wrestlings of "considerate pride," with fierce remorse, in the changes of "pale ire, envy, and despair," and with all those lineaments of gloom and grandeur, which should have out-deviled the arch-fiend himself? Aye! and we would have done it, had not Milton forestalled us! But of all marauding usurpers, we view Shakspeare with the most jaundiced eye. Sometimes we note in the human

heart a little shady valley of poetry and sweetness, which we think we will rifle of its flowery treasures, and set up our memorial there. Soon we discern that Will Shakspeare has been in every nook, and given an exact transcript of all its beautie sin his Universal Gazetteer. The nymphs have all sworn allegiance to him; it forms an integrant portion of his boundless dominions, and from a spot, which we had discovered and conquered by our own exertions, we are cast forth as an alien and an intruder. Is it not enough to impregnate any spirit with the "gall of bitterness ?" We never can forgive him for that fat old Falstaff, particularly, who left no wit behind him. Why did not the fellow keep to his trade of petty-larceny, and content himself with deer-stealing, without becoming a robber on a scale of unprecedented boldness, and taking from a whole posterity of minds their legitimate estates?

But "nil desperandum." Something can be done, surely, by us, who superadd our own wit to the knowledge of our fathers.-What is an "Essay?" It is an attempt, an effort, a trial. It is a display of what you can do: nothing more. Of course, then, anybody may write an essay." It requires only a little exertion. What is the etymology of Say "

Es

The votaries of the immortal Ego imagine it to be only a corruption of the words " I say" and, consequently, in their "essays," the everlasting "I" stands before you in every line, erect and stately, with the homage-craving inscription on his brow: "obolum date Belisario." Their verbs are all unipersonal. "Iota" swallows up all their alphabet from " Alpha" to " Omega." But we do not admire this omnipresent impersonation of self-this obtrusive display of individuality. We leave the vulgar repetition of the first person singular to the conversational oi noλλoì— the men who have no idiosyncracy, no distinguishable "image and superscription;" who are just as much other people as they are themselves, and who, therefore, by dwelling on the I" with "damnable iteration," vainly strive to convince their hearers that they actually are "individuals." We shall be guilty of no such absurdity. We believe that the etymology of "essay" is to be found in "we say," and we shall maintain the dignity of an author by expressing ourselves in that stately plural number, appropriated, hitherto, almost exclusively

to kings and editors. We have a perfect right so to do, for we shall say nothing but what all sensible people would say, if they only happened to think of it; and, of course, in expressing the sentiments, we may employ the style of "Legion." The advantages we derive from this multiplication of our personality, are many and great. In the first place, "I" is too plain, too comprehensible. It means " unity," "number one." It is the first of acquired conceptions; rather say, it is an innate idea, lying at the foundation of all human knowledge and of all animal instinct.

Besides, we do not choose to be so perfectly transparent. Perspicuity is the sworn foe of the Sublime. Some critics, we are aware, do not think so. But some critics are asses. We are resolved to deal a little in the sublime, and must of course meddle somewhat with the unintelligible. The indefinite is unintelligible, and what is more indefinite than "we"? Or what can be more convenient than this ever-flowing number? "See how we apples swim," quoth the Repudiator and the Texas-man, as they watch the progress of the Ship of State, which they are doing their best to dismast and scuttle. It is a little curious to observe that the more nations depart from their original barbarism, the more they discountenance the practice of "egoisme" and "tutoiment"the more they banish the "I" and the "thou." "I" and "thou" are essentially selfish. They are the symbols of brutal ignorance and savage liberty, and present as many "salient points" to humanized and kindly intercourse as the "quills of the fretful porcupine." But the introduction of the word "we" is the first harbinger of civilization-the first symbol of social existence, Then the antagonistic elements begin to crystalize; the "attraction of repulsion" is overcome by the "attraction of cohesion;" and the rough units of humanity combine and consolidate their fragments into the glittering diamond of civic harmony and associated life. Live forever the urbane and kindly first person plural pronoun "we," and avaunt the self-idolatrous and supercilious "I," that regards itself as sitting enthroned in the centre and diffusing its radiance to the very circumference of being! We are Fourierists-better still, Owenites. We agree with the latter that there ought to be no "I's," and but two "we's," in the world-the English on the Eastern Hemi

sphere; the Americans in the Western. And when our "westward star of empire" has culminated to its zenith-when we have re-annexed Texas, and extended our "area of freedom" from Melville Island to the Land of Fire (Terra del Fuego)-when, in short, we have become strong enough to enforce on all nations the law of love-then we propose that the twin-born "we's" be fused and amalgamatedin to one omnipresent and allprevailing "Ourselves," who shall Yankeeize the globe into a grand Cosmopolitan Republic, and whip all Nullifiers, that refuse to be affectionate, into a perfect observance of the "Golden Rule!" That's our theory. Our rod is better than any other rod; and why should'nt it swallow up its brethren? The day of the establishment of such a commonwealth, "one and indivisible," on principles allcomprehensive and incomprehensible, will be the first day of the "Greek Kalends" of the year 1 in our chronology.

Like most young

But this employment of the weighty and solemn plural phrase has several other advantages. It imposes on the "sine nomine vulgus," the class of literary idiots-we use the term in its classical acception. Well do we remember the day when, as yet uninitiated, we listened in respectful silence to every enunciation, whether in the work reviewing or the work reviewed, endorsed with the imprimatur of the unseen, mysterious and omniscient "WE." We had studied Greek, Latin, and the Mathematics "some," and had, moreover, read many other books, which we did not understand, and read of thousands more, which we never saw. sciolists, therefore, we were always conceited, often impertinent, and sometimes impudent. We laughed at individual authority, and had no respect for visible and tangible persons. We thought our own "I" as good as any other "I." But very different were our feelings for the dignity of "we." Toward the shadowy locale of that composite personage, sitting curtained and invisible on his mystic tripod, we gazed with fear, and wonder, and reverential awe. Whenever Messrs. Oracles prophesied, or expounded the prophets in the plural, we whispered to our hushed heart, "Ipsi dixerunt," and swallowed the whole without one wry face, or peevish murmur. As the seventytwo Roman Cardinals at the Vatican-the modern Septuagintoduûmviral conclave, who exert indirectly the gift of in

terpretative inspiration-do, from their seventy-two separate fallibilities, manufacture one compound infallibility; even so our youthful credulity believed that the best spirits of the living and the dead were wont to congregate in the "sanctum" of the pluralizing Author or Reviewer, and that their immancable utterance, viva-vocal or bibliothecal, was by him interpreted, embodied, and embalmed in immortalizing ink. If two or more of these literary Pontiffs claimed the primacy at once, and issued to all the faithful their periodical Bulls, vilipending, anathematizing, and excommunicating one another, that did not stagger our implicit reverence: we believed in the orthodoxy, and obeyed the mandates of them all. We were a boy then. Now we know better. At present we walk by sight, not by faith, and judge of men from their fruits, not their leaves. The moment we were enrolled among the Scribes, we demurred to the authority of the elders of the synagogue, who, as Tony Lumpkin says, were always snubbing us young folks." It is now our turn to apply the rod of correction, and we shall lay it on with a heavy hand and "some frowns."

But we suppose that many of our more youthful readers, even in this unbelieving age, still entertain the same single-hearted and earnest reverence for the apophthegms of the invisible and polycephalous" we." They will doubtless think that our edition of critical and literary doctrine is the very latest, embellished with numerous cuts,-in fine, "accuratissiminè edita, et prioribus multo emendatior." And so it is. Some of the young ladies and young gentlemen-the aspirants to taste and knowledge-will be convinced that we are nothing less than three single gentlemen rolled into one," and will transcribe our decrees into their note books, as a "vermilion edict," stereotyped, permanent, universal. We fancy even that we hear some of the "old ones," who have not entirely broken through their infantine egg-shell, exclaim ing at our decisions, See there, now! Do you hear what they say? And there, again! Well, did you ever? Oh! if I had been born a century later, to be instructed in the full doctrine of the new school!" Poor, dear old fellow! (Italicè, "vecchiccinòlo") Act uprightly, and die contented! If you are good, you know more than most of your descendants will. If you think, however, that we make any discoveries, we shall not deny it. It

redounds to our glory, and this is the great aim of authors.

"Hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum."

But all the while that we are awakening this strength of unreasoning reverence, by our forged signature of "we," we chuckle in our closet, to think that the "real presence" of the idol, is, at last, only the biped locomotive "I." Some may even think that we are no other than the Editor himself, discoursing in a more familiar mood. We are not, though. We are only his very particular friend, and still more, the friend of his cause and purpose. We have no doubt, however, that we think and write precisely as he would do, if he had the time! It is our design to help him out in his arduous task of filling one hundred and odd double-column pages every month, by occupying all the odd pages ourself, with brief essays, written in the incorrigible style-which, we take it, means a style incapable of, and needless of, correction.

We have lately made a classical discovery, of which, we doubt whether Homer himself was apprized, and which has certainly escaped the penetration of all modern critics. It is, that the dual number of the Greek language was originally invented to accommodate the conversational requirements of a man and his wife. That peculiar duplicate existence of which, happily or unhappily, we are ignorant, except by "hearsay,"that Siamese coalescence of will and movement, needed a separate and peculiar form of speech, to express their exclusive community of rights, property, and feelings. That same dual number ought to exist for the accommodation of the writer and his Editor, to indicate that the thoughts originated by the one, and rectified, endorsed, and published by the other, are, in some sense, their common property. In our case, the Editor is privileged to "excissorate," and has a carte blanche to add what he pleases. We consider ourselves as constituting a kind of publishing firm-Nosmetipsi & Co.

Well: we have spun quite a "yarn," and have only to hope that it may not be worsted in the perusal. We shall do better next time. One thing-we mean to be liberal. We intend, hereafter, to run our thought-carriage, our mental omnibus, for the benefit equally of Whigs, Neutrals, and Democrats (the soi-disant); though we anticipate but little patronage from these last. NOSMETIPSI.

UPON Some poetic principle, difficult to explain, but which Art, however untaught, has instinctively comprehended, even among rude nations, and before yet rules and systems were known, he whom it would make the favorite of all famethe matchless hero, of a beauty, a strength and a valor, beyond all human parallel -always perishes young, in the very flower of life and force and renown. Whether it is that the wise poets of the early and great national lays felt that, to move the utmost admiration, pity must be called in to avert our envy, and the perfectly brave be cut short in the very midst of their glory, so that mortal bitterness (consoled by the brevity of its date,) will bear to see their greatness; certain it is, that in Grecian, in Norwegian, and in Persian song alike, the same resort of the affections has been employed. Achilles falls in his first manhood; the equally irresistible Rustem yields to a fate as premature; Balder, the delight of the Valhalla, and brightest of all the children of Odin, is cut off untimely. The tale of Hercules, of Samson, of Roland, and of whatever made to rude and warrior nations the favorite image of an incomparable prowess, is much the same. Milton, too, has, in a beautiful passage of his Lycidas, appealed with admirable skill to the same feeling, in deploring the cruel destiny which seems ever to snatch from earth, the earliest, those who have just begun to show themselves capable of treading the highest career.

Such is the sentiment which everywhere attends the early fall of him on whom Nature appeared to have lavished in vain her most consummate gifts. This, Homer has touched again, where he bemoans Euphorbus, young, beautiful and brave, yet suddenly overthrown in death, like some young olive, whose lofty and verdant head, lifting itself to the glad air in snowy flowers, is all at once laid low by the whirlwind, With the same thought, once more, Virgil has affected us, when he pathetically tells what, had he lived, poor Marcellus would have been. Upon the very countenance of his shade, that has never yet visited the earth which he was to adorn so briefly, the poet sheds a visible gloom, a melancholy radiance,

In

such as might well be imagined to fling itself upon the port of him of heroic nature, who foreknew that, with everything that should have given him a lasting memory among men, he was to be born to the disinheritance of Fate and Fame. the same feeling, finally, we sadden over those who would else but little engage our esteem or compassion-the boy-conqueror of the utmost East that the Greeks knew; or even the hair-brained Swedish imitator of his ambition, not abilities; and Gaston de Foix, or Desaix, or whoever else that fell before yet the star of his honor seemed to have culminated.

Yet are there others, of souls as high and of hands more innocent, at whose immature fall we may still better be affected than at that of any who have plied, however generously, the cruel trade of war. Whatever the impulse that may urge, the vision that may lead, from childhood, such as these on to exploit; whatever the exercises that must breed them to heroic arts; whatever the patience, the vigilance, the discipline of pain and toil, of calm self-command or of fiery daring, that must form them up to perfect manhood and the ripeness for great deeds, there are yet others whom Nature must have cast to faculties as noble, far more beneficent, and capable of being carried to their fit perfection only by a training to which that of arms is little better than a diversion. The warrior of Thought—as we may well call him who turns upon Letters a force of the mind as powerful and purposes as immortal as any that Military Glory ever called forth-the Intellectual Worthy can only be produced by a training still more severe than any that forms the mere physical hero.

The fall, then, of a man like the late Hugh Legare, in the very prime of life and in the very vigor of noble faculties nurtured by the most consummate cultivation, is one of those mischances of life which come, at times, to sadden at his lonely toil the enthusiast of Letters, to check the ardor of high public pursuits, and teach to the most generous of passions-that of a great and just intellectual renown—the melancholy lesson of humility; how the studious watchings of year after year, the accumulated

knowledge, the practised judgment, the fancy enriched with all that Poetry or Taste could supply of the brightest, the disciplined reason, the commanding and varied attainments, the minuter skill of technical learning in its details, and all that mighty and beautiful pile of thought and feeling which labor and the strenuous love of high things can rear, on the mind naturally great, may be suddenly dashed to the earth, like the merest hovel of the mind, and, just when the grandeur, the grace and the solidity of the structure has begun to catch and to charm every eye, spread its ruins around! The great powers so lavishingly given, and so admirably improved, have, by a cruel blow of Fate, been snatched away, when they had yet been scarcely felt by the country which they seemed destined to illustrate and to serve; he was stricken down at the very threshold of fame; and just when the entire public should have begun to yield him its admiration, we were called on to deplore his loss! So precisely is the lesson that of Milton to which we have just alluded, and so well will the strain recall, to all who knew him to whom we apply them, his habits and aspirations, that we cannot omit what no other words can tell so well:

"Alas! what boots it, with incessant care To ply the homely slighted shepherd's trade,

And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spright

doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days: But the fair guerdon when we hope to find And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorréd shears,

And slits the thin-spun life!

HUGH SWINTON LEGARE was sprung from that honorable stock which has given to South Carolina so many eminent names -her Huguenot population; whom attachment to religious freedom led to seek refuge from French oppression, under the liberal institutions which a philosopher had planned for the infant State, in whose genial clime they found an image of their own. Settling there, in the neighborhood of the now dismantled town of Dorchester, his ancestors acquired respectable, though not large estates, in that quarter, where, and in John's Island, lay his patrimonial property.

The early loss of his father (who perished while he was a child) left him with a sister, who died in 1842, and another, whom his own death has left completely desolate, the last of her immediate raceto the widowed care of that excellent mother, who breathed her last in his arms in Washington, just before his death. She was of the race of the Swintons of Scotland; so that the Covenanter and the Huguenot were mingled in his lineage.

How admirably she performed those duties, to the successful exertion of which, nature herself seems to have made the concurring influence of both sexes almost indispensable, was apparent in the singularly fine impulses which, from studious boyhood upward, bore him on through the successive honors of the school, the college, professional and public life; in all of which, he made himself constantly felt as one on whom nature had lavished talents, and in whom art and labor would give to those talents a very high perfection.

It is probable that his mother was (as mothers then so often were throughout the South) his main teacher, up to the time (the 8th or 9th year) when the rudiments of a classical education may be begun. This, however, he commenced under the present Judge Mitchell King, then principal of a High School in Charleston, which has since taken the loftier name of the Charleston College, but has by no means made, like its early portioned to the titular accession, Mr. head-master, a progress in eminence proKing, after a laborious life, distinguished as much by merit as by success, has crowned a long professional career by accepting, in a very singular manner, a high judicial appointment, of which the salary is appropriated to the support of the almost destitute family of his predecessor. Under Mr. King, an exceedingly good and exact scholar, young Legare probably laid the foundations of those philological attainments which afterwards made so fine a part of his very varied acquirements.

His riper boyhood was committed to the instruction of that fortunate teacher, the Rev. Mr. WADDELL, then (we believe) of Abbeville, and subsequently the Presi dent of the Oglethorpe University of Georgia-the master of GEORGE MCDUFFIE, of JAMES PETTIGRU, of WILLIAM HARPER, and of many other distinguished pupils in that region. To his lessons