nd on any great
emergency their sudden heat carries the reader away captive.' The
admiration expressed by our other accomplished friend for the chaste and
graceful essays of a still more accomplished correspondent (there is
nothing like disparagement in this comparison) is widely shared, as we
have the best reason to know, by our readers on both sides of the
Atlantic: 'JOHN WATERS! There is a drab-coated plainness about the name,
which is at the same time _liquid_ and musical; not more liquid and
musical, howbeit, than those charming commentaries of his on every variety
of quaint topic; full of an amiable grace, tinged with the most delicate
hue of a fine humor; a refined ore drawn from no ordinary mine without
alloy; like the compositions of SAPPHO, to which an unerring critic has
applied the expression, [Greek: chruseiotera chrusou]; the very best of
gold. Doves never bore choicer _billet-doux_ beneath their wings. A
beautiful sentiment always touches the heart, though couched in homely
phrase; but when one knows how to cull from our mother-tongue the most
expressive words, and has gained that enviable mastery, making them fall
into their own places, and thus become inseparable from the idea, the
perfection of art is gained. Serve us up these choice _morceaux_ each
month, dear EDITOR; let them not be missed from the generous board, lest
the banquet be incomplete. Let me tell you, in passing, that your
correspondent HARRY FRANCO'S tale is a caution to dowagers. Never have I
encountered such a startling incident on the high seas, out of 'DON JUAN.'
. . . DID it occur to 'N.' that the change suggested in the mere
inscription of his epigram, '_Religious Disputation_,' would be entirely
out of keeping? 'Uniting the circumstances,' as Commissioner LIN would
say, would produce such discrepancy as was occasioned lately at a
democratic meeting in one of the western States, where a certain
resolution in favor of our old friend and correspondent, Gen. CASS, was
made to undergo a slight metamorphosis by the substitution of the name of
Mr. VAN BUREN; causing it to read something like this: 'Whereas Gen.
MARTIN VAN BUREN emigrated to the west from New-Hampshire in early life
with his knapsack on his back, and unsheathed his sword in repelling the
Indians and fighting against the British!' etc. This historical fiction,
in the antagonistic excitement of the moment, was carried by an almost
unanimous vote! . . . INVERSION of mere words,