happen to please him, and he had the bad taste to record his unfavorable impressions of it in a Poetical Epistle to a Miss M- , which he afterwards published, and with a foot-note in which he mentioned the three most remarkable nuisances of the town at that time, in a sentence which a few of its present inhabitants may perhaps still remember-to laugh at and forgive. He wrote also, while here, his Ballad entitled "the Lake of the Dismal Swamp," a poem of a better mood, and a much more agreeable memorial of his visit. Leaving Norfolk for Bermuda, he returned to it again the following spring, and stopping there, at this time, only three or four days, he came to our city by the way of Williamsburg, and after a short stay here, passed on to Washington-and thence to Philadelphia-finding or making occasion for his mirth" in all that he saw, or fancied, by the way; and scribbling satirical verses to amuse himself and his friends at home. It is proper to add, however, that he subsequently recanted all these effusions of his idle gaiety in the most handsome and honorable terms; and they do not appear in his collected works.

For the rest, we have only to say, that while we admire the beauty of Moore's poetry, we regret that we cannot commend its morality with equal praise. He appears, indeed, to have written for the most part without any serious design or desire to make the world either wiser or better by his strains, but merely to give pleasure and to get applause; and he had his reward. He led a gay and brilliant life for many years, followed by a calm and pleasant old age, (as we suppose,) living in elegant retirement, not without honor, and with as much literary leisure as he wished-till a cloud came over his intellect which left him but "the shadow of a name"-and hung about him until he faded away from the scene, and was-as he is now-no more. Alas! that he did not aspire to live a higher life, and to leaveas he might have done a better and more permanent fame!

THE ATHENÆUM.

We had the pleasure of being present, with many others, at the opening of this institution, (a new thing in our city,) on Saturday evening, the 31st of January last, and of hearing the address of Judge Robertson on the occasion, which struck us as very appropriate and interesting; and appeared to give equal satisfaction to all the company. The subject was the value of knowledge, and the importance of mental and moral culture; with some reference, of course, to the lectures which were to follow; and it was well and handsomely treated. We were ourselves particularly gratified by the judge's illustration of the

often-quoted aphorism of Lord Bacon, that "knowledge is power"; and thought that his cases from history especially, were well put. His style too, we found, was much more rhetorical than we had expected, an agreeable surprise. It was certainly a good beginning, and seemed to augur well for the sequel.

We have since heard a number of the lectures which have been delivered by different gentlemen, on various subjects; and have been considerably pleased with several of them that seemed to approach the true idea of such things. We are sorry we cannot say quite as much for all of them.

We have observed, with great pleasure, that some of our most worthy and intelligent citizens, and more particularly our ladies, have manifested a disposition to countenance and encourage this novel entertainment, by their personal attendance, and otherwise, that is highly proper and becoming.

We owe it to the committee to add, that they appear to us to have discharged their duty in this service with as much propriety as possible in so new an engagement. They have done well, and, we may fairly hope, will do better hereafter.

THE WRITINGS OF WASHINGTON.

It appears that the editor of this well-known work, Mr. Jared Sparks, now President of Harvard University, has recently published several papers in the New York Evening Post, in answer to the communications of an anonymous writer which appeared some time ago in the same journal, charging him with having taken some great and unwarrantable liberties with the text of his author in preparing the letters of Washington for the press; and in answer also to the strictures of Lord Mahon, who in his recent continuation of his History of England, has adverted to the charges, and condemned the infidelities of Mr. S. in the strongest terms. We have not seen these papers, and therefore cannot properly judge how far Mr. S. has succeeded in defending himself in the case, but the Whig of this city gives us a short passage from one of them in which Mr. S. writes:

"I deny that any part of the charge is true in any sense, which can authorize the censures bestowed by these writers, or raise a suspicion of the editor's fidelity and fairness. It would certainly be strange, if the editor should undertake to prepare for the press a collection of manuscript letters, many of them hastily written, without a thought that they would ever be published, and should not at the same time regard it as a solemn duty to correct obvious slips of the pen, occasional inaccuracies of ex

pression, and manifest faults of grammar, which the writer himself, if he could have revised his own manuscripts, would never for a moment have allowed to appear in print. This is all I have done in the way of altering or correcting Washington's letters. The alterations are strictly verbal or grammatical; nor am I conscious that, in this process, an historical fact, the expression of an opinion, or the meaning of a sentence, has, on any occasion, been perverted or modified."

All this, we suppose, is true, and we are willing to give Mr. S. the full benefit of his own statement; but we must still think that, by his own showing, he has opened himself to some censure in the case. In our opinion, he ought to have published the letters, as far as possible, exactly as they were written, in all respects; and left the reader to make such trivial alterations as he mentions for himself. There is always danger that petty infidelities may lead to greater, and that the assumption of a liberty with the text in a small point, may pave the way to the indulgence of a taste for correction in matters of more importance. Moreover the allowance of any license of this sort, in a single instance, is apt to cast some shade of suspicion over the integrity of all the rest. Therefore, we should say, let all alteration and amendment alone.

At the same time, we are not disposed to judge Mr. S. with harshness, or to censure him with any asperity. As at present advised, we are inclined to think, that his offence has been merely an error of judgment, and that proceeding from an honorable motive; and if we cannot acquit him, we will not condemn.

WINE-MAKING AT CETTE.

I said that it was good-good for our stomachs-to see no English bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is a great manufacturing place, and that what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor wool, Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,— but wine. "Ici," will a Cette industrial write with the greatest coolness over his Porte Cochere-"Ici on fabrique des vins." All the wines in the world, indeed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order for Johannisberg, or Tokay-nay, for all I know, for the Falernian of the Romans, or the Nectar of the gods-and the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you. They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitiouers pale and wan with envy. But the great trade of the place is not so much adulterating as concocting wine. Cette is well situated for this noble manufacture. The wines of southern Spain are

brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valencia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from the Garonne by the Canal du Midi; and the hot and fiery Rhone wines are floated along the chain of etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be hard if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux with violet powders and rough cider-colour it with cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it is precious Chateau Margaux-vintage of '25.Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Lavant? The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will place it in his oven, and, after twenty-four hours' regulated application of heat, return it to you nine years in bottle. Port, sherry, and Madeira, of course, are fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist's shop for seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade, and it supplies almost all the Brazils, and a great proportion of the northern European nations with their after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out thousands of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of Johannisberg, Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the fine qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a customer to the Cette industrials—or, at all events, he helps in the distribution of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies also patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette; and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin and Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low Burgundy brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated phial. I fear, however, that we do come in-in the matter of "fine golden sherries, at 22s. 94d. a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted port, at 1s. 9d."for a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is very probable that after the wine is fabricated upon the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still further improved upon the banks of the Thames. Argus B. Reach.

LONDON AND NEW YORK.

The Metropolis of the old and of the new world are about to be brought within five days of each other. The Newfoundland Telegraph Company is now organizing in this city, with a cap

ital of £100,000; and the Engineer, F. M. Gisborne, will leave in a few days for Europe, to make contracts for submarine wire. The Company is guarantied the exclusive right to telegraph across Newfoundland for thirty years, with a bonus of thirty square miles of land and $30,000. It is expected that the whole will be completed and in operation in six months from the present time.

This, so far as relates to the communication of intelligence, will shorten the distance between the two cities one-half. All the steamers of the Collins and Cunard lines, (12 ships,) making together twenty-eight trips per annum, each way, pass in sight of Cape Race, Newfoundland, at which point the Telegraph Company is to furnish a steam yacht to run out and exchange despatches with every steamer. The proposed Quebec and Liverpool and New-York and Galway lines, (eight vessels,) will touch at Cape Race, going and coming.-N. Y. Obs.

Miscellany.

THE LETTER H.

We see by an article in a charming volume entitled "Recollections of a Literary Life," recently published by our old favorite Miss Mitford, that the Enigma on the letter H. which we remember reading some years ago, in a volume of Lord Byron's works, and which we thought at the time was the very best thing of the kind that we had ever read, evincing, as it seemed to us, a wonderfully nice ear, and a curiously delicate appreciation of the varying sounds of the letter in different words,— was, after all, not written by Lord B., but by a Miss Catherine Fanshawe, a poetess whom we confess we never heard of before. This strikes us of course as rather strange, but so it seems to be; for Miss M. assures us that though "she has it herself printed in two different editions of Lord Byron's works, the one English, the other American," she has a letter from a surviving friend of Miss F., in which he writes: "The letter H. (I mean the enigma so called, ascribed to Lord Byron,) she (Miss F.) wrote at the Deepdene. I well remember her bringing it