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50

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THE BRITISH PERIODICALS

AND THE

FARMER'S GUIDE.

LEONARD SCOTT & CO.,

NO 54 GOLD ST., NEW YORK,

Continue to publish the four leading British Quarterly Reviews and Blackwood's Magazine; in addition to which they have recently commenced the publication of a valuable Agricultural work, called the

"Farmer's Guide to Scientific and Practical Agriculture,"

By HENRY STEPHENS, F. R. S., of Edinburgh, author of the "Book of the Farm." &c., &c.; assisted by JOHN P. NORTON, M. A., New Haven, Professor of Scientific Agriculture in Yale College. &c., &c.

This highly valuable work will comprise two large royal octavo volumes, containing over 1400 pages, with 18 or 20 splendid steel engravings, and more than 500 engravings on wood, in the highest style of the art, illustrating almost every implement of husbandry now in use by the best farmers, the best methods of ploughing, planting, haying, harvesting, &c., &c., the various domestic animals in their highest perfection; in short, the pictorial feature of the book is unique, and will render it of incalculable value to the student of agriculture.

The work is being published in Semi-monthly Numbers, of 64 pages each, exclusive of the Steel engravings, and is sold at 25 Cents each, or $5 for the entire work in numbers, of which there will be at least twenty-two. The British Periodicals Re-published are as follows, viz :

THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW, (Conservative,)
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, (Whig,)

THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, (Free Church,)
THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW, (Liberal,)

AND

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, (Tory.)

Although these works are distinguished by the political shades above indicated, yet but a small portion of their contents is devoted to political subjects. It is their literary character which gives them their chief value, and in that they stand confessedly far above all other journals of their class. Blackwood, still under the masterly guidance of Christopher North, maintains its ancient celebrity, and is, at this time, unusually attractive, from the serial works of Bulwer and other literary notables, written for that Magazine, and first appearing in its columns both in Great Britain and in the United States. Such works as "The Caxtons" and "My New Novel" (both by Bulwer,) "My Peninsular Medal," "The Green Hand," and other serials, of which numerous rival editions are issued by the leading publishers in this country, have to be reprinted by those publishers from the pages of Blackwood, after it has been issued by Messrs. Scott & Co., so that subscribers to the Reprint of that Magazine may always rely on having the earliest reading of these fascinating tales.

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A discount of twenty-five per cent, from the above prices will be allowed to Clubs ordering four or more copies of any one or more of the above works. Thus: 4 copies of Blackwood or of one Review will be sent to one address for $9; 4 copies of the four Reviews and Blackwood for $30; and so on.

*** Orders from Clubs must be sent direct to the publishers, as no discount from these prices can be allowed to Agents.

Money, current in the States where issued, will be received at par.
Remittances and communications should be always addressed, post-paid or franked, to the Publishers.
LEONARD SCOTT & CO.,

79 FULTON STREET, New York, Entrance 54 Gold street.

PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR.

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Yes! fill the goblet high with generous wine,
As sparkling as the draughts of ancient Massic
Or old Falernian made by Horace classic,
Brought from the sunny valleys of the Rhine
And throwing off their daughter's brilliant glances-
Just as the diamond, long obscured from sight,
With all the rays it last absorbed is bright,
This wine, as o'er the festal board it dances,
Gives back the flashes from the beaming eye
Of the brown vineyard beauty, on our meeting:
Fill up to friends a kind, a cordial greeting,
And though December's winds may rustle by
And lead the howlings of the furious storm,
Our faces kindle and our hearts are warm.

IV.

OLD FRIENDS TO LOVE.

Old friends to love!-true soul bound to true soul
With olden memories, and traces dear
Of the dead past, claiming the happy tear
That still at sight of each will fondly roll!
Old friends! No sycophants of yesterday,

With smiles and protestations never done,
Bright summer-flies, true "lovers of the sun"
And all who bask beneath the golden ray.
Old friends! who on the battle field of life,

When closed the serried hosts in stormy fight,
Have raised the buckler Friendship strong and bright
And borne us bleeding from the mortal strife,
Who heart-whole, pure in faith, once written friend
In life and death are true, unto the end!

Κ. Σ.

II.

OLD WOOD TO BURN.

Old wood to burn!-hew down the highest trunk On Alleghanean ridges, seen afar

-A monarch crowned with his imperial starAgainst the crimson where the sun has sunk. The sharp axe glittering in his kingly heart

Sends echo ringing through the golden woods— And then a crashing fall!-like bursting floods When roar the surges and great mountains part! The dim year wanes-I see an indoor sightBright faces gathered round a blazing fire At Yule or Pentecost when rising higher The frolic-mirth draws gladness from the lightOf that old oak that towering once so vast Laughed at the storm, and whistled at the blast!

III.

OLD BOOKS TO READ.

Reach from their dusty places of repose
A Virgil's lay or "Livy's pictured page,"
The varied lore of an Augustan age-
What visions panoramic they disclose!
With o'er-attentive faculties we hear

The wandering minstrelsy of Scio's bardPoor houseless tenant of a life ill-starredOr catch the minster-music of the scer

VOL. XVII-1

THE NIGHT-SIDE OF NATURE.*

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done and there is no new thing under the sun.

"Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us."

The experience of the world adds daily confirmation to the truth announced by The Preacher in the passage we have quoted. Amid the apparent vicissitudes of human affairs and human knowledge, there is really nothing but the repetition of old things. As in physical nature, summer follows spring, and winter succeeds to autumn, but the succession is invariable, and the new year is but the copy of its predecessor— so in the moral and social world of man, opinions, habits and tastes-sciences and arts-knowledge and power-nay, even the creative force of

*THE NIGHT-SIDE OF NATURE; Or, Ghosts and Ghost"Susan Seers. By Catherine Crowe. Authoress of Hopley," "Lilly Dawson," "Aristodemus," Etc. New York: J. S. Redfield. Clinton Hall. Boston: B. B. Mussey & Co. 1850.

costume.

the imagination and the dreams of poesy-seem earliest and the most obstinate of our inclinations. to move, in greater or lesser orbits, through the Nothing so fascinates the child at the nurse's same unvarying cycles. In dress, the fashion of knee as a terrible ghost story; and the taste, thus to-day is but a reproduction of some long forgotten cultivated almost in the cradle, is seldom rooted The fairy tales, which beguiled us in out, even when the belief has been wholly disthe nursery, are traced back by learned scholars pelled by the light of reason and experience. to the birth place of the human family in the re- Those, who have fully emancipated themselves mote East; and we find that Jack the Giant from the control of superstition, still enjoy as a sort Killer, with his seven mile boots, has really per- of stimulant the pleasing terror that is excited by formed some astounding journeys, though with such tales. So the old play-goer, to whom the less speed than his biographers have represented. stage is no longer a reality more vivid than the A more intimate acquaintance with China has life by daylight out of doors, loves to be cheated shown that nation of conservatives to have pos- for a little while into sympathy with the humor sessed, for thousands of years, the knowledge of of Falstaff, or the pathos of King Lear. We many processes, upon which civilized Europe have often felt, and as often laughed at, the whimprided herself as the crowning triumphs of cen- sical dilemma of good Dr. Adam Ferguson, the turies spent in study and invention; while the historian of the Roman Republic. He was found monuments of Egypt and Nineveh indicate the by a friend one night, when Mrs. Siddons was former existence of mechanical contrivances, and playing Lady Randolph in the tragedy of Dougof secrets in the manufacture of unfading colors, las, standing in the back part of a box, blubberwhich baffle all the inquiries of modern genius ing like a school boy, and soliloquizing to this and research. Even in this, which we call the effect- I know that I'm auld Adam Fergusonnew world, the authentic narratives of those ad- and I know this is the Edinbro' theatre-and I venturers, who first saw the glories of Mexico and know, yon's just that d-d jade Mrs. SiddonsPeru, are sufficient to excite our wonder and but-but-" and off went the philosopher again, amazement. And yet these nations were but mushrooms-the growth of yesterday-upon a soil where lie buried countless millions, whose very name has perished, of whom no tradition floats along the tide of time, and whose only memorials are the vast mounds and enclosures, that have bid defiance for unknown ages to the assaults of the elements.

We might pursue this course of illustration without end. We might prove not only from the dim glimpses of the past which pierce through the mists of early history-but from the aunals which the haud of Almighty power has traced in the strata of the earth itself—that the period, of which we know something, is but a fraction inconceivably small, compared with that chain of centuries from which it has been severed. And if even this limited history presents such evidence to our eyes of renewal and repetition, how much more must lie hidden beneath the waves of oblivion?

"So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed,
That withers away, to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

in another ungovernable tribute to the matchless acting of the heroine. In like manner, when one has spent a lonely hour at midnight, in devouring some well wrought narrative of supernatural and tragic mystery, his nerves are strung up to a pitch of morbid acuteness, his imagination rules with irresistible, if not undisputed, sway. Logic and common sense are summoned to no purpose. Like hasty levies of militia, they make a show of firmuess till the enemy approaches: but flee, panicstricken, at the first symptom of his appearance. The flap of a shutter, the rustle of a curtain, makes him start as if he already saw a spectre; and if the cat upset a tray of crockery, or throw down the fire-irons, in another room, he hears the fall of the castle of Otranto, or the clang of the gigantic helmet upon the marble floor.

If this were the whole extent of our superstitious fancies, merely nervous vagaries, which passed off with a night's sleep, and left us in full possession of our senses the next day, we should have no quarrel with the makers and retailers of such fictions. But, unfortunately, there are too many who do not stop at this point. Wise as this generation is, and much as it has outgone (according to its own reckoning) all the advances of its predecessors, a large proportion of the people alive this day, in the most cultivated countries of the globe, are just as credulous as those of any age, dark or light, since the world begun. The No department, in which the human mind has Salem witches are defunct indeed, and their death exercised itself, betrays this tendency more sig- has left a sad record behind them; but the nally than that which relates to the spiritual Rochester knocking girls have arisen in their world. The love of the marvellous is one of the stead, and make a comfortable living by the

"For we are the same that our fathers have been; We see the same sights that our fathers have seen : We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,

And we run the same course that our fathers have run."

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