be pardoned for
adopting the shift of dealers in the dearer vaccine article, and
reinforcing his stores from a friendly pump. The expansiveness of
the heart would naturally communicate itself to the diction. But,
on the other hand, repeated experiments failed to detect even the
most watery flavor of conviviality in the composition. The epistles
of Jacob Behmen himself are not farther removed from any
contamination with the delights of sense. Was this, then, a mere
Baratarian banquet, a feast of reason, to which Mr. Cushing had
been invited? Or did he intend to pay an indirect tribute of respect
to his ancestry by sending what would produce all the hilarious effect
of one of those interminable Puritan graces before meat? No, the
dinner was a real dinner,--the well-known hospitality of South Carolina
toward Massachusetts ambassadors forbids any other supposition,--and
Mr. Cushing's letter itself, however dark in some particulars, is
clear enough in renouncing every principle and practice of the founders
of New England. We must find, therefore, some other reason why the
Ex-Commander of the Palmetto Regiment, when the Carolinians ask the
pleasure of his society, gives them instead the agreeable relaxation
of a sermon,--an example which, we trust, will not prove infectious
among the clergy.

It occurred to us suddenly that the next Democratic National
Convention is to assemble in Charleston. It is not, therefore, too
early to send in sealed proposals for the Presidency; and if this
letter is Mr. Cushing's bid, we must do him the justice to say that
we think nobody will be found to go lower. We doubt if it will avail
him much; but the precedent of Northern politicians going South for
wool and coming back shorn is so long established, that a lawyer like
himself will hardly venture to take exception to it. Like his great
namesake, the son of Jephunneh, he may bring back a gigantic bunch
of grapes from this land of large promise and small fulfilment, but
we fear they will be of the variety which sets the teeth on edge,
and fills the belly with that east wind which might have been had
cheaper at home.

If, nevertheless, Mr. Cushing is desirous of being a candidate, it
is worth while to consider what would be the principles on which he
would administer the government, and what are his claims to the
confidence of the public. We are beginning to discover that the
personal character of the President has a great deal to do with th