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68 THE COURANT; A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL.
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strainer. They are so clear, that it is a pleasure at
times, to look at the world through them." That is,
through the filtered intellects of those female writers who
have left their womanhood on the strainer!!! It is
surely valde deflendus, or greatly to be regretted, that
the intellects of the author, of all his drivel and unintel-
ligible stuff, had not also been strained of the mud and
mist that clogs them, or rather, that they are not re-
strained, so that the world may be spared any more
such displays of them, as it has had in the successive
numbers of the "Atlantic," and the volume we have
been reviewing.
He differs from Solomon on the subject of the alleged
vanity and transitoriness of wealth, wordly grandeur,
and all earthly things; and says, that there has been
"much foolish talk about these matters, for they have
a real responsibility and meaning, if we will only look at
them Stereoscopically"--that is, as he explains this
learned term--"with both eyes, instead of one." He
previously observes, that there has been an endless repe-
tition of trivialities on these hackneyed topics.
"In old times," he observes, "when men were all
the time fighting and robbing each other, and in those
tropical countries where the Sabeans and Chaldeans
stole al a man's cattle and camels, and there were fright-
ful tornadoes, and rains of fire from heaven; it was true
enough that riches took wings to themselves, not unfre-
quently, in a very unexpected way. But, with common
prudence in investments, "it is not so now." On a
changè tout cela. In fact there is nothing earthly, that
lasts so long as money. "A man's learning dies with
him, (as did that of Aristotle, Bacon and Liebnitz,)
"even his virtues fade out of remembrance; (as those
of Aristides and Cato, Fenelon and Washington, have
done,) but the dividends on the stocks he bequeathed to
his children live, and keep his memory green." This
puerile stuff, and melancholy nonsense, appears to be
meant for badinage, or as specimens of that light and
graceful, and archly smiling mode of treating serious
subjects, of which we have such inevitable examples in
the pages of Montaign and Addison.
But both you and your readers, Mr. Editor, must by
this time, we fear, be tired of the niaseries which we
have quoted, and been obliged to quote, in order to jus-
tify our criticisms upon the work from which they are
taken, and we therefore, here bring our remarks to a
close. We had intended to offer in another number,
a few cursory comments upon the poetry or poems scat-
tered through the volume; but we have concluded that
the following, along with the extracts, given from the
piece entitled "A Good Time Going," will be as much
as the readers of the Courant will care to peruse, or like
to have forced upon their attention.
The writer intends the first of these pieces as a
humorous quiz upon the pedantry of his College Teach-
ers; but, though it will make no one laugh, it serves to
show how much the peculiarities of the master influ-
enced the scholar, whose learning so perpetually oozes,
as Bob Acres's courage did, from his fingers ends.

ESTIVATION.
An unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor.

In candent ire, the solar splendour flames;
The floes, languêscent, pend from arid rames.
His humid front, the cive, anheling wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb, with none to supervise;
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine.

To me alas! no verdurous visions come,
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva scum,
No concave vast, repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!

Me wretched! let me curr to quircine shades,
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids.
Oh might I vole to some umbrageous clump,
Depart, be off, excide, evade, erump!

Was pedantry ever so amusingly quizzed, and shown
up before?
From "The Good Time Going" we give the follow-
ing morceau:
His home! the western giant smiles,
and turns the spotty globe to find it:
This little speck, the British Isles,
'Tis but a freckle, never mind it.
He laughs, and all the praries roll,
Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,
And ridges, stretched from pole to pole,
Heave, till they crack their iron knuckles.
But memory blushes at the sneer,
And honor turns with frown defiant,
And freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant!!!

What a succession of splendid and novel images have
we here! Chuckling cataracts, mountain ridges, that
heave until they crack their knuckles, blushing mem-
ory, frowning honor and laughing giants, all unite to
enhance the beauty and swell the sublimity of these un-
equalled stanzas. ATHENION.
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For the Courant.
DYSMOROS-CALLISTA.
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BY PRESTON DAVIS SILL.
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The rich dark beauty of a southern clime
Doth mantle in her fair and velvety cheeks,
While from her eyes of dreamy shadows flash
The fitful lightnings of her passionate soul,
Which slumbers restless in its thrall of clay,
Like fires beneath the snow-crowned mountain heights,
That trammelled seek to burst their chilling bonds:
A glorious fulgour 'tis, which, softening down,
Blends with an amorous languor that of old
They knew to give unto their statuary,
Till love would beam from out the senseless eye,
And men were fain to love the work they wrought.
Her bosom with its deep, voluptuous swell,
Doth heave and fall, responsive to the glow,
That tints her face, which--as the carven marble
Beareth an impress of the mighty mind
Conceiving it--so doth betray her secret--
The love--the wild, delirious love--that fills
Her breast and scathes it, while she fosters it.
Her glossy tresses, wanton and luxurious,
Are caught and twined about her stately head
In classic fashion--simple and severe,
And haughty in its modest dignity;
And in the profile of her perfect face
The sculptor's hand might find a glorious model--
In all, a queen--the queen of passionate Beauty,
Drunken with deadly Circe-draughts of passion!
Filling her soul with such all-conquering longings,
They must have utterance, or she'd droop and die:
They must have love--the food on which they feed--
Or as the flower that wanteth sun and air,
She'd fade, and fall, and pass away from earth.
Yet, if indulged, she'd be like some fair oak,
O'er which the rain, refreshing, had descended,
But which the direful levin blasts and leaves
All scorcht and blackened and a hideous thing.
Such, such is she--the beautiful and lost!
The beautiful, for she is Beauty's self;
The lost, for love will at the same time blast
When it shall bless her all-insatiate heart.
O fatal and most rare anomaly!
May guardian angels shield and keep thee now:
And when thine hours of grievous sorrow comes,
As come it must--'tis stampt upon thy brow--
When thy young heart is dried up as a spring
By fires that raged around its living source--
O, may they aid and comfort thee, until
Thy soul shall know--if it can ever know--
The calm and peace that slow and silent time,
Or draughts from Lethe's heaven-welled stream bestow--
A peace--I fear me--thou wilt never feel--
A peace that will abide with thee forever!
Columbia, S. C.
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WHAT A GOOD PERIODICAL MAY DO.--Show us an
intelligent family of boys and girls, and we shall show
you a family where newspapers and periodicals are plen-
tiful. Nobody who has been without these silent pri-
vate tutors can know their educating power for good or
evil. Have you never thought of the innumerable
topics of discussion which they suggest at the breakfast
table, the important public measures with which, thus
early, our children become familiarly acquainted; great
philanthropic questions of the day, to which uncon-
sciously their attention is awakened, and the general
spirit of intelligence which is evoked by these quiet
visitors? Anything that makes home pleasant, cheerful
and chatty, thins the haunts of vice, and the thousand and
one avenues of temptation, should certainly be regarded,
when we consider its influence on the minds of the
young, as a great moral and social blessing.--Emerson.
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PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF LITERARY PEOPLE.
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A correspondent of the Springfield Republican gives
the following pen-and-ink sketches of prominent literary
people:
Emerson looks like a refined farmer, meditative and
quiet. Longfellow like a good-natured beef-eater.--
Holmes like a ready-to-laugh little body, wishing only
to be "as funny as he can." Everett seems only the
graceful gentleman, who has been handsome. Beecher
a ruddy, rollicking boy. Whitter the most retiring of
Quakers. And thus I might name others. Not one of
these gentlemen can be called handsome, unless we ex-
cept Beecher, who might be a deal handsomer. Mrs.
Sigourney, the grandmother of American "female" lite-
rature, in her prime (if we may believe her portrait,)
was quite handsome. Katherine Beecher is homely.--
Mrs. Beecher Stowe so ordinary in looks that she has
been taken for Mrs. Stowe's "Biddy." Mrs. E. F. Ellet
looks like a washerwoman. Margaret Fuller was plain.
Charlotte Cushman has a face as marked as Daniel
Webster's, and quite as strong. So has Elizabeth
Blackwell. Harriet Hosmer looks like a man. Mrs.
Oakes Smith is considered handsome. Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe has been a New York belle. Frances O. Osgood
had a lovely womanly face. Amelia F. Welby was al-
most beautiful. Sarah J. Hale, in her young days, quite
lovely, unless her picture fibs. The Davidson sisters,
as well as their gifted mother, possessed beauty. If we
cross the ocean, we find Madame de Staël was a fright,
but Hannah More was handsome; Elizabeth Fry glori-
ous; Letetia Langdon pretty; Mrs. Hemans wondrously
lovely; Mary Howitt fair and matronly; Mrs. Norton
regally beautiful; Elizabeth Barrett Browning in phy-
sique is angular, and though she has magnificent eyes,
her face is suggestive of a tombstone. Charlotte Bronté
had a look in her eyes better than all beauty of features.
But if we look at British men of first-class craniums--
Shakspeare and Milton were handsome; Dr. Johnson
was a monster of ugliness; so were Goldsmith and Pope;
Addison was tolerably handsome, and Coleridge, Shelly,
Byron, Moore, Campbell, Burns, all were uncommonly
so. Sir Walter Scott looked very ordinary, in spite of
his fine head. Macauley is homely. Bulwer nearly
hideous, although a dandy. Charles Dickens is called
handsome, but covered with jewelry, he can but look
like a simpleton.
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A good story is related by Dickens, from the Life of
Jerrold. It is in a letter addressed to Jerrold from the
Continent:
I am somehow reminded of a good story I heard the
other night from a man who was witness to it, and an
actor in it. At a certain German town, last autumn,
there was a tremendous furore about Jenny Lind, who,
after driving the whole place mad, lef tit on her travels
early next morning. The moment her carriage was out-
side the gates, a party of students, who had escorted it,
rushed back to the inn, demanded to be shown to her
bedroom, swept like a whirlwind up into the room indi-
cated to them, tore up the sheets and wore them in strips
as decorations. An hour or two afterward, a bald old
gentleman, of amiable appearance, an Englishman, who
was staying in the hotel, came to breakfast, at the table
d'hote, and was observed to be much disturbed in his
mind, and to show great terror whenever a student came
near him. At last he said, in a low voice, to some peo-
ple who were near him at the table, "You are English
gentlemen, I observe. Most extraordinary people, these
Germans! Students, as a body, raving mad, gentlemen!"
"Oh, no," said somebody else; "excitable, but very
good fellows, and very sensible!" "Then, sir," returned
the old gentleman, still more disturbed, "then there's
something political in it, and I am a marked man. I
went out for a little walk, this morning, after shaving,
and while I was gone--" (he fell into a terrible perspir-
ation as he told it,)--"they burst into my bedroom, tore
up my sheets, and are now patrolling the town in all di-
rections with bits of 'em in their button-holes!" I
needn't wind up by adding that they went to the
wrong chamber.
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Whoever walks through the streets of Japan, town or
village, will be surprised to notice the number of books
exposed for sale in almost every shop. On looking in-
side he will probably find one or more of the attendants,
if otherwise disengaged, busily reading, or listening to
something being read by one of the company. In walk-
ing through the outskirts of the town, it is not un-
likely he will come suddenly on a knot of children,
seated in a snug corner out of the sun, all intently
engaged in looking through some story book or other
they have just bought at a neighboring stall, and
laughing right heartily at thecomical pictures which
adorn the narrative. The conviction is thus brought
home to a man's mind that the Japanese are a reading
people.
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