eyes at being told by one who is a favorite in their sacred circle, that the women of Boston, Baltimore, and New York- "creatures" belonging to merchants, lawyers, and men of letters - -are as good as themselves; and "Aunt Harriet's Cabin" would be turned to better uses than on certain recent occasions, if Mr. Thackeray would be induced to make it the stage for communicating his experience and observations on one American institution, for the benefit of the well-disposed but unquestionably mischievous "friends of humanity" among the English aristocracy.

From the Spectator. THACKERAY'S ENGLISH HUMORISTS.* MR. THACKERAY is amongst us once again, and gives welcome notice of his reappearance by the publication of the famous lectures we heard two years ago. Since that time they have drawn crowds of interested listeners in many of our great towns. Those who came once to hear and see the author of " Vanity Fair," and to watch at a safe distance the terrible satirist, whose dressing-gown, like that of the old Frankish king, was trimmed with the scalps of slaughtered" snobs," were In turning over the pages of Mr. Thackeattracted to continue their attendance to the ray's Lectures (which, by the way, abound close of the course by the engaging manner in misprints, requiring the vigilance of the of the lecturer, just sufficiently elevated above proof-corrector for the next edition), we find, as the frank familiarity of the best society, by we expected, many points of literary criticism his expressive but always pleasant voice, by on which questions could and will be raised. his unconcealed desire to inake a favorable Persons whose tastes and studies have led impression upon his audience, no less than by them to our older literature and history, no the sense, the sound feeling, the delicate less than those whose training is emphatically irony, the profound human experience, or the modern, will consider that Mr. Thackeray has fascinating style of the lectures. It has been placed far too high the general moral and a great triumph for Mr. Thackeray to have intellectual level of the eighteenth century. established this personal relation between Particular judgments will be disputed, and himself and the admirers of his books; so that the highest poetical excellence will certainly henceforth he speaks to them through these not be awarded without an appeal from Mr. books, not as an abstraction, a voice issuing Thackeray's decision. But it was not the from a mask, but as a living man, and a opinions that drew crowds of various ranks and friendly, companionable, accomplished gentle-ages to the lectures; and the style - clear, Few popular writers could venture the attempt thus to combine that personal sympathy and admiration which reward the great actor or singer, with the more solid and enduring esteem which attends those who can make us wiser and better while they minister to our delight. Mr. Thackeray's English success has been more than repeated in America; fulfilling the hope with which we closed our review of Esmond," that his genial presence would add another to the uany links which bind England to the United States." The Americans have been delighted with their guest; and he is not the man upon whom either the cordiality of their reception, or the greatness of their future, or the expanding energies of their present, are likely to be lost; nor will he regard every deviation from the Belgravian code of manners as necessarily an infringement upon those principles of manliness, kindness, simplicity, and feeling for the beautiful, by which all codes of manners will one day come to be tested. In him, American men, women, and institutions have a critic at once frank, fearless, and friendly; already, as we hear, countesses and duchesses lift up astonished

man.

idiomatic, forcible, familiar, but never slovenly
-the style of a man of letters and a man of the
world; the frank avowals; the searching
strokes of sarcasm or irony; the occasional
flashes of generous scorn; the touches of
pathos, pity, and tenderness; the morality
tempered but never weakened by experience
and sympathy; the felicitous phrases; the
passages of personal allusion to himself or his
audience, and of wise practical reflection;
all these lose much less than we could have
expected from the absence of the voice, man-
ner, and look of the lecturer. To those who
attended the lectures the book will be a
pleasant reminiscence, to others an exciting
novelty; and all will be interested in looking
over the accompanying notes (which might
have been and may yet be made more com-
plete), as an agreeable selection of the facts
and passages from writings on which the
lecturer's judgment was founded.

From the Examiner.

FOLLOWED by admiring audiences" in England, Scotland, and the United States of America," these lectures have obtained their purpose, have achieved all reasonable fame as well as other substantial results for the lecturer, and present very little to us now to challenge attention from a reviewer. The chase is over, the sport run down, there was no place in the hunt for the critic, and where at fast should he come in but with the lag

So?

of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never surrendered.

Nor can we close the book without one striking extract more. It speaks of Steele, but exhibits also Mr. Thackeray's tone (not on the whole a just one, we think, though not to be excepted to in this particular passage) as to Swift and Addison:

society of men more friendly, as there never was one more illustrious. Who dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking the society of men great and famous? and for liking them for the qualities which made them A mere pretty fellow from White's could not have written the "Patriot King," and would very likely have despised little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great St. John held to be one of the best and greatest of men; a mere The great charm of Steele's writing is its natnobleman of the court could no more have won uralness. He wrote so quickly and so carelessly, Barcelona, than he could have written Peterbor-that he was forced to make the reader his conough's letters to Pope, which are as witty as Congreve; a mere Irish dean could not have written "Gulliver ;" and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all these men. To name his friends is to name the best men of his time. Addison had a senate; Pope reverenced his equals. He spoke of Swift with respect and admiration always. His admiration for Boling broke was so great, that when some one said of his friend, "There is something in that great man which looks as if he was placed here by mistake," "Yes," Pope answered, "and when the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an imagination that it might possibly be come to carry him home, as a coach comes to one's door for visitors." So these great spirits spoke of one another. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever dawdled round a club-table, so faithful and so friendly.

And, having opened the volume, let us quote what is said, and said most pleasantly, of Henry Fielding:

fidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentlemen ushers of the court, with men and women of fashion; with authors and wits, with the inmates of the sponginghouses, and with the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all company because he liked it; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a box full of children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote; and, full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and good-humor. His laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakspeare affectionWhat a wonderful art! What an admirable ately, and more than any man of his time; and, gift of nature, was it by which the author of called upon all his company to like what he liked according to his generous, expansive nature, these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize he was in the world and of it; and his enjoyhimself. He did not damn with faint praise; upon our credulity, so that we believe in his ment of life presents the strangest contrast to people-speculate gravely upon their faults or Swift's savage indignation, and Addison's lonely their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore serenity. Permit me to read to you a passage Jones' fondness for drink and play, Booth's from each writer, curiously indicative of his fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen-love peculiar humor; the subject is the same, and and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that talk about them as faithfully as if we had break-upon all the actions of man, the most trifling fasted with them this morning in their actual and the most solemn, the humorist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old drawing-rooms, or should meet them this after-masters know the terrible lines of Swift, in which noon in the Park! What a genius! what a he hints at his philosophy and describes the end vigor! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here! watching, meditating, brooding, creating What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humor and the manly play of wit! What a courage he had! What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view

of mankind:

Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne ;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
"Offending race of human kind,

By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never erred through pride;
You who in different sects were shammed,
And come to see each other damned!
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you),
The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent your freaks no more;
I to such blockheads set my wit,

I damn such fools- go, go, you're bit!" Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how different a voice! says, in his fa

and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment; and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. "Look what a little vain dust we are," he says, smiling over the tombstones; and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks in words of inspiration, almost, of "the Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."

The third, whose theme is death too, and who will speak his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you up to his father's coffin, and shows you his beautiful mother weeping, and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand and confidingly asks your sympathy.

mous paper on Westminster Abbey ("Spectator," No. 26): -"For my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow." (I have owned that I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the "vanity of grieving.") "When," he goes on, "when I see kings lying by those who See how good and innocent and beautiful deposed them; when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes-I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600 years ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."

Our third humorist comes to speak upon the same subject. You will have observed in the previous extracts the characteristic humor of each writer- the subject and the contrastthe fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which each comments on it; and now hear the third writer- death, sorrow, and the grave, being for the moment also his theme. "The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," Steele says in the " 'Tatler,' ""was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why nobody would play with us. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand and fell a beating the coffin, and calling papa; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me, in a flood of tears, Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more; for they were going to put him under-ground, whence he would never come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief, amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since."

Can there be three more characteristic moods

women are," he says, "how tender little children!" Let us love these and one another, brother- God knows we have need of love and pardon. So it is each man looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and prays his own prayer.

When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse it? One yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned - the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no means the most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers; but he is our friend; we love him, as children love their love with an A, because he is amiable.

When Mr. Thackeray there said so well that "a man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned," he did not perhaps know that Landor had expressed the same thought in very beautiful verse: Let others, when their nature has been changed To do what angels do and brutes do not, To such unwonted state, when they are called Sob at their shame, and say they are unmanned; Unmanned they cannot be; they are not men. At glorious deeds, at sufferings well endured, Yea, at life's thread snapt with its gloss upon it, Be it man's pride and privilege to weep.

Mr. Thackeray's lectures, we may observe in conclusion, are printed pretty much as they were spoken, except that additions have been made (we notice this particularly in the Swift) in connection with particular writings of the humorists not at first introduced, and that a great many notes are appended illustrative of statements or opinions in each lecture. of minds and men? "Fools! do you know any-notes will be thought an improvement. They We are not quite sure that these thing of this mystery?" says Swift, stamping on a grave and carrying his scorn for mankind actually beyond it. Miserable, purblind wretches! how dare you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven? Addison, in a much kinder language

are not generally very apt; they have no merit of rare or out of the way reading, and here and there they have tant soit peu of a bookmaking aspect. The lectures had better have been left to run alone, which they could well afford to do.

From Eliza Cook's Journal.
MULATTO LITERATURE.

THE empire of literature is gradually extending. The printing-press, like civilization, is making the tour of the world; and even in imperial Hayti, among a population of negroes, literature is becoming a power for good, if not also for evil.

At the time when the negroes of Hayti revolted against France, elementary instruction in the French language had made some progress in the island. Schools and churches had been founded; the negroes spoke in broken French, many of them could read, and they mostly worshipped in Catholic churches. Still, the literary classes were greatly in the minority, for the bulk of the population were illiterate slaves when the rebellion broke out which finally severed their connection with France.

During the height and fever of the rebellion everything French was hated and denounced French books, French churches, French monuments, and French men. Such of the latter as were not killed were banished the island, after which the blacks governed themselves - first under a black president, and, as now, under a black emperor. On the massacre of the last French colonists, Dessalines, the future emperor, was asked "What was to be done with the French libraries ?" "We have no need of them," was his reply, "except for gun-wadding. And by his orders, the company of grenadiers, who went from house to house in Port-au-Prince, tore to pieces and threw into the street all the books they could discover.

ber endeavored to contribute his quota of entertainment in the form of dissertations, toasts, fables, dramatic essays, songs, and funeral orations. Petion also patronized the public journals, assisting the proprietors with presses and paper; and these, together with the establishment of theatres, the throwing open of the senate houses, the public right of petition, triennial electoral meetings, and above all civic festivities, which were and still are the occasion of numerous speechifyings, presented additional opportunities for the growth of the infant literature of Hayti.

At an early period in Haytian literary history the need of a grammar was felt, and the then director of the national printing-office, Chaulatte, undertook the task. The French grammars had all been torn to pieces, but he compiled one, not without many faults, from memory. This answered its purpose very well, until the reestablishment of pacific and commercial relations with France, in 1823, reïntroduced French books, and gave a new impulse to education in the island.

The present native literature is not extensive, but it is growing. Truth to say, it is chiefly of a very light description, fitted rather for amusement than for high culture. The negro is a pleasure-loving being, of warm blood; and the mulatto is his brother, differing from him mainly in a lighter-colored skin, for French blood runs in the veins of the mulattoes of Hayti. And the French-Haytian mulatto, sprung from two volatile sources, is an embodiment of volatility, the like of which perhaps few countries can exhibit. Hence the gay literature of Hayti, which is but a reflex of its people.

Not content with suppressing the "paper First and foremost come drama and comspeech," as he called it, Dessalines resolved edy. The theatre is the leading amusement also to put down the schools, in which he had of the Haytians, and many of the negroes succeeded to some extent before his sudden have a strong love of acting, as well as an and violent death. Nevertheless, the germs extraordinary talent for it, the negro being of literature, however imperfectly, had been essentially imitative. Even in the time of planted in Hayti, and when the population Dessalines, the boys at Port-au-Prince used had time to settle down to peaceful pursuits, to compose and play little melo-dramas, and their hatred of the French became as- which had for their subject the principal suaged, they turned to literature as a neces- episodes in the expedition of the French gensity. The president, Petion, encouraged let-eral, Leclerc. All that we know of these ters, and restored some of the schools; but essays now is, that they were furiously apthe ban being still upon all French colonists, plauded. One little circumstance is still no professors could be obtained to fill the remembered that the head of the French seats in the university, and the progress of colonel, Frère, a character in one of the learning was therefore very slow. The more dramas, was decorated with an enormous intelligent part of the former free blacks and hairy cap, on which might be read in large mulattoes of the island having gradually be- red letters-" Hayti, the grave of Frenchtaken themselves to the towns, there to en- men. gage in commercial pursuits, found themselves Since then, a really great actor has ap gradually drawn together; and many of them peared in Hayti - Dupré and he has also united in clubs, especially in masonic lodges, exhibited eminent qualities as a poet and a which latter reunions soon became the nuclei dramatic writer. He wrote some light of the literature and learning of Hayti. dramas, which were played, himself being These lodges were schools of mutual help, as the principal actor, with immense success; well as social gatherings, at which each mem- but having been killed in a duel, and the