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more chaste and beautiful building than the former. A correct taste for architecture is, however, advancing; and the new bank of the United States promises to exhibit a pure specimen of the Ionic order. I was informed by the architect, however, that the monied gentlemen who preside over the institution, insist upon the arched door way, as being prettier, though it must destroy the unity of the whole building. Though there are very many churches, none of them are very remarkable. I cannot say that they are in general in very correct taste; a circumstance that arises probably from the various opinions of those who direct their construction. The portico of St. Paul's I must, however, except: it appears to me very beautiful; exhibiting in the purity of its style, a strong contrast to the mongrel Gothic, and wretched composite, with which your eyes are now and then presented.

The houses are a much more important part of domestic economy than the churches. They are in general small and very low; at least, so they strike a foreigner. They resemble more those of the modern part of Marseilles, than any of our other towns. The private buildings are generally brick; extremely comfortable, and perhaps better furnished than our houses usually are. Indeed, I have been somewhat struck at the luxe of the Americans, in this respect. Une maison bien montée, belonging to a respectable merchant here, would make some of our wealthy bourgeois blush for their simplicity, in having never seen a Brussels carpet covering the floor of a plain salle à manger. The houses are always painted outside, as well as in; and the inhabitants seem attached to the natural colour of the brick, as they are generally painted with the same gaudy, glaring tint. Rough casting in the absence of building stone, seems almost unknown.

Mais il ne faut pas vous assommer, with this tedious epistle. I will leave these matters until another time, and pass on to a more agreeable subject. I have visited, as you desired me, those places which once filled your heart with so much joy and sorrow. Some of the houses are converted into stores-others are pulled down-and the whole quartier has, from the resort of the gay and fashionable, become the abode of the laborious mechanic and the calculating and busy trader. Even the names of the streets are altered, and Great and Little Dock and Queen streets are scarcely to be recognized in Water and Pearl streets. I assure you that I visited the spot with great interest where the patriotic governor of New-York, at the close of the war, and when the last British soldier had ceased to trample on the American soil, gave a grand fête to the Count de la Luserne, in which you participated, and to the details of which I have so often heard you fondly recur, as if even its splendour were equal to the event it celebrated.

The house still stands where the illustrious George Washington took leave of his brother officers upon his retirement from the army. I passed through the apartments, with my imagination constantly employed in painting that touching and tender scene, the recollection of which fills your heart so frequently with sad but honourable emotion--a scene which never can recur again, until some new band of brothers, led by some new Washington, shall gloriously break the shackles of despotism, and after eight years of suffering and peril, and having secured the fruits of their efforts to their posterity, shall again, with Roman firmness, consent to relinquish all to their country, and retire calmly to the shades of private life. Never was there a sublimer act of disinterested devotion in the whole history of man. The authors are fast gliding into the tomb; and but few are now left to relate the story. I rejoice that my country can enrol some names among them, and cherishes their honours as part of its common inheritance of glory.

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Adieu, my dear father, although I am interested in the new scenes before me, I cannot forget France. Send me, then, every detail respecting the movements in the Chamber, and the inconsistencies of M. De N. * * * * I have sent you some trees to embellish Estelle's favourite alley. Remember me to my old companion Frederic, and assure my dear mother of my constant regard. Mille amitiés à la famille C.

Again I embrace you all affectionately.

V. DU C

P. S. As old Gaspard is something of a sportsman, I commit to his especial care and favour Diane and Brilliant.

HORACE, BOOK II. CARM. 3.

When fortune frowns, thine equal mind
Preserve, and when her smiles are kind,
Exult not, arrogantly vain,
But keep thy calm and equal strain:

Whether black care consumes thine hours,
Or stretched in cool secluded bowers,
The festal day inspires thy soul,
And old Falernian fills the bowl;

Where the tall pine and poplar white
Above their social shades unite,
Marrying their boughs, and winding nigh,
The rapid lymph runs trembling by.

Here bring the wine, the perfume bring,
And the sweet rose, soon perishing ;
While fortune, youth, and the black twine
Of the dread sisters leave them thine :

For from thy fields and fireside blest,
Thy domes by yellow Tiber kist,
Soon thou must part; thine heaps now grown
So high, the heir shall call his own.

If rich, and sprung from lines of fame,
Or houseless, and without a name,
Indifferent is; at the fixed day,
Relentless hell demands its prey.
We all are onward urged, the urn
Fraught with a death at every turn,
Must soon or late our lot discharge,
And we for endless exile mount the barge.

THE PROPHECY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY.

BOOK I. CARM. 15.

As o'er the waves the Trojan galleys sped,
Whenas his prize the faithless shepherd bore,
A death-like calm o'er all the waters spread,

And the lulled winds lay cradled on the shore;
Rebuked by father Nereus, hoary seer,
Who thus prophetic breathed his chant of wo and fear.
" Sad omens meet thee, and thy leman vile,
Whose rape embattled Hellas shall atone;
Sworn to destroy thy ties, reclaim thy spoil,
And overthrow king Priam's ancient throne.
Ah, me! from heroes' limbs, from coursers' sides,
The heavy sweat-drops hot and fast run down!

What funeral pyres thy lust insane provides,
For all the Dardan line of long renown!
Pallas assumes her helm, her ægis shakes,
Fierce yokes her thundering car, and all her fury wakes.

In vain, fond boy, in Cypria's care confiding,
May'st thou thy graceful, yellow locks dispart;
And on the effeminate lyre the notes dividing,
Soothe, with lascivious lays, thy lady's heart:

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In vain! thy dalliance soft the cumbrous spear,
The keen barbed Cretan arrow shall awake,
The roar of warshall thunder in thine ear,

Thy slumbers swift pursuing Ajax break:

Alas! for deadlier battles then prepare,
And with black dust stain thine adulterous hair!

Scourge of thy race, Laertes' awful son,
And he of Pylos, venerable sage,
Behold! with these, undaunted, hurrying on,
Teucer and Sthenelus, or skilled to wage
On foot, the strife of close contested war,
Or o'er the encumbered plain swift urge the echoing car.

And lo! Merion, and the hero sprung

From Tydeus-he yet greater than his sire,
Furious shall track thy steps the hosts among,
Raging with gory steel, and eyes of fire:

Whom thou, as trembling hart that in the vale

Sees the gaunt wolf with fangs all armed for death,

Shalt fly-until thy coward limbs shall fail,

And heavily be drawn by thy panting breath.

Not such the sport thy wanton hope descried,
When, from Mycena's domes, thou borest the treacherous bride!

The day of wrath o'er Ilium dawns at last;

The day of wail shall Phrygia's matrons know;
Achilles rouses; and, long winters past,

The appointed hour must come of bale and wo;
When Grecian flame shall wrap the Trojan walls,
And desolation sit on Priam's prostrate halls!

MODERN LITERATURE.

There is, perhaps, nothing more striking in relation to modern literature, than the extent of acquirement which excellence in any department of it demands; "il faut savoir pour sentir, savoir pour penser, savoir pour parler;" almost every work, to gain even readers, not to say admirers, must be, what the "Paradise Lost" has been said to be" a book of universal knowledge:" it must be filled with allusions drawn from every possible source; and the exotics of every age and region ; and language must be transplanted into its style: nor is this the case alone with the severer productions of intellect;-with history, for instance, where there has been a transition from the simple narration of general facts, to a wide assemblage of them, from every quarter; and an induction from them of general principles in taste, in morals, in government, in every thing in which man's head, or heart, or imagination is concerned; but it extends even to the lightest works of fancy, to the companions of our very idlest hours; and when we would be meditating upon " nescio quid nugarum," and wish to be " toti in illis," we are hurried away by the strong arm of an athletic intellect over some untravelled region, where we are to "ask its earthly name" of every being that we encounter in our journey, and to learn his habits, his manners, his religion, his history, and, in nine cases out of ten, his dialect, before we can presume to indulge ourselves in his conversation. Take, for example, any one of the works of the anonymous and predominating genius in the walks of fiction: what is each of them, but an attempt to beguile us by the spells of interesting incident and bewitching imagery, into an entire familiarity with the history, and antiquities, and prevailing character of the age in which he has thought proper to lay his scene? We are taken through every period of British annals, from "Sixty years since," back to the days of the grantor of the great charter, nay almost to those of the Norman conqueror; and introduced to all the customs of successive centuries, as well as to every spring of action, in the various revolutions of church and state. Even the boarding-school miss, who avails herself of the general exception of discipline, in favour of the Waverley' novels, and who reads but to indulge her lively fancy in the contemplation of the soft scenes in which she longs to be an actress, betrays herself unwittingly into an acquaintance with antiquities, which Scriblerus himself might have envied. Another novelist chooses to make us conusant of the times of the Christian persecution, under the later Emperors of Rome; another of the prevailing habits in the parti-coloured regions under the Turkish rule; and the struggle seems to be, who shall find periods, and people, and places, unattempted by preceding pens, to form the appendages of what after all must owe its chief interest to the faithful pictures of human character, which it furnishes, and to the skilful combination of a few simple and similar principles, by which that character is formed, actuated, and exhibited.

But this is not all. These works are never didactic, either in their object or their style; they seldom prepare us, by the communication of the requisite information, respecting the peculiarities of the modes of living, thinking and acting, of those who figure in their scenes, for the very scenes, of which the effect must in a great measure depend upon our previous acquaintance with all those peculiarities. This they take for

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