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sure immediately to assume it on the entrance of a stranger into his study. It is almost as great a mark of ill-breeding to use any other mode of sitting on such an occasion, as it would be to hold your book still open in your hand. I own, that no posture in which you can sit conveys quite so barbarous a hint to your poor visitant as the holding of your book open, which I regret to say, is sometimes unthinkingly indulged in by scholars, who would be sorry not to be thought gentlemen. But, sir, let me repeat it, the cross-kneed is the posture in which to receive a visitor with whom you are not on terms of considerable intimacy. It gives you time to collect your ideas; it tacitly informs your visitor that he is of consequence enough in your eyes for you to think about the position of your limbs; it thereby conciliates his good feelings, and induces him civilly to present before your face a similar example. When you are thus both seated according to due form and manner, you may interchange thoughts with much facility and effect. But be sure not to abandon the cross-kneed posture till the end of the first half-hour. After that period, you may venture your feet out, and lean back in your chair. By the end of the second half-hour, you may put your feet over the fire-place, and if your visitor stay two hours, and be somewhat tedious and unprofitable, contrive by all means to get a table between you, and thrust your feet up into his face. Time is valuable, insomuch that the saving of it is one of those few instances where the end sanctifies the means. It often is not enough to pull out your watch,-not enough to sit ten minutes without saying a word to your companion, or even looking at him,-not enough to glance every two minutes at your study-table; no, sir, the only method often which is efficacious is the attitude I have just mentioned, which may be called the assaultand-battery posture, and which exhibits a new and fair illustration of the importance of our subject to the man of letters.

In the second place, let the votary of literature adopt the cross-kneed style in general company. The great advantage of it there is, that it saves im from a thousand ungraceful attitudes, and trange crookednesses, which savor too decidedly f the study, and into which he will be apt almost nevitably to slide, if he ventures beyond the shelering precincts of the cross-knee. It has too long been the reproach of the scholar, that he behaves ike nobody else. For mercy's sake, then, Mr. Editor, since everybody else behaves so very well, let is act like them. Let us not bring a reproach upon our profession, and render a life of letters unpopilar, by our manner of sitting. A few sacrifices of this nature will cost us no very tremendous effort, and may be of incalculable service to the cause of literature and science.

In the third place, the style in question is to be assumed amidst all kinds of plain reading, where but little attention and study are required. Indeed, so appropriate is it on these occasions, that scholars might very pardonably denominate it the belleslettres posture. How delicious, Mr. Editor, when you have brought the Edinburgh or the Quarterly, and for my own part, let me add, too, the North American, from the bookseller's, all new

and fresh as is the month of May,

to take your ivory knife in the right hand, your Review in the left, your cigar, if you please, in your

mouth, and at a window, on which the rays of the setting sun are richly, softly falling, and a western breeze is luxuriously blowing, to sit-how? Unworthy he of all these invaluable blessings, who takes any other posture at first than the true belleslettres-cross-kneed. Or, when, in the society of friends, you read aloud the adventures of Conrad, Roderick, or Robert Bruce, or in imagination range through old Scotland with the author of the Antiquary, or visit England, France, Italy, and Greece with modern travellers, whilst you gracefully hold the book with a wide-spread hand, your thumb and little finger pressing on the leaves to prevent them from closing, your middle finger propping the back, and the other two faithfully employed each to support a separate cover of the book,-do not fail to complete the elegant scene by adjusting one knee above the other in the manner worthy of your employment. Take, generally, this posture, moreover, when you read history,-when you snatch up the Spectator or Mirror to save the odds and ends of your precious time,-when you are reading letters from persons with whom you are not intimately acquainted, (posture not being to be thought of in perusing the epistles of your much valued friends,) and on all occasions, in short, when your mind only goes out to gather ideas, copiously, easily, freely. So much for this posture, sir, on which I would gladly write pages and pages more, if some other classes did not press upon me with strong claims for consideration.

Secondly. Next to the cross-kneed, that which is most appropriate to secluded, literary characters is the parieto-pedal posture. This consists, as will be seen at once from the etymology of the term, in fixing the feet against the wall. This posture was instituted for the relief of literary limbs. However valuable, indispensable, and gentlemanlike may be the cross-kneed, it would be fatiguing and unhealthy always to conform the body strictly to its rules. For this reason, allow the feet of your readers occasionally to make the delicious and grateful transition from the floor to the wall; with this strict proviso, to be transgressed on no condition whatever, that they never shall so sit in the presence of a being of the gentler sex. And here let me expatiate, parieto-pedal posture, in thy prais At this very moment, while I am assuming the languid luxury, holding in my hand a Horace, wh is prevented from closing only by my forefinga unconsciously placed on Otium Divos,-here, as,y a direction parallel to the horizon, I station my f against the wainscot, and, leaning back my ch fall sweetly and quietly into a rocking, which more gentle than the cradle-vibrations of half-sle ing infancy,-here let me ponder on all thy exc lency. I feel thy influence extending through m frame. I am brought into a new world; the objects around me assume sidelong positions; the trains of my ideas are quickened; the blood rushes back, and warms my heart; a literary enthusiasm comes over me; my faculty of application grows more intense; and whatever be the book which I next reach from the table, I find my interest in its contents redoubled, my power of overcoming its difficulties increased, and altogether my capacity of gaining knowledge incalculably enlarged and extended. Mild, and easy, and lovely posture! Let the votary of decorum stigmatize thee as awkward and half indecent; let the physician reproach thee as unnatural and unwholesome; let indigestion,

with bleeding at the nose, and personal deformity, shake their hideous fists of threatening out of the mists of the future;-still will I lounge with thee; still shall every room where I reside bear marks of thee, whether they be deep indentations in the floor, occasioned by my backward-swinging chair, or blacker and more triumphant insignia impressed by my shoes upon the wall. Be thou my shelter from the spleen of vexatious housewives, and the harassing formality of ceremony; soothe my fullfed afternoons; inspire my dyspeptical dreams, and let my last fatal apoplexy be with thee.

Thirdly. We come now to the favorite posture of all severe and laborious students! It is simple, picturesque, characteristic. Place your elbow on the table, prop one of your temples with your knuckles, and, if it be excusable to introduce features into this subject, (though I have another treatise partly finished, upon literary tricks,) let a slight knitting of the brow take place between your eyes, and you are at once-I will unhesitatingly hazard the assertion-in that position in which Aristotle discovered the categories; in which Pythagoras investigated the properties of the rightangled triangle, and Locke defined infinity; in which Newton balanced the world, Copernicus, like another Joshua, made the sun stand still, and La Place deduced the great motions of our system; in which Bacon sat, while turning the whole course of science, as a pilot turns the course of a ship; in which Stewart was seated, when he detected the error of the French philosophers, and proved that there must be something besides the power of sensation, which is able to compare one sensation with another; in which Bentham unfolded the true principles of legislation, and Berkeley devised the theory of acquired vision; in which Eichhorn made his researches into Genesis, and Paley his into the Epistles; a posture, in short, in which the greatest energies of intellect have ever been put forth, and by the efficacy of which alone, assure your young readers, they can hope for eminence, or look for almost indefinite advances towards the future perfectibility of our race. Its name is the delving.

Fourthly. Now, Mr. Editor, let your elbow remain precisely where it was in the last posture; but in ad of knitting your brow, and fixing your eyes the table, let your head turn round, till your en hand is upon the sinciput; let your forehead smooth, as the sleeping surface of a lake; let ur eyes be rolling on vacancy, and, presto! you e fixed at once in the genuine attitude poetical. is this posture alone which Shakspere had in his id, nay, in which Shakspere must have sat, when described the fine frenzy of the poet, whose eye nces from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. was this posture in which the most interesting portrait of Pope was executed, that has descended to our times. So sat he, I will hazard every poet in my library, when he penned this line,

And look through Nature up to Nature's God.

So sat Milton, when he described

Those thoughts that wander through eternity.

In this posture must Goldsmith,

where Alpine solitudes ascend,

Have sat him down a pensive hour to spend,
And, placed on high above the storm's career,
Looked downward, where a hundred realms appear, etc.

It could be only while thus leaning and thus look

ing, that Chaucer used to scatter through his poems innumerable refreshing descriptions of those vernal seasons,

When that Phoebus his chair of gold so hie
Had whirled up the sterrie sky aloft,
And in the Bole was entred certainly,
When shouris sote † of rain descended soft,
Causing the grouud, felé ‡ times and oft,
Up for to give many an wholesome air,
And every plaine was yclothed faire, etc.

What other attitude could our contemporary Campbell have taken, when he leaped in imagination up to those glorious heights on our side of the Atlantic,

Where at evening Alleghany views,

Through ridges burning in her western beam,
Lake after lake interminably gleam?

In what other posture could the chaste Tasso have placed himself, when he addressed to the Muse of Christianity that invocation, of which you will excuse the following imperfect version?

O Muse! not thou, whose meaner brows desire
The fading growth of laurelled Helicon,
But thou, that chant'st amid the blessed choir,
Which pours sweet music round the heavenly throne!
Breathe thou into my breast celestial fire;

O smile, and not thy votary disown,

If truth with flowers I weave, and deck my song
With other graces than to thee belong.

Byron must have sat in this posture, in some cold midnight, when he dreamt his dream of darkness; and Southey must have persisted in the same attitude through a whole vernal season, when he wrote his Thalaba.

So sat Homer and Scott in the conception of their battles.

So sat Virgil and Leigh Hunt in the imagination of their sceneries.

Wordsworth must have arranged his corporeity in the very quintessence of the poetical posture, when he sketched the following outline of his Recluse:

For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep; and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.

So sat his neighbor Wilson, when he described the stream, half-veiled in snowy vapor, which flowed With sound like silence, motion like repose or the duteous daughter in the sick chamber of her mother, she whose feet

Fell soft as snow on snow.

So sat Thomson when he wrote this line:

Ten thousand wonders rolling in my thought;and Lucan when he wrote these:

niger inficit horror
Terga maris: longo per multa volumina tractu
Estuat unda minax: flatusque incerta futuri,
Turbida testantur conceptos æquora ventos.

So sat Akenside, when his mind

Darted her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets,

.... and looked back on all the stars.

So David sat (I would reverently suppose) in his hours of inspiration, when "contemplating man, the sun, moon, and stars." To say nothing of innumerable others.

Fifthly. The metaphysical posture. Place both * Bull. + Many.

+ Sweet

elbows on the table, let the insides of the two wrists be joined together, keeping the palms just far enough asunder to admit the chin between them, while the tips of the little fingers come up and touch the outside corners of the eyes. This posture, sir, from its fixedness, gives you at once an idea of solidity. The mutual contact of two of the most tender and sensible parts of the human body, the tip of the finger and the eye, will assist you in making experiments on sensation; and as your whole head is fastened, as it were, into a socket, your eyes must look straight forward, and your train of reflection will be thus more continuous and undisturbed. Keep precisely so for several days together, and you will at length arrive triumphantly at the important and philosophical conclusion, that mind is matter.

leg on the knee of your right, and so forming a
triangle. Then there is the lay posture, made by
throwing the legs wide asunder, and twirling the
watch-chain. There is the musical posture, where
you bring one foot round behind the other, and rest
the toe most delicately and aerially on the floor. This
was used by one of the small band from Bonaparte's
court who lately charmed our metropolis with the
violoncello and guitar. Why is it not as appro-
priate to the flute as to the guitar? There is the
monologue posture, when, in default of a companion,
you take another chair, place your feet in it, and
hold high converse with yourself. But, Mr. Editor,
by far the most independent, lordly, and scholarly
style is, to command as many chairs for your own
accommodation as can possibly come within reach.
I had a chum, whilst I was in college, who put in re-
quisition every chair but one in the room. He had
one for each of his feet, one for each of his arms,
and the last for his own more immediate self. As
our whole number of that article of furniture
was but half a dozen, I was often perplexed, at
the entrance of a friend, to know how I should
pardon, I should have said, all three of us. After
some confused apologies, I used to offer the visitor
my own, and betake myself to the window-seat,
quite willing, I assure you, to undergo such embar-
rassments, for the reputation of living with one of
the best posture-masters within the walls. Ah, sir,
that was the glory of sitting! I cannot describe
the silent admiration with which I used to gaze
upon the sprawling nonchalance, the irresistible
ennui, the inimitable lounge, with which my room-
mate could hit the thing off after an enormous din-
ner. I ought here to observe, that the state of
mind peculiarly adapted to the posture now under
consideration is that of perfect vacuity, and that, if
I write much longer, I shall probably prepare your
readers to assume it. I conclude therefore by wish-
isg them all, whatever may be their favorite mode
of sitting,
The gayest, happiest attitude of things.

Innumerable other attitudes crowd upon my recollection, the formal discussion of which, after just hinting at a few of the most prominent, I must waive, and leave them to be treated by writers of freer leisure, and more enlarged views of posturology. For instance, there is the dishabille posture, formed by lying at full length on your chair, cross-economize for the convenience of all seven,-I beg ing your feet upon the floor, and locking your hands upon the top of your head,-very common and very becoming. In conversation, there is the positive posture, when you lean your cheek upon one finger; the sentimental, when you lean it upon two fingers; the thoughtless, when you lean it upon three, thrusting at the same time your little finger into your mouth; and lastly, the attentive, when you lean your cheek outright upon your whole hand, bend forward, and stare the speaker in the face. There is the sheepish posture, formed by placing your legs and feet parallel and together, laying both hands upon your knees, and contemplating no earthly thing save your own pantaloons. This is to be assumed when you are overwhelmed with a joke, which you cannot for the life of you answer, or when you are attacked with an argument which you have not the ingenuity to repel. There is the clerical posture, formed by laying the ankle of your left

EXTRACTS FROM THE CROAKER POEMS.

[The quaint and delicate humor of these celebrated productions is almost lost to the readers of the present age, from the local and consequently evanescent nature of the allusions to persons and things peculiar to New York in the early part of the present century.]

Ode to Impudence.

BY JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 1818-19.

THE man who wears a brazen face,
Quite à son aise his glass may quaff;
And whether in or out of place,

May twirl his stick and laugh.
Useless to him the broad doubloon,
Red note, or dollar of the mill;
Though all his gold be in the moon,
His brass is current money still.

Thus, when my cash was at low water,
At Niblo's I sat down to dine;
And, after a tremendous slaughter
Among the wild-fowl and the wine,

The bill before mine eye was placed

When slightly turning round my head, "Charge it!" cried I-the man, amazed! Stared-made his congee-and obeyed.

Oh! bear me to some forest thick,

Where wampum'd Choctaws prowl alone!
Where ne'er was heard the name of tick,
And bankrupt laws are quite unknown:
Or to some shop, by bucks abhorr'd,
When to the longing pauper's sorrow,
The curs'd inscription decks the board,
Of "pay to-day and trust to-morrow."

Or plunge me in the dungeon tower;

With bolts and turnkeys blast mine eyes; While call'd from death by marshal's power, The ghosts of murder'd debts arise!

The easy dupes I'll wheedle still,

With looks of brass and words of honey; And having scored a decent bill, Pay off my impudence for money.

Domestic Happiness.

BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

"BESIDE the nuptial curtain bright,"

The bard of Eden sings;

"Young Love his constant lamp will light, And wave his purple wings."

But rain-drops from the clouds of care May bid that lamp be dim,

And the boy Love will pout and swear, 'Tis then no place for him.

So mused the lovely Mrs. Dash;

'Tis wrong to mention names; When for her surly husband's cash She urged in vain her claims. "I want a little money, dear,

For Vandervoort and Flandin, Their bill, which now has run a year, To-morrow mean to hand in."

"More?" cried the husband, half asleep, "You'll drive me to despair;" The lady was too proud to weep, And too polite to swear.

She bit her lip for very spite,

He felt a storm was brewing,
And dream'd of nothing else all night,
But brokers, banks, and ruin.

He thought her pretty once, but dreams
Have sure a wondrous power,

For to his eye the lady seems

Quite alter'd since that hour;

And Love, who on their bridal eve,
Had promised long to stay;
Forgot his promise, took French leave,
And bore his lamp away.

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have the honor to say that the Tombigbee River don't run up at all. I have the honor to be, etc.

Our word for it, Paulding has never written a tale or invented a fable, whose wit has so much disturbed the reader, as the truthful reply of his clerk. A long letter might have so mystified the Tombigbee, that, like the Niger, no traces of its source could ever be developed. Indeed, it is said, a "soft answer turneth away wrath; " but an answer can be

Dear Sir: In reply to your letter, just at hand, I soft and short too.

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