I am told by mothers, that children manifest fear when, cated them according to a fancied propriety. Here in two or three months old. If the brain be a single organ, the front they placed common sense, because it seemed these powers should be simultaneously developed; but the most appropriate place for receiving information this is not so, and the only true explanation seems to from the eyes, nose, and taste. Fancy they placed on be, that the mind is composed of different organs, which the sides of the head, because it has such great facility come to maturity at different times. Dr. Johnson, in- in flying off in a tangent. Reflection they placed at the deed, remarked that the doctrine of a variety of organs back of the head, because, in reflecting, men throw the was absurd, “for,” said he, “ the man who can walk east mind back on itself. Memory they placed in the cerecan certainly walk west." But it may be remarked, bellum, because they thought it formed a nice little storethat walking east and walking west are but walking-house for the safe and snug keeping of ideas till they the exercise of a single function; whereas perceiving were needed. This, you will observe, was making man, color, and reasoning, are quite distinct operations. not observing him. Again, genius is always partial, which it ought not to be if the organs of the mind were single. I have seen it maintained, in one of your periodicals, that genius is always the result of an accidental exciting cause. Thus, Newton was made a philosopher by the fall of an apple, and Byron became a great poet because he was lashed by the reviewers and condemned as a poe

The brain, then, is not a single organ, but each particular function is manifested by a particular portion of the brain.

NO. VI.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE TREE ARTICLES."

taster. But like causes produce like effects, and how CURRENTE CALAMOSITIES; happens it that so many millions, before Newton, had seen apples fall without ever thinking of any thing but picking them up and eating them? And if a lashing be sufficient to produce a great poet, why are not great poets more numerous? Indeed, if critical flagellation had been sufficient, I should by this time have become a great poet myself.

May, "the delicate-footed May," has come in upon us once more. She is suggestive of beautiful associations, and hence, chiefly, is she delightful to us, in this Dreaming can be rationally explained by Phrenology Northern clime of ours. For to us her sunny smiles alone. Were the brain a single organ, then would all are few, while her cloudy skies and rainy days are its faculties be asleep or awake together, and conse-many. Now you, my dear green-pea-eating editor, are quently dreaming be impossible. But this is not so. enjoying, all this month, the most delicious and truly Cautiousness alone is sometimes awake: then are con-May-like weather; while our trees, in leaf as they jured up all fearful thoughts, and the dreams are of "hydras and chimeras dire." On the other hand, a number of the intellectual faculties may be awake and the sentiments asleep: then we may have a vision of friends long dead, but totally free from that awe or fear which their presence would inspire were not the feelings dormant.

Were not the brain a congeries of organs, partial idiocy could not occur; yet, that it does occur we well know. Here is the cast of an idiot whose intellectual faculties were externally small, but whose self-esteem was large; and not withstanding his utter imbecility, he had a very comfortable opinion of his own importance. I knew an idiot on the banks of the Clyde who could play on one or two musical instruments, yet in other respects he was so utterly imbecile that he had to be supported by the parish. Now if the brain were a single organ this would be the same as if a man had the power of walking east without having the power of walking west.

are, it is true, have not, as I write, attained a tithe of that fulness and richness which yours have for weeks displayed. Oh! how beautiful are your Southern woods in May! Why are you not all poets or painters, under their inspiration? The green is so rich,-the tints so varied! The oaks put forth their new foliage of the same hue with that which fell a few months before, from their branches,-thus seemingly arraying themselves in their cast-off autumn garments: yet how softened is that sombre hue by the thick down which covers every folded leaf! And how slowly do they unroll themselves, as if they feared that the winds of heaven would breathe on them too roughly! and then with what dignity do the elder and larger of these noble trees stretch out their huge branches;-with what stateliness do they receive the warm greetings of the Spring, as she flies gaily to meet them, imprinting kisses on their tender leaves, and making, the while, the younger saplings dance, and tremble with joy, at the salutation! The chesnut oak,-that rare and cuIndeed, that the brain must consist of a congeries of rious tree; how light and fresh is the tint of its foliorgans, is maintained by distinguished physiologists age, and how saucily does it flaunt its new bravery otherwise opposed to Phrenology; as Foderé, and Sir in the presence of the fine old chesnuts, which are more Charles Bell. Such considerations as I have stated, slowly awakening into life! Is it not adding insult to have impressed men, in all ages, with belief in the injury,-after having stolen the shape of their leaves,— brain's multiplex character; and particular portions of to boast of being in greater beauty, at an earlier period the head have been assigned to distinct faculties, from of the Spring, which gives beauty to all, in turn? Boast, the time of Aristotle. This drawing represents a head as this imitative oak may boast, of being mistaken by published at Venice in 1562, by Ludovico Dolci. Now the careless observer for the veritable chesnut, the what is the difference between such an arrangement ripening acorn soon dispels the illusion, and shows it and the system of Gall? Simply this:-Gall discovered for what it really is: for the true fruitage (emblem of the seat of the various faculties. These older writers modest worth,) hides itself, you know, in a thick and considered modes of activity as simple faculties, and lo-impenetrable coat, as it grows to maturity.

and its fragrance reaches farther; it is enjoyed, as the exotic is not, by the passer-by, and is better, because it is more natural, and does far more good!

And see the silver birch; with every pointed leaf fetched and his! But the simple flower smells sweeter, dancing gaily on its slender stem, before the approach of musical May! and the dogwood, so full of white flowers, tinged so delicately with pink,-and so profuse in their growth as quite to usurp the place of leaves, of which it has but few! And the tulip-tree, towering above all the rest like a giant,-its immense arms swaying about in the cool breeze, and seeming to be "coming the grand" over the whole green populace below! But the Fringe-tree! at this season, the very queen of all the wood! None of your Southern trees can compare with her, as I have seen her, in May, in the woods of old Fairfax! Yet, queenly as she is, she is withal most modest: (a rare trait in queens,-which I commend to the imitation of the fair Victoria!) How gracefully hangs that drooping drapery upon her faultless form,-presenting her to our eyes, as the beautiful bride of the forest,—the Rosalind of trees!

Yes, your woods are more various, more beautiful, more fraught with delicate and tender associations than our Northern forests. Yet ours have rich beauty, too: many of your oaks grow abundantly with us, and then there are our maples, our elms, and sycamores,—all of which we have communed upon in the pages of the Messenger, in years past;-but over them all there is a melancholy shade thrown by the pine,-whose deep and dark foliage, and whose tall straight trunks, give a solemn grandeur to the northern forest. The winds, as they play through the branches, send a thrill of awe to the heart of the listener, as he starts at the shrill treble, or the deep diapason of this magic music. For the woods are Nature's organ, with its million stops;—the winds of heaven are the players, as they swell the deep bass among the mighty pines, or delicately touch the smaller trees in soprano; making such sweet music as melts the sternest heart into mute adoration. The thousand birds and the myriads of humming insects, which ever throng the woods' deep shades, are the choir, and so the woodlands are ever vocal, ever tuneful.

But I am writing another "tree article,"--which is what I did not sit down to do. Return we to "May," once more!

May is gardening-month. Every body of taste enough to love flowers, and who has a nook of ground big enough to display that taste, carefully cultivates it

now.

How much aristocracy one sees, at times, in a garden for this weed may grow there as well as elsewhere; and one can judge of the character of a person, and often of his rank, by the standard presented by a flower-garden. Flowers, though not aristocrats, themselves, are at least, never vulgar: and a poor man may evince as delicate a taste as a rich one, in cultivating them; though the former, may not have the means of displaying it to the same extent. They take the wild flowers from the heath, the sides of the river-rocks, the depths of the woods, and the banks of the streams, because they are free to them and to all. Nature is profuse and undiscriminating in these rich gifts. She will make the modest violet bloom as sweetly in the poor man's garden-nook, as in the midst of her own rich and wide domain; and the lily or the primrose outvies many a rare exotic in the hot-house or conservatory of the rich man, who values these because they are far

I remember seeing a vulgar taste most strikingly and somewhat amusingly displayed, in the arrangement of a garden, in one of the beautiful country towns, from which I have dated some of my communications to you. On the brow of a gently sloping eminence, a well-todo kind of person had set up the frame of an old barn, which he soon cobbled up into the shape of a very decent habitation, and which, as he viewed it, was the perfection of house-building. The lot of land he had chosen had the advantages of a rich soil, and a most fa vorable location. Along the front, or street side of it, there towered a line of gigantic sycamores, and wide, branching elms, and from these to the summit of the billon the very apex of which the house was built, all was green meadow and arable. The view in front compre hended the wide sweep of one of our most lovely rivers, and, yet more distantly, the blue line of the ocean, which formed nearly one half of the horizon. In the rear, there were delightful prospects of deeply wooded hills, and sunny fields of rich and waving grain, or broad expanses of pasture land filled with browsing cattle. So much had nature done for the locale. See how the new.comer had improved upon all this!

First, he painted his house pea-green; a color contrasting oddly enough with that of the rich grass and beautiful trees, that grew luxuriantly around it. Then he made a straight gravel walk from the front-door to the main road, upon each side of which, all the way down that beautiful slope, he planted a row of yellow sun-flowers! How their broad faces flamed at mid-day, while the fiery orb whose name they bore, was blazing in the midst of the summer solstice! "What a taste!" exclaimed every one who passed, as he involuntarily wiped from his brow the perspiration, which a single glance at this odd parterre had excited.

There certainly is no great sentiment in a "Sunflower." It is not this flaring weed, but the "Heliotrope," which furnishes Moore with the beautiful simile;

"As the Sunflower turns on her god, when he sets, The same look which she turned, when he rose !"

The only relics of "May games," once so popular, which we, in America, have preserved, are "Going a Maying," on the first morning in the month, and, in some of our cities, "May-balls." The weather is so precarious, generally, in this country, about that day, that the first of these amusements is more likely to fail than to succeed. It was so, in this part of the country, this year,-cold, easterly winds prevailing on that day, almost universally. Had it not been so, the schoolchildren of Boston would have enjoyed a most rare and antique mode of welcoming in that morning. The great flag-staff on "The Common," was converted the night before, into a real old-fashioned "May-pole," and the children were to have been carried thither to dance around it as their English ancestors were wont to do, years bygone, in the fatherland. But" May balls” are within-door amusements, and these, this year, were very joyously attended in certain places within our ken.

"May games," used to be celebrated in England, very generally. The city of London clung to them

-thou 'turn'st' with all thy goodly train,

Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers! Thy zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,

The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers,"

And poor Bampfylde; (1778)—

"What time the young and flowery-kirtled May
Decks the green hedge, and dewy grass unshorn,
With cowslips pale, and many a whitening thorn."

And Charlotte Smith, (1784,) thus sweetly welcomes in this gentle month:

"Again the wood, and long-withdrawing vale,
In many a tint of tender green are dressed,
Where the young leaves, unfolding, scarce conceal
Beneath their early shade the half-formed nest