of human nature, many have united in the deprecatory voice of the poet:

'Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To touch the bones enclosed here!'

Shame, shame on the Vandal, that can trample, brute-like, on the graves of his kindred, or cast indignity on the soil that presses the bosom of his friends! The man of refined feelings will recollect, that that which now lies cold beneath him, was once the birth-place of all that is noble. He will feel it a sacrilege to trample on the grave; much more, to invade with indecent hand its precincts. He will rather regard it a 'holy of holies,' a place to be protected from every profane intrusion; a shrine whither to wend in frequent pilgrimage, and to bring the tribute of his tears. By every motive of self-respect or of love for the departed, let us protect their sepulchres; adorning them with the mourning cypress, and with the sweetest flowers of the spring!

It is this beautiful custom, which takes away from those chilling sensations that are apt to crowd upon the mind, and to oppress it, on the approach to the sepulchre. We forget that the worm is revelling on the object of our affection, and, enchanted by the sweet poetry of the prospect, we look upon the grave as a beautiful resting-place. What a peculiar fitness, also, in the rite, and how emblematic of the virtuous dead! For as flowers, though long plucked from the stem, still continue to diffuse their sweetness around them, so will the fragrance of virtuous actions be strong and lasting, even when the heart which prompted, and the hand which performed them, have been for ever chilled in death.*

When, instead of a dank, unhandsome-charnel house, associated only with the humbling ideas of corruption, where the aged, whom we have honored, and the young whose beauty, so sylph-like, so spirituelle, we have idolized, are given up to festering and the worm; when, instead of all that is repulsive to human feeling, we behold the sepulchre turned into a garden of roses, and into a breathing wilderness of sweets, we could almost forego the remnants of a life, too agitated by painful emotions, and lay down our heads as in some chamber of sweet forgetfulness, some flowery entrance to the blest abodes, where there are no more tears or sorrow, 'where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'

Happy is it, that the grave can be thus stripped of its prerogative of terror, and robbed of its 'victory,' even as Jesus Christ has rifled death of its 'sting.' That thus we may look calmly upon it, as the

* It was not until writing the above, that we discovered a similar sentiment in the poet SHIRLEY, and it is one which, with its context, made the veteran CROMWELL turn as pale as ashes:

The garlands wither on your brow;

Then beast no more your nighty deeds;

Upon death's purple altar now

See where the victor victim bleeds!"

All heads must come

To the cold tomb:

Only the ashes of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'

It

ultimate goal whither all steps are wending, as the dark opening of some bright and glorious perspective, and not recoil into the giddy world, to escape its lessons of morality. Were the grave rendered

, more attractive, it might be better than the words of the preacher. The old man, as he passed by, would remember, without shuddering, that he was dust, nor would the youth hurry on, 'whistling to keep his courage up.' It should entice more readily than the lips of some

old man eloquent,' and instil its stern lessons into willing ears. should have a voice and an eloquence of its own. More sublimely than human thought ever conceived of, and in a language 'sweeter than all tune,' it should discourse of death, judgment, and eternity. Ob! bring flowers, bring flowers ! Disdain not to encourage what is so refined in its tendency, though Reason, in her despicable pride, may sneer at you, and account it a weakness to honor the casket, when deserted by the gem!

Let us visit often the burial-places of the dead, recall our minds from the grossness of earthly cares, commune with them, and then, scattering our sweet emblems, go back with a cheerful heart into the world, and endeavor to emulate their virtues. We shall be better affected by this, than by rearing any cold mausoleum. That may be intrusted to the artist, and inay excite the gaze, if not the sneer, of the passer. It is better to present our own offerings.

What are the proudest piles of sculptured marble? Will not the beating storm, and the effacing moss, and the corrosive hand of time, soon blot out these vain memorials, and destroy the short-lived characters which are inscribed upon them? But the willow and the rose will be ever returning, and ever blooming on the approach of spring; thus quickening our affections, and almost enticing us to linger at the grave. And who would not prefer these natural monuments, to the cold marble which the hand of man has fashioned? the romantic beauties of Père la Chaise,' to the long-drawn aisles of Westminster Abbey? Yes, surely if there is a place where simplicity possesses a charm, and where every approach to arrogance should be avoided, it is that last narrow house :

where side by side, The poor man and the son of pride,

Lie calm and still! To throw around the grave the gorgeous paraphernalia of living haughtiness, appears a kind of horrid mockery. It is the unseemly paint daubed upon the ghastly features of death. It is creating a distinction, where every distinction is alike levelled with the dust. And there are better memorials than the gilded marble, or the sculptured stone; for the tear, as it trembles in the eye of affection, or sparkles on the tomb of the dead, is worth all the 'pomp of heraldry, and boast of power;' and the deep-graven characters which are inscribed

the living tablets of the heart, are better than the most vaunting epitaph upon Parian marble.

COXCOM BS.

FROM 'KYTTEN HAWTEN,' AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY J. H. BRIGHT, ESQ.

I.

HIGH on the quarter-deck the master stood,

His slender frame form'd less for use than show:

A soft blue eye, light hair, of gentle mood,

And small thin hands and feet, a forehead low;

He looked a figure for a lady's beau

The neat appendage of the drawing-room;

A quite convenient thing, when Miss must go

To purchase ribbons, laces, and perfume:

You'll find such when 't is fair, in Broadway, in full bloom.

II.

This leads me to digress upon the way

In which those objects live on land; they toil
Not, neither do they spin;' and yet more gay
No gilded butterflies e'er go. They spoil
The finest epigram, though smooth as oil,
Which genius ever penn'd; and when it closes,
You wonder where the wit is! They so maul
The sense, in reading, it no point discloses.

They credit Shakspeare, when they quote from Job, or Moses.

LITERARY NOTICES.

HOME AS FOUND. By the Author of 'Homeward Bound,' 'The Pioneers,' etc.' In two volumes, 12mo. pp. 582. Philadelphia: LEA AND BLANChard.

WE shall devote but brief space to a notice of this work, than which we have seen nothing worse from the pen of its author-not even excepting 'The Monikins.' It will be remembered that, in a late number of this Magazine, in closing a notice of 'Homeward Bound,' we expressed the hope that its author would hereafter forget the unpleasant wranglings of the past, and that 'the fine genius of our countryman, now in the prime of life and manhood, would play out its variations, unfettered by kindled prejudices, and untrammelled by awakened remembrance of real persecution or fancied wrong.' We regret to say, that our anticipations were not well founded. Indeed, the warmest personal friend of Mr. COOPER cannot but deeply regret the publication of the work under notice. As a novel proper, it is, to say nothing of more venial faults, plotless and desultory - utterly without form and void.' Our author seems to anticipate this verdict, in his preface; and hazards an apology for his failure, which can in no wise avail him. It will not do for the author of the 'Pioneers,' 'The Spy,' 'Lionel Lincoln,' etc., who has derived so much repute from his labors on American ground, to turn round, at this late day, and, as an excuse for giving us the lees of his good wine, pronounce our country 'the most barren field on earth for a writer of fiction.' It is true, that if Mr. COOPER's fame were to depend upon the volumes before us, it would ultimately be found vastly to resemble infamy. He evidently sat down to his task with all his vanities and grievances, imaginary or real, thick clustering about him; and no reader can resist the conclusion, that the discharge of ink was necessary to avoid a most plethoric congestion. Scenes and conversations, in which American society is elaborately caricatured, make up the staple of the work. The writer indulges liberally in satirical digressions, and is not at all scrupulous about the tie which connects them together. The spirit of the book could not well be worse. It is full of nuts for the tories of England, and all enemies of republican equality and institutions, every where. Doubtless, as our author has often averred, there is something too much of national boasting among us. It has been well remarked, that there is enough of honest triumph for the republic, in her actual position, and reasonable prospects, without sending up our writers and statesmen to the high places of the American Pisgah, to enjoy the prospective subjugation of the globe. But on the other hand, is there need of underrating? Is there need of native dogmatism and arrogance, in treating of our people? Is there cause for an American to represent the mass of his countrymen as fools or clowns ? — to speak slightingly of our scenery, and disparagingly, nay, contemptuously, of our society, in particular and in the mass? But we must pause. A long notice of these volumes would be out of all proportion to their importance; and we gladly leave them to the oblivion which awaits them, and from which nothing can rescue them.

THE MOTLEY BOOK; A SERIES OF TALES AND SKETCHES. By the late BEN. SMITH. With Illustrations. One volume. pp. 190. J. AND H. G. LANGLEY, Chatham-street. We have already alluded to this work, in the fragmentary form in which it first appeared; and now that the' tales and sketches' are collected by the author into a volume, where they may be read consecutively, we find no cause to modify the conscientious verdict which we have heretofore rendered against them. The author's head is capacious enough of dreams and similitudes of humor; but there is no naturalness in his descriptions, and no distinctness in his pictures. His observation of men and things, is cursory and superficial; and there is a perpetual tendency with him to exaggeration or dilution of thought; until the reader is sometimes led to doubt whether he always affixes any very precise ideas to the language he employs. Under such a process, even the best of scenes or ideas would become as flat as champaigne in a decanter. We will illustrate the justice of our comments, by a single extract from a sketch entitled 'Greasy Peterson,' a grocer, described, with characteristic vraisemblance, as 'a smooth, unctious, fish-faced being,' which we shall take the liberty to place by the side of a natural picture, drawn by a master of the humorous, and ask the reader to compare the odd patch-work fancy' of our motley author, with the clear limning, which he has elsewhere aped, but signally aped in vain:

'Greasy Peterson vulgar mortals have named thee, knowing not the true sweetness and blessedness of thy life in its even flow. Judged by thy garments, thou art in truth a poor-devil. Ablue coat, patched like the sky with spots of cloudy black, oil-spotted drab breeches, cased in coarse overalls of bagging, are not the vestments in which worldly greatness clothes itself, or worldly wisdom is willing to be seen walking streets and highways. True, thou hast a jolly person and goodly estate of flesh and blood under such habiliments. Glide on, glide on, Oleaginous Robert-like a river of oil, and be thy taper of life quenched silently as pure spermaceti! Robert Peterson, Esq., greengrocer and tallow-chandler, possessed the most incongruous face that ever adorned the head of mortal. His nose thrust itself out, a huge promontory of flesh, at whose base two pool-like eyes sparkled small, clear and twinkling, while a river of mouth ran athwart its extreme projection, flowing almost from ear to ear, with only a narrow strip of ruddy cheek intervening. Within, greasy Bob possessed a mind as curiously assorted as his countenance. It was composed of fragments of every thing, bits of knowledge of one kind and another strangely stitched together, and forming an odd patch-work brain, whose operations it was a merry spectacle to observe.

'Good morning, neighbor Peterson,' said as mall, pie-shaped fruiterer from next door, 'Good morning! I hope we shall have fine weather, now the wind has shifted his tail to the Nor'-west.'

Who ever saw a 'fish-faced' or a 'pie-shaped' man, or one, elsewhere mentioned, with features like a dried codfish, suddenly animated?' Compare the foregoing obscure and plethoric picture - a single specimen from a numerous class, of kindred genus and characteristics with the subjoined, by IRVING, whose drawings in this kind seem always, in contrast with those of other would-be humorists, (we except NEAL, the charcoal-sketcher,) like a Michael Angelo in a picture-gallery. The passage is familiar to the reader, being a sketch of Ichabod Crane, and his steed 'Gunpowder,' as they sat off for old Baltus Van Tassel's party :

'The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scare-crow eloped from a cornfield. It is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plough-horse, that had outlived almost every thing but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with