ston. LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. NEW-YORK, June 18, 1850. be made known, without implying either imposture on the one hand, or the lifting up the brazen veil of the future state on the other. But a truce to these gravities, and let me proceed to my story. I merely wished to be political for a moment, and "define my position" as a mere outside spectator, without the shadow of a theory, or a belief, or an opinion, in regard to the facts in question. It is my function to describe and not to philosophise. or more sceptical celebrity of New-York, with a swarm of all those spirits who are tormented with the demon of uurest, flocking to such an exbibition of the marvellous, like moths to a candle. I presume that none of your readers are so straight-laced, as to wish me to omit from my monthly bulletin, the famous sounds which are just now the rage in New-York, because they It is now over a fortnight since these itinerant labor under the suspicion of having their origin Sybils arrived in New-York. They have been in arrant imposture. Should the deception be visited by hundreds every day since they came brought to light, and the whole affair exploded, here. Their room at Barnum's Hotel is conbefore my letter makes acquaintance with your stantly thronged with a crowd of aspirants, some types, the account I shall give may prove a com- eager to pry into the secret of the deception, fortable ghost-story, for which almost every body others curious to converse with a departed spirit. has a taste the world over, not excepting such In general, they are treated with courtesy, their good authorities as Scott and Irving and All- own manners being modest and rather prepossessing, though at times a savage customer comes I believe Dr. Johnson never entirely recovered along, who shows that the spirit which hung the from his faith in the Cock-Lane Ghost, which witches, has not quite passed away with the became such a notorious character in London boasted light of the nineteenth century. You about a century ago, and Southey describes, with find all sorts of persons in the ghostly drawingall the gravity of a poet-laureate, the weird noises room,-fashionable ladies, grave divines, scoffthat so long haunted the Wesley family, winding ing editors, inquisitive travellers, live Hoosiers up his smooth narrative with the expression of from the far West, and almost always some one his belief that they were preternatural phenomena sent to convince the conceited Sadduceeism of the age, that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in its philosophy. I own I have no such incontinent facility of faith. I cannot conceive the mental affinities which see a ghost in every object that they cannot call by name, and ascribe the rattle of the Rochester knockings to the agency of departed spirits, because they can tell no other way in which they are produced. Nor, on the other hand, am I ready to charge the lady ghost-seers with a settled plan of deception. They seem more like persons, who have come into possession of powers which they do not comprehend themselves, but for which having become responsible, they wish to show them off to the best advantage. That they are free from all artifice or vanity in the management of these powers, no one can imagine who remembers the "mingled yarn" of which the web of human life is composed. I The visitors are seated at a long table,-a part know how much easier it is to sweep off all such of the ordinary furniture of the room,-the lapretensions with one withering expression of dies on a sofa near each other, and the whole scorn; but he who believes that there is a "Night- company forming a sort of magic circle, before Side of Nature," not yet put into equations or the sounds begin to be heard. They then break formulas, will maintain a large latitude of chari-out, apparently under the floor of the room,— ty, whatever limits he may place on the excur- sometimes commencing suddenly with a full, sions of his faith. With the facts of Mesmer- sonorous roll, almost startling the unwary audiism and Clairvoyance, in spite of their baffling tor out of his propriety, but more frequently exuncertainty, we should be slow to believe that hibiting in the first instance a succession of faint, the resources of nature are bounded by our ex-low, irregular raps, not unlike the strokes of a perience, or that a new order of facts may not muffled drum,-but, in either case, indicating The operators consist of a party of six persons, Mrs. Fox, an elderly matron of fair, rotund figure, with nothing special in her appearance to distinguish her from the neat-handed dames of Genesee county,-her three daughters, one of them a married lady, and the two others, young girls, neither apparently over eighteen,—and two gentlemen, who officiate as the masters of ceremonies and pursuivants in the wizard pageant. The ladies seem to possess the usual degree of intelligence; there is nothing that designates them as spiritual revelators, prophetesses, or impostors; the two youngest, in particular, often giving the most unmistakeable evidence of regarding the performance as a bore, and of wishing that it might soon come to a close. that the unknown agents are on hand and ready | questions about his family and pursuits are anto make further communications. swered correctly, but, I believe, this gentleman The question may then be asked either by one did not extend his inquiries into the spiritual of the ladies, or any visitor. Will the spirits world. converse with such or such an individual? The A farmer-looking personage-brown and weathanswer to this is by no means certain. The un-er-stained, from Indiana, after being rebuffed for seen rappers appear to be quite capricious in two or three times, at last succeeded in obtaintheir tastes. They sometimes give a flat nega-ing an interview. Can I converse with my detive. Often they yield a conditional consent, ceased son? Yes. With my daughter? Yes. saying that they will converse with the persons Are their spirits present? Yes. Can I speak at some other time-perhaps at a later period of to them directly? Yes. Do you know me? that session. I have noticed no principle in the selection of the favored individuals. The most intelligent person in the room is as likely to be accepted as any other. Nor can he flatter himself that he will be heard in preference to any gaping fanatic who happens to be present. I see that at the reunion, about which so much has been said in the newspapers, at the house of Rev. Dr. Griswold, a decided partiality was shown to Dr. Francis and Mr. Fenimore Cooper. At other times, no answer at all is vouch- On another occasion, a highly intelligent lady, safed to those who are most inclined to swallow who had been drawn by the general current of the pretensions. Often when apparently the la- curiosity into a visit to the ghost-seers, was receivdies seem most desirous to make a favorable im-ed with very considerable empressement. On her pression, they are mocked with an astringent si- solicitation of an interview, the knocks were lence. Perhaps this is an element in the complot. No answer. Soon the signal was given for the alphabet. The words were spelled out. "They are always with you." Are you happy? Yes. Are you happy together? No direct reply, but a succession of rhythmical knocks were heard, which the old man recognized as a favorite tune which his son and daughter had been in the habit of playing together on the piano and violin. He was greatly agitated, and no further questions were then asked. Did he live in emphatical, and as far as one could understand this "dead language," seemed particularly corSupposing, then, the preliminaries to be ar- dial. Wishing to step out of the usual routine ranged, and an acceptable interlocutor on the of family questions, she fixed on Jean Jacques "inquiry bench," the question is usually asked, Rousseau as the spirit she would evoke. Can I with a view to identifying the pretended ghost, converse with him? was the first question, of What was your age when you left the body? course conceding the name. Yes. Was he an This question is often followed by raps, showing American? No answer. A German? No the correct number of years; as often, by silence; answer. A Frenchman? Yes. and not unfrequently, by an answer altogether the present century? No answer. erroneous. Another method is to write down several figures, including the right one, at which the spirit knocks, on its being touched with the pencil. In most cases that I have seen, the answers are given correctly by this method. Similar questions are then put, and the replies, though name? After several confused knocks, no one often wide of the mark, are frequently so cor- being able to count the number, eight knocks reet as to excite as much astonishment in the were given. Will he rap the letters in his first company, as when Madame McAllister disap-name? Wrong answer. Will he rap the letters pears from the table at the pistol-shot of her husband. Another mode is for the spirits to call for the alphabet, which is slowly repeated by the officiating hierophant, and a knock is heard at each letter of which the answer is composed. Such is the usual modus operandi, and if you choose, I will give you some instances of its application which I have witnessed myself. In the last? Yes. Does he now retain the views which he cherished on earth? He does not. Does he think as he did of the family relation? No. Will he tell the number of his names? Three distinct raps. Will he rap the letters in his last in his three names? Wrong answer. The lady discontinued the conversation with the firmest conviction that all she had witnessed was clearly the result of accident or deception. Others drew the opposite inference from the same facts. Minds will differ. A German gentleman present then took up the thread of inquiry, proposing his questions in the A gentleman from Charleston, S. C., names French language. They related to his family several cities, inquiring which of them is his res-abroad, or deceased, and were all answered coridence. Knock at Charleston. How many rectly. weeks since I left there? Knocks the number. At another time, a literary gentleman of this Am I thinking of father? mother? brother? city proposed to converse with the poet Goethe. wife? Knocks at the relative in his mind. Other This was found to be no easy matter. At length, the answer came, that no one could converse inquirers. I perceive that Prof. Agassiz is now with him directly, but that questions concerning treating the question in a course of lectures at. him would be replied to. The following dia-Boston. The controversy could scarely be in logue then commenced. Will you rap the num- better hands. Agassiz looks at the question in a ber of tens in his age? Eight raps. The num- purely scientific point of view, expressly disber of tens since he died? Two. Was he an claiming any desire to influence opinion in reAmerican? No answer. Was he a French-gard to the interpretation of the Scriptures, or man? Yes. The question was then varied and any of the delicate topics of current controversy. put in writing, the interlocutor being requested Dr. Smyth considers it as a theologian and as a to knock, when the right word was touched with citizen of the South. But this does not seem to the pencil. Is he an Englishman? An Italian? damage his candor or impartiality. He makes A German? A Frenchman? Yes. Does he out a strong case on his side of the question, retain his old opinions? No. Was he a great which of course, is a public intellectual benefit. author? Yes. Was he a great poet? No. The truth will be elicited from the best efforts of Was he thought to be a great poet while on the advocates on both sides. earth? Yes. Was the world deceived about him? No answer. It was evident that the in- Among the reprints, I notice The Pillars of quirer had fallen in with one who was no friend | Hercules, a loose, disjointed, rambling, pedantic of Goethe. Swedenborg would have perhaps book of travels in Spain and Morocco, by a memsaid that it was one of those envious, scampy, ber of the British Parliament, D. Urquhart, Esq. imps, who love to detract from merit, and who could not forgive Goethe his world-wide reputation or his French tastes. It has been lashed without mercy by his political opponents, who wield the critical pen, in England, but you may take my word for it, I have given you what I think is a tolerably leaving out its plethora of Greek and Latin, it has fair view of the average character of the ques- humor, sarcasm, droll anecdotes, lively descriptions and answers. Thus far, no important re- tion and curious information enough to make it ply has been given to any question. No new well worth reading. After you have been proknowledge has been communicated. No facts voked, in the worst way, with its ill-assorted have been disclosed, which were not already in crevasses of strange learning, and its numerous the mind of the inquirer when the question was high-horsical pomposities, your good-nature is put. In this respect, the performance does not restored by some happy hit, or sprightly narraequal the achievements of many clairvoyants. tive, and you think the fusty old pedant is the The language, when a sentence is spelled, is pre-most entertaining writer in the world. cisely such as might be expected from the intellectual calibre of the lady mystatoques. The The life of Andrew Combe promises to be an raps often take the form of musical airs, but agreeable piece of biography, I have dipped into without exception, they are the familiar tunes of it here and there and find it far less stupid than Rochester and its vicinity, with no echo of blessed most of the popular productions of that literal, harps. Still, you find something more in the downright, unmitigated Scoth prosaist, George phenomena, taken as a whole, than can be well explained on the theory of a voluntary humbug. This may yet prove to be the case, but at present, the mystery is so complete, as to make one wary of affirming or denying aught in relation to it. The believers that it is the work of departed spirits of course, are few. The most important work of this month is Dr. Smyth's admirable Treatise on the Unity of the Human Races, published by Putuam. The eminent Charleston divine handles the interesting topic of discussion, with a rich display of erudition such as few men can command in this country, and with a keenness of perception and power of argument which must make him a formidable antagonist. Nothing heretofore written on the subject appears to have escaped his notice, and on this account, if on no other, his volume will be a text book of standard authority, with all future Combe. C. A. Bristed has written a pamphlet of considerable piquancy, scourging the modern radicalisms all and singular, over the shoulders of the head school master of New-England, Horace Mann, of Massachusetts. Harpers' New Monthly Magazine has taken the "reading public" by storm. It cannot fail to be a most readable production, as the abundant materials of which it is composed, if merely thrown up into the air, like a bag of feathers, would come down in most delightful shapes. The first number has been sold to the amount of some 20,000 copies, and large orders await the appearance of the second, which I am told will be a decided improvement on its predecessor. One of its features, that of giving copious extracts from the best new English works in ad vance of their regular publication, I think, is most excellent. They are like samples of good wine, which create a taste for the real article, and allay the appetite till a full supply can be obtained. Harper & Brothers will speedily issue Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, the most delicious book of the season, as aromatic and flavorous as the dish of ripe strawberries, which with the thermometer at 90° tempts me to let you off today with a short letter. KATHLEEN, OR THE FELON'S TRYSTE. Sister, we must part to-night! Bring with thee too, that book of prayer, Sister, ere we breathe farewell, J. M. C. EDITOR'S TABLE. During the last month, we have received the painful intelligence of the death of two distinguished poets of England; and to these has recently been added the name of Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, one of our sweetest American poetesses. William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, in Westmoreland, on the 23rd of April, in his eighty-first yearhaving thus, as it were, outlived his generation, and heard with his mortal ears the impartial verdict of posterity. His high reputation was neither acquired early, nor without a struggle with that English public, so famous for worshipping false gods in Literature, and neglecting its real men of genius. With his merit unacknowledged, his genius chilled by neglect, his warm inspirations frozen in their fount by the sneers of the Edinburg Review, which then dictated without appeal in Letters, William Wordsworth, whose name will pass to future times as the great Philosophical Poet, struggled on through fifteen years of neglect and indifference from that public, which has since done all but worship him. He was twenty-three when his first poem was published. It bore the title of "An Evening Walk-an Epistle in Verse, addressed to a young Lady of the North of England, by W. Wordsworth, B. A., of St. John's College, Cambridge." In the same year 1793, appeared "Descriptive Sketches in Verse"-of a tour in Switzerland and Italy. These fell almost still-born from the press, but Coleridge has recorded in his Biographia Libraria his own impression of them in the following words: "During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled 'Descriptive Sketches;' and seldom if ever was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the Literary horizon more evidently announced." A few appreciative admirers, however, could do nothing for the poor "Sketches," and they fell dead. They were followed by "Lyrical Ballads," and in 1807, by an edition of his poems, in two volumes, which Byron, then nineteen, reviewed in the "Monthly Literary Recreations." His pompously rounded would-be-critical sentences remind us strongly of Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his critiques in Thackeray's last new novel. These volumes added much to the reputation of Wordsworth. He was at last beginning to be known and appreciated. His "Lyrical Ballads" had become favorites with the public, and a new work from their author was looked for with curiosity by the general reader, and with impatience by his admirers, embracing in their number every cultivated intellect, and every admirer of simplicity and nature. While the public mind was in this state of favorable regard toward the new poet, his "Excursion," undeniably the greatest of his poems, was given to the world. In vain did the Edinburg Review fulminate and threaten, exclaim, "This will never do!" and boast of having "crushed the Excursion"-Lord Jeffreys for once found his goosequill powerless. The public were determined to read and judge for themselves. The Excursion raised the poet's reputation still higher with his admirers. Then came in succession, "Peter Bell," the "Waggoner," the "White Doe of Rylston," and those beautiful Sonnets which appeared under the title of the "River Duddon." From the appearance of this latter volume dates Wordsworth's fixed fame as a poet. From this time forth it was never called in question, and his subsequent works, "Yarrow Revisited," "Tinturn Abbey," "Laodamia," "Yarrow Unvisited," &c., sustained, rather than added |the person of Frances Sargent Osgood, whose songs and to his reputation. In 1835, Wordsworth received a pension of £300, and on the death of Southey, he was appointed poet-laureate-an office which Jonson, Davenant and Dryden had held before him. His only production, as poet-laureate, is his Ode on her Majesty's visit to his old alma mater. The incident of the pension and his appointment by the Queen soon after, gave rise to the following verses by that most eccentric of poets, Robert Browning. They have more bad feeling than poetry "Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat- Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud! Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watched from their He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! It is unnecessary here to do more than allude to the merits of William Wordsworth. The impartial voice of his own generation has declared him to be a noble and true poet-with a heart to sympathize with nature in all her moods of shine or storm, "thunder or sunshine," agitation or rest, and an intellect expanded, acute and vigorous, to interpret in "noble words," his "noble feelings of the heart." His greatest poem, the "Excursion," is not only a noble work in point of thought and matter, but the diction is terse, flowing, meditative, dramatic, embracing in a word all the moods of the language moulded by a master hand. His "Lyrical Ballads" will, however, be always the favorites of the great mass of readers. "Lucy Gray" and the "Waterfall and Eglantine" are types of these charming productions, which linger in the heart like some longtreasured memory of happy childhood. The power to write these "Lyrics," says all that need be said for Wordsworth's heart and head. Nearly at the same moment with Wordsworth, died William Lisle Bowles, the contemporary of all the great poets of the last generation. He had reached his eightyeighth year, at his death. lyrics have so long been favorites with the public. Her first poems appeared in the "Juvenile Miscella ny," under the nom de plume of “ Florence," and in 1839 a volume of her works, called " A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England," was published by a house in London, whither she had gone with her husband. For several years Mrs. Osgood has edited different magazines and annuals with great taste and elegance-her pen turning indifferently to poetry or prose. Mrs. Osgood in the light gay sparkling lyric or song, which has of late years become so common, has few ri vals. Mrs. Welby is perhaps her equal, but not her superior. The perpetual gaiety which pervades these writings, and the tender, delicate sentiment, which runs through all of them, is delightfully refreshing when the mind has been overburdened, and asks for relaxation. As an example of this manner, we refer to the little song"I have something sweet to tell you," and as a proof of this lady's warm and poetical imagination, to the "Magic Flute," a poem which appeared some time since in one of the Northern magazines. Mrs. Osgood is the most | feminine of American poetesses. It is not our practice to refer to the Prospectuses of Schools or Colleges in the editorial department of the Messenger, inasmuch as such reference in general savors too much of the "Puff direct" to be much to our taste. But we hope it will not be considered foreign to the scope of our Magazine to ask attention to a "Prospectus of a Law School to be conducted by Benj. F. Porter," in Charleston, S. C. It is perhaps enough for us to announce the fact that such a school is to be commenced, for surely nothing that we can say can add to the claims Judge Porter already possesses upon the Southern public. A distinguished jurist, he has also acquired an enviable literary reputation; and we congratulate the young men of the South, who are about to enter upon the study of the Law, on the advantage they have in being able to choose so excellent a Preceptor. The school opens in November next. NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. WANDERING SKETCHES of People and Things in South The title of this book is so fair and full an index to its conHis first work, entitled "Fourteen Sonnets," was much tents, that perhaps a mere reprint of it would suffice for a admired by Coleridge, who "made more than forty trans- criticism. But Dr. Wood has acquitted himself so very credcriptions, as the best presents he could offer to those who itably and agreeably in his unpretending narrative, that we had won his regard,"-his finances "not permitting him cannot forbear giving our readers an extract or two, that to purchase copies." Of his succeeding publications, may furnish them with some insight into its merits. We few now remember anything ;-his "Coombe Ellen," "St. dip into the book at random. From the one which we select Michael's Mount," and "Spirit of Discovery," have pass-first, it would seem that a taste for gaudy trappings and ed away. He is chiefly remembered by his controversy useless parades was quite as common in South America with Lord Byron, and by the witticism on his "Spirit of as in " these United States." Discovery," in the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. To these names, famous in another land, and now gone from the abodes of men, an addition has been made in "Among the most interesting street incidents at Rio Janeiro are the religious processions frequently occurring. In these processions images as large as life, and gaudily |