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original thinkers.' His mental fatness is apparent on every page of his writings, and it is equally apparent that it has been acquired by feeding from the richest granaries that the accumulations of ages could afford. He carried to the mangers he has fed at, strong digestive powers and a great appetite; and an appetite for books always 'grows by what it feeds upon.'

There was a terrible onslaught made upon D'Israeli, the novelist and ex-chancellor of England, some time since, for a singular plagiarism that he was guilty of. It is doubtful if the plagiarism alone would have made the critics so wrathy against him, if his position as a statesman had not been such a prominent one. Macaulay says it was not the pain the bear suffered that made the Puritans dislike bear-fights, but it was the pleasure they afforded the spectator. It was not the plagiarism of Mr. D'Israeli, we suspect, that so disturbed the critics; it was his political elevation. Envy is a feeling common to human nature, and pertains alike to Puritans, blacklegs, and authors. Lord Brougham gives, in the following sentence, a fine description of what a man of superior abilities is exposed to, who raises himself greatly above his fellow-men: While the conqueror mounts his triumphal car, and hears the air rent with shouts of his name, he hears, too, the malignant whisper appointed to remind him that the trumpet of fame blunts not the tooth of calumny; nay, he descends from his eminence when the splendid day is over, to be made the victim of never-ending envy, and of slander which is immortal, as the price of that day's delirious enjoyment; and all the time, safety and peace is the lot of the humble companion who shared his labors, without partaking of his renown; and who, if he has enjoyed little, has paid and suffered less.'

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This sentiment, it must be admitted, is very forcibly expressed, but no one can doubt that it had been expressed thousands of times before, in some form or other. Shakspeare's language for the same idea is quite vigorous. This is it:

'O PLACE and greatness, millions of false eyes
Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report
Run with these false and most contrarious guests,
Upon thy doings! Thousand 'scapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,
And rack thee in their fancies.'

Innumerable other forms of expression for the same idea might be produced from eminent sources, but cui bono? Moore, once observing Byron with a book full of paper-marks, asked him what it was. 'Only a book,' he answered, 'from which I am trying to crib; as I do whenever I can, and that's the way I get the character of an original poet.' This candor was equal to Emerson's, but Moore explains it as follows: Though, in imputing to himself premeditated plagiarism, he was, of course, but jesting; it was, I am inclined to think, his practice, when engaged in the composition of any work, to excite thus his vein, by the perusal of others on the same subject or plan, from which the slightest hint, caught by his imagination as he read, was sufficient to kindle there such a train of thought as, but for that spark, had never been awakened, and of which he himself soon forgot the source.'

This seems a much more reasonable supposition, as to the source from which Byron had his inspiration, than that of those who affirm that he must have received it from gin and the devil. Although these are very powerful agents, and accustomed to work harmoniously together, the inspiration they give is more apt to be destructive than creative.

A kindred charge to that of plagiarism, and one which is often brought against all sorts of literary performances, is that they are but 're-hashes' of old facts and events. This is an objection that there is but little risk in presenting, for but few writings on any subject, we suspect, are free from it. Is Blackstone any less a 're-hash' than the last religious pamphlet on the Unity or the Trinity, or the last newspaper-article on the Tariff, or the Currency? What are Macaulay's and Bancroft's histories but re-hashes?' The same facts and events, when handled by a man of genius, are made to appear very different from what they do when used by one without it. The historical characters drawn by Bancroft and Macaulay, although retaining the same prominent features when sketched by dull and indifferent writers, would hardly be recognized as the same persons. There is about the same difference between a good re-hash' and a poor one, as there would be between a statue Powers would cut from a block of marble, and one that an ordinary stone-cutter would produce; or, about the same difference there would be between the manner of handling the same case by Webster, and a tenth-rate lawyer.

Sir Walter Scott was always esteemed an original writer, but Lord Jeffrey, in reviewing his works, said: 'Even in him, the traces of imitation are obvious and abundant.' We will close this article by another quotation from Lord Jeffrey, bearing upon the subject of which we have been treating.

'SHAKSPEARE, to be sure, is more purely original; but it should not be forgotten, that in his time, there was much less to borrow, and that he too has drawn freely and largely from the sources that were open to him, at least, for his fable and graver sentiment: for his wit and humor, as well as his poetry, are always his own. In our times, all the higher walks of literature have been so long and so often trodden, that it is scarcely possible to keep out of the foot-steps of some of our precursors; and the ancients, it is well known, have stolen most of our bright thoughts, and not only visibly beset all the patent approaches to glory, but swarm in such ambushed multitudes behind, that when we think we have gone fairly beyond their plagiarisms, and honestly worked out an original excellence of our own, up starts some deep-read antiquary, and makes it out, much to his own satisfaction, that heaven knows how many of these busy-bodies have been beforehand with us, both in the genus and the species of our invention!'

THE

DAYS OF YORE.

THE days of yore! the days of yore!
How sweet their memories come,
When, e'en in thought, we wander o'er
Our happy childhood's home!

The merry years! the merry years!
When you and I were boys,

When nought we knew of bitter tears
Amid our many joys!

They 've passed away! the brightest, best
Of life's swift-fleeting hours;

But MEMORY's pages still hold pressed

The leaves of childhood's flowers.

N. S. 8.

A PRI L.

WITH Smiling face young APRIL comes,
Her apron full of flowers;

And oft she's seen to sprinkle them
With soft and dewy showers;

She's brought the birds to sing again,
The bees to hum around;

She's filled the air with balminess,
And carpeted the ground.

O'er mountain, hill, or through the vale,
Where'er her path-way weaves,
She breathes upon the sleeping buds,
And bursts them into leaves;
The yellow Jonquil lifts her head,
Fresh from her wintry tomb,
And where her foot-steps lightly fall,
The modest violets bloom.

Each streamlet has a merrier laugh,
That runs from mountain's brow;

Each meets to-day the full sunshine -
No ice to clog it now;

Some few white clouds float through the sky,

Those soft and snow-white clouds,

That oft in childhood's time we deemed
Were angel-spirits' shrouds.

The farmer plies the busy plough,

And turns the mellowed sod,

And deems that there in autumn-time
The yellow grain will nod.

At morn yon ox was grazing here,

And loiters still at noon;

No grass so sweet as April brings-
Not that of May or June.

Within the post, close by our door,
The wren now builds her nest;

The social robin, too, is here

With his bright speckled breast.

The dove is cooing to her mate

In tones of tenderness;

And merry black-birds through the fields
In songs their joy express.

Amid the woods the maple-trees

Now wear their brightest dyes;

And, nearer by, the apricots
Are opening to the skies;

Yes, hourly peeps some beauty forth
To meet our gladdened eyes;

And soon we'll view the clover-buds,
And bees with laden thighs.

I love each Spring and Summer month,
And sigh when they are gone;
But most my heart young APRIL loves,
And tunes for her the song;

For she's the first of all the months
To bring the warming showers,
The song of birds, the hum of bees,
And scent of lovely flowers.

J. II. WILSON.

A SKULL-AND-BONE

BY VIATOR.

SKETCH.

'SINCERELY desirous to aid the cause of science, through which temporal suffering is alleviated; wishing to promote the best good of my fellow beings; and deliberately preferring that my body after my death should undergo dissection, than that it should be consumed by worms, I do hereby request my said executor, immediately after my decease, whenever the same shall be, to deliver my body to the Professors of Surgery and Anatomy in the Medical Institution of Yale College, for the purposes of dissection and anatomical examination.'

THE above is an extract from a will preserved in the skull of the man who made it, whose skeleton is, or was, suspended in the medical department of Yale College, with the name, age, and date of his death, engraved on a silver plate attached to the forehead. In reflecting upon the history of that skeleton, I have often lost all the words of the learned Professor who was laboring to impress a little knowledge upon the minds of us under-graduates.

That man must have been a true philosopher. I think I have heard that he was a stone-cutter by trade, and that it was in the pursuit of his business of making monuments that he became impressed with the emptiness of all such memorials of the dead, which are, for the most part, invested with interest to only a small circle of relatives and for a short period, and too often record of the deceased,

'Not what he was; but what he should have been;'

and he desired that, after death, he might atone for a life which he felt had been of very little use to his fellow men, by making his own frame a permanent source of instruction, after his flesh should have served a similar purpose on the anatomical table.

Some may be disposed to find in this will nothing more than a streak of eccentricity, or even of vanity, since the monument he thus made of his own person would be a more enduring and remarkable memento than any other he could have constructed. But methinks nothing except some conscientious feeling akin to that above indicated, could have induced him to take a course so directly in opposition to the general sentiment of mankind. Although every intelligent man will readily admit that the disposition of his body after death is a matter of no real moment, a regard for the feelings of surviving relatives will prevent his giving any unusual direction in the matter. A dread of exposure

after death would operate with a sensitive mind, especially that of a female. And indeed we find in the minute directions people frequently give with regard to their funerals, the costly tombs and monuments for which they make provision, and the self-denial to which poor persons will frequently subject themselves in order to be well laid out' at last, evidence of the extent to which this feeling prevails, whether it be ascribed to regard for surviving friends, delicacy or vanity, or a little of all.

Charles Lamb has finely touched it off in his chapter on Burial Societies; and Pope, in one of his poems, thus alludes to the ruling passion strong in death, (referring to the law which required that the dead should be buried in woollen, in order to encourage that branch of manufacture :)

'ODIOUS! in woollen! 't would a saint provoke;
(Were the last words that poor NARCISSA Spoke;)
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face;
One would not sure be frightful when one's dead –
And BETTY, give this cheek a little red.'

I think it is a great pity that people cannot be made to look upon these things with a more philosophic eye. Not that I would have them all will their bodies to the surgeons. Nor would I be understood as taking exception to those monumental structures and other mementos of affection which relatives are in the habit of rearing over the remains of departed friends: such practices keep alive the noblest sentiments of our nature; but I would have these things provided for by those who survive, and not by those who are to be commemorated. 'Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth.'

I would do away with the absurd superstition, or prejudice, in favor of what is called 'decent burial;' and have people think that, so their remains are put out of sight, it matters little what becomes of them. It is nothing but the dread of encountering this feeling which has prevented legislators in this country from passing those laws which are necessary to furnish the materials for anatomical study, such, for instance, as a provision that the bodies of those who die in the prisons and almshouses, with no friends to demand a burial, may be delivered to the surgeons. It is to no purpose to say that people, whose misfortunes have driven them upon the parish for support, ought not to be punished with the apprehension of dissection. With as much reason might it be said that, because some ignorant people are afraid of witches or 'sperits,' the law should provide a supply of old horse-shoes, or other equally potent antidotes. If the feelings of survivors are consulted, that should suffice. The public good and public health should be the paramount considerations.

I am neither a doctor nor the son of one; but I think that those who, in order to minister to the sufferings of their fellow men, are obliged to travel over such a nasty road to learning as the dissecting-room, ought to be able to do it without the fear of a state-prison before their eyes.

People are indeed becoming more reasonable now-a-days in relation to post-mortem examinations. I have heard physicians remark that rarely does death occur of any very unusual form of disease, that they have

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