Five Points stands. It might have furnished half the city with the purifying ele. ment; but it was filled up at incredible expense-a million loads of earth being thrown in before perceivable progress was made. Now they have to supply the city with water from a distance, by the prodigious expense of the Croton water works. This is a good illustration of the policy of society towards crime. Thus does it choke up nature, and then seek to protect itself from the result, by the incalculable expense of bolts, bars, the gallows, watch-houses, po. lice courts, constables, and Egyptian Tombs,' as they call one of the principal prisons here."

The reflection appears to us very unfortunate, inasmuch as the Croton works mete out an infinitely greater, and more accessible, and every way preferable supply of the pure element, to what even half a dozen ponds of however soft or sweet water would afford. Just so little of practical wisdom appears in many of Mrs. Child's occasional remarks, as is manifest in this romantic regret for fresh water ponds, albeit the Croton is spinning its white floods down walk, and street, and gutter at every sunrise. So trustworthily would the Abyssinian prince, or his sister, Nekayah, have dilated upon city economy.

But should we blame an imaginative woman for one of the thousand errors in which taste takes precedence of judgment? We would not, surely, had she not arrogantly and needlessly made the same the vehicle for a mischievous satire upon social policy. If the reflection was unfortunate, the accompanying illustration is even more so. Not only does it fail her rhetorically, but from its very nature exposes the weakness of her logic. Observe her words: "Thus does it (social usage) choke up nature, and then seek to protect itself from the result, by expense of jails," &c.

Now, did it ever occur to Mrs. C., we mean not in penning her illustration, but did it ever occur to her, that our nature does not need to be choked before it is full of depravity and rottenness;-that man is not sweet and pure, but rather the opposite, by nature-for which we beg leave to cite, most unfashionably, that Old Authority-than which, pray tell us, what is higher?

No, no, good Mrs. C., trust us for it: man needs not to be choked into uncleanness, but the rather if he is to be choked at all, it should be out of it. It may seem

trifling, that we use so many words to expose a mere disagreement of terms-unfitness of apodosis to protasis ;-so, however, it does not seem to us; and for reasons we hope to make apparent. Two or three, or even half a dozen times, through the volume, does our pleasant-writing authoress give expression to opinions kindred to that quoted-of the aggressions of society upon the-not rightsbut the dispositions and feelings of the individual. Thus, of the vagabond children at Five Points-in all whose eyes she sees visions of suffering innocence, stricken tenderness, debauched modesty, tearful aspirations-she says: "And this is the education society gives her children-the morality of myrmidons, the charity of constables!" And again on page eight, that "society makes its own criminals ;" and again, "When, oh when will men learn that society makes and cherishes the very crimes it so fiercely punishes, and in punishing reproduces ?" (p. 84.) And again, "Society is a game of chance, where the cunning slip through, and the strong leap over." (p. 190.) And again, "For every criminal you execute, you make a hundred murderers outside the prison, each as dangerous as would be the one inside." (p. 212.) Now, if disposed, we might take a very logical, and a very practical way withal, of disposing of this squeamishness, by asking, what is society after all, this bugbear, but the understood agreement of you and I, and the million, to conform to certain usages, which the past experience of mankind, and the known and accredited tendency of humanity to evil doing, unless restrained, seem to have rendered essential? If, now, those usages grate harshly on that sensitive one, or even chance to help forward this unfortunate, by its action, to misery, who are you, or who are the ten, or the ten hundred, wiser than all, who shall say of this great establishment-glorious with the highest of human endearments, rich with the golden sheaves of a harvest ripening ever, finding change by reform, and not reform by change, (sedulo cavere, ut Reformationis studium mutationem inducat, non autem studium mutationis Reformationem pretexat,)—away with it! it is unclean? But, we say, we prefer, with a little of the reader's forbearance, to take up the matter in Mrs. C.'s own gossiping way. "Society makes its own criminals." Well, we will not now question the fact, for we think we are told in

the book under hand, that the wildest fancies are facts somewhere within the limits of God's creation; and if this nota ble one must be inet, why, as well here as anywhere. If society makes its own criminals, it should not surely punish its own making :-if not, it makes no more. But, straightway, if we are to consider any point settled in human experience, criminals proceed to make themselves; now, query-had society better make a few, giving a monopoly, as it were, of crime, or had individuals better multiply it among themselves to the most profit? Or the question can be stated thus: Society, in its corporate capacity, if it make criminals, ought not in justice to punish; it therefore does not, and is just to whom, pray? Why, only to the criminal; it appearing a matter of very little importance whether justice is done to those who are not criminal. Thus it appears that half of Mrs. Child's romantic regrets lose sight entirely of the great principle that the glorious operations of justice have regard not only to the individual subjected to its power, but to that society of which it is protectress. A violation of civil obligation, under any enlarged consideration of the subject, should be viewed not only with reference to the violator, but to the interests which are violated. Further on, where her pleasant trip to Rockland Lake calls forth some remarks upon the fate of the unfortunate Andre, she says: "It is not therefore a sense of justice, but a wish to inspire terror, which leads to the execution of spies." There again she loses sight, from mere wilfulness, (will directed by her strong sympathies,) of proper distinctions-distinction between justice to the individual and to the species. Could there be less of reason in smaller space? A General is servant to the interests of the people investing him with power. Justice to the interests of that people is his motive of action. If these interests are hazarded by such and such anticipated operations, so as to require the execution of such and such demands, on their occurrence, who would not see, and say, that justice was fulfilled in their execution, whether done by inspiring terror, or some other way? But again, give these ideas of the harsh justice of society the most practical bearing they can have-apply them to the need of the criminal himself. Here is a man who has offended against law; he is committed to the "morality of myrmidons, and the charity of constables,"

without any very visible perturbation in the outward world. But society made him a wretch, and, if you please, (a hard supposition,) he is aware of it; either through the medium of some such written sentiments as are within these covers, or better, because more probable, he arrives at it amid his prison fancies. Well, by and by he finds there are those outside of just his way of dreaming. He credits it hardly, (especially if a shrewd knave,) but yet credits it; and we will suppose him anxious to see such sympathizers. He finds one in a lady-any lady but Mrs. Child. Pleasantly, very likely, he listens to words that render less and less cankerous his own conscience, and give it less and less of doubt and fear to digest; but presently, amid the verbiage which seems to have no definite issueneither opening his prison, nor making it sweeter-nor breeding any new love for his species which has so wronged him, nor for Right, which has given him such a left-handed blow-nor for his own nature, seeing it has made a shuttlecock of him, but only for his vices, which have made a hero-martyr of him, which martyrdom he would neither extend nor renew, however graphically came from his visiter the pictures of its glory-amid all this, we say, he ventures the question, "Here I am now what shall I do?" A disgusting bluntness the fellow has, but what shall he do? How a short, plump question, testing practical issues, does bear down, and bear away, the pretty, the ideal, the vain! Now that he is in earnest, it will never do to read him Coleridge's Ode on Dejection, or to tell him of the bond of human sympathy, or of unutterable human love, or of spiral progress to the clouds, or of a "gleam in the far-off future;" for if a weak man, they will make him a lunatic, and if a strong one, he will either grin, or else put a fresh quid of tobacco in his cheek. No, no; the only way is the best way: Sir, you have offended the law; you are in durance for it. You must reform, and if the temptations society has held out have helped you to misery, you should in future resist them; you can, and you must. Inaction or womanly regrets will never strengthen you."

66

How like a flood of effulgence beams in here the memory of a Howard's philanthropy! directing to a world that knew no crime-bringing promise of a career that will never fade! We do not intend to excite any comparisons very

unfavorable to Mrs. C. We are sure few possess her warmth of heart-feeling; it pulsates heavily through her pages; we know it must beam in her looks. Still, once more, we put it to her candidly, do these romantic sneers at the hollowness of existing social usage, considered either speculatively or practically, prove either helps or helpers? If so, which way, and who are the helped? Are the sufferers helped, one or all; counted few or many? Nay, consider a moment; reckon all the sufferers you will-hundreds or thousands are such sentiments like manna to the fasting descendants of Abraham? -are they words to bring down manna? Does she even propose any system-digested or not-for better usage? Has she in her moments of nearest commune with Infinity, whether ascending by the steps of music, or sympathy, or making the petals of forget-me-nots the ladderrounds for celestial pilgrimages-has she ever contrived a probable scheme for that "Living by Love" which the goldwrought vases over the head of the outcast woman so prettily suggested? If, even now, men and women were to call together, for the government by Love, with the which society should make no criminals-criminals no crimes-trust induce honesty--sympathy breed universal love-riches be magnified, and yet scattered-old formularies discarded -laws abrogated--prisons be transmuted into blooming conservatories for crabcactuses-alas, would not our philanthropist be weak to marshal the movement, or even to act as third-rate committeewoman in directing issues? There might be those, and she among them, to cry, even with brazen-mouthed trumpets, or golden wrought ones, (for such matters would be common under the rule of Love,) have faith-grow strong in soul-be steadfast--have love; but who shall tell us what new state of things would make more listeners, or more quiet for listening, than now?

"Virtue could see to do what virtue would, By her own radiant light, though sun and

moon

Were in the great sea sunk."

But have we not here an honest disclaimer of all speed and Proteus sort of reasoning: "What is written is written: it did itself. I would gladly have shown more practical good sense, and talked wisely on the spirit of the age, progress of the species, and the like, but I believe

in my soul, fairies keep carnival all the year round in my poor brain; for even when I first wake, I find a magic ring of tinted mushrooms to show where their midnight dance has been." Would to heaven that all who devoured these same tinted mushrooms believed them no sweet vegetable growth, but only diseased fungi from over-imaginative brains! Yet we quote from her without full endorsement: Thy simplest act, thy most casnal word, is cast into the great seed-field of human thought, and will reappear as poisonous weed, or herb medicinal, after a thousand years."

Letter XIV. is somewhat remarkable from the half-dozen very wonderful vagrants it brings to notice. We dare say, without intimate knowledge in the premises, that such, and so many as the news-boy-the two Spanish youngsters and mother-the tired vagabonds sleeping under the trees-the creature draggled all over with mud, and the struggling woman at midnight-of such uniform benignity of aspect-such inner sympathies shadowed in their tearful eyes-never in one day before delighted the most inveterate romancer. Why, Lawrence Sterne-that kind soul whose eyes flowed over at the sight of a spilled bowl, found only one Maria in all France; yet here we have two Marias in a day, and curlyheaded boys, with bright eyes, for prisoned "starlings." And should our lady observer extend her walks till after ten, who can tell how many Rosamond Grays she might find, pleading how tenderly, against the new measures of the new authorities?

We by no means say that faces full of inward pleading, telling of innocence undone, may not sometimes waken a good man's sigh, even in New York streets; but that they may be found by the halfdozen in a walk over the Battery, is too great a reproach upon humanity. Brute sorrows, tears and desires, may be found any day with the looking after; but how unlike to that soul-touchedness of aspect which Mrs. C. so currently reckons on! Unlike as baby tears to those of manhood, or as the dim circles which an occasional mist will throw about the sun, to those glorious and changing ones which to-day (Sept. 7) are twining brilliantly as braided rainbows, and tortuous as a shifting wave, high over head.

We have after the chapter of what we cannot help considering eccentric beggars--an account interesting, and more

full than we remember to have seen elsewhere, of that singular being, Macdonald Clarke :

"A poet comfortably crazy,
As pliant as a weeping-willow;—
Loves most everybody's girls; an't lazy-
Can write an hundred lines an hour,
With a rackety, whackety, railroad power."

Thus, not inaptly, he described himself. He was born in New London, lost his mother at twelve-slept in Franklin's monument at Philadelphia, "habitually," at one period of his youth-wrote for New York papers in 1819-married an actress, from whom he was forcibly separated by her mother, after a serious ducking at her hands in a rain-water hogshead. "From this time, the wildness of poor Clarke's nature increased, until he came to be generally known by the name of the 'mad poet." Mrs. Child mingles with these prime facts some romantic touches, after her own way, making his story altogether a very readable one. Indeed, there are numerous stories, and anecdotes, and curious facts, scattered up and down throughout the volume, interesting enough for a book of much greater pretension; and subtracting somewhat from them, as in courtesy due to her very active fancy, they are very reliable stories, and safe to be read. Such is that about the Polish Jew-the fish and the ring of Captain T. and the Swiss emigrants-of the snake and the swallows. And of places, and histories around New York, are these true daguerreotypes and transcripts, such as we would put into the hands of a fresh country cousin, even in lieu of a pocket map. But our business now is not so much to give a general idea of the book-which, however, we may do incidentally and in all fairness-as to observe such things dropped here and there, as seem to require a note. Thus, having ourselves little confidence in mesmerism, we relished indifferently well the raillery which, in her chapter on that subject, she takes occasion to throw upon those who cavil at the professed attainments of that branch of human speculation; and observed, with some degree of caution, the progress of that raillery-very prettily, daintily, and speciously made out, until her uniform extravagance of expression betrays her. "Nothing can be more unphilosophic," says she, "than the ridicule attached to a belief in mesmerism. Our knowledge is exceedingly imperfect

VOL. I.-NO. I.

even with regard to the laws of matter; though the world has had the experience of several thousand years to help its investigations. . . . There is something exceedingly arrogant and short-sighted in the pretensions of those who ridicule every thing not capable of being proved to the senses." (p. 119.)

How is this? It appears to us on the contrary the part of a rational man to receive with exceeding distrust, and of a merry man even to ridicule the pretensions of those who believe without "proof to the senses"-saving only in matters of the soul's connection with futurity. Mrs. Child's error consists in neglecting proper nicety of distinctions. The fact that a phenomenon cannot be understood in its nature or in its relations, in no way invalidates the evidence which may and ought to be presented to the senses, that the phenomenon exists; in fact, acceptance of the phenomenon as real, is virtual acceptance of the evidence-which must come through the senses, and in no other way.

Therefore we say again, the rational thinker will very properly hold himself aloof from what is not proven to the senses-in animal magnetism, as in any other branch of inquiry.

We know of electricity scarce any thing but that it exists in two states, which we term negative and positive: the evidence of these is palpable to the senses. But a belief in any one of the theories started to account for its action, being insusceptible of proof to the sense, is not held as good. Just so of mesmerism prove to the senses that certain manipulations will render a lady capable of seeing new sights, and of telling new stories, and we will believe it, understand the phenomena little as we may. But observe how accurate must be the character of evidence to establish premises so unusual. First, there must be evidence to show that the manipulation has connection so intimate as to induce, and alone to induce, the new state: next must be proof that the new state is bona fide a new state-that the mind under treatment is opened to sights previously unseen and unheard of by that mind. It will readily appear that such evidence, from its nature, is hard to come by, and that trust (which is only evidence to the senses taken at second-hand) must be almost unlimited before the circle of testimony is complete. Therefore it is that mesmerism is slow in working out for itself belief in the minds of men; there