our efforts could not recall her. There we were forced to sit with staring eyes, and listen to a conversation which could neither engage our thoughts, nor allow them to be engaged about any thing else.

Dress is the great staple of a woman's thoughts; she talks of it on all occasions; she meditates on it in all places, and for sake of it she makes her greatest sacrifices. She goes to church to display her own dress and to criticise the dress of her neighbors. She goes to balls and tea-parties for the same purpose; she walks up and down Broadway for no other reason. It is the great point when she marries, and the selection of her wedding gown costs her a thousand times more anxiety than the choice of her husband; and when she loses him, her first thought is her mourn ing, not her weeping. Her children are objects of great interest to her, because she can dress them to suit her fancy, and the little unconscious innocents are made to toddle about the streets as a kind of advertisement of their mother's taste. Do you doubt this? Then walk down Broadway some sunshiny morning and look at the little bits of humanity which dot the side-walks the whole length of that famous avenue, decorated with all the fantasies which velvet and gold cord are capable of creating. Do you doubt the controlling thought of women? Look at the popular magazines of the day! Not one of them can be supported without the appendage of a fashion-plate; but with it they flourish like willows by the water courses, though they may have nothing else to recommend them. There are some half a dozen of these monthly distributors of ladies' fashions and literature, varying in their circulation from ten to fifty thousand copies, and they all thrive and bring money to their pub lishers; while it is a fact too well known to need penning, that no mere literary periodical has ever flourished in this country, although there have been many established and sustained by the very highest talent in the nation (the Democratic for example), although they have been continued in an enduring faith that the public sentiment would come right in the end.

As no magazine publishes fashion plates for men, and as no man, except ing a silk-jobber, can be supposed to care a copper about the fashions of the

gentler sex, this inordinate appetite for intelligence in regard to dress must of necessity be laid exclusively to the door of the ladies. Their patronage of the magazines proves nothing for literature, but, on the contrary, it is the strongest evidence they could give that they have no sympathies to bestow upon literary exercises, since they will not subscribe for a work which does not contain a pattern of a new boddice or a lace cap. If you pass through Broadway on a pleasant morning, you see a great number of daily carriages, drawn by horses which cause you to break the tenth commandment, though you be never so pious a churchman, and you wonder on what expedition they can be bound; you watch their stoppingplaces, and you find them at the doors of mantua-makers' and milliners' shops. They are kept for the express purpose of carrying ladies, when they go in search of dresses, and when they go to display them, either in the ball or the house of prayer. At church they make a very grand display of the latest importations from Paris, while their horses and their coachmen are waiting on the outside. This they do in obedience to the fourth commandment. Let no lady say that we scandalize the sex, unless she can name the gentle being who will go to church in a last year's hat.

Now, the ladies assembled at Mrs. Pederson's tea-party were by no means exceptions to the peculiarities of the sex, and such a din as they contrived to raise about mousseline-de-laines and chène silks would be passing belief, except with those who have witnessed similar things themselves. We could not, of course, join in such a conversation; and as there were but three men present beside ourself, we had a severe time of it, for neither of the gentlemen would talk of anything but the times; a subject which means, like many other conversational topics, anything or nothing, but generally, as was the case now, nothing.

The" times," with our companions, meant the price of oats, which to us was a matter of not the slightest importance; and when we had been informed that oats weighing twenty-nine pounds could be bought at two-and-sixpence per bushel, there was an end to the subject. It was suggestive of nothing but the wretch Titus Oates; and as we named the name of that paltry

creature, quite unconsciously, our party friends caught it up, and remarked that they had never "hearn tell" of that kind of grain before. We were just on the point of making an explanation, when Mrs. Pederson's colored girl entered the parlor, and announced that tea was ready, upon which all conversation was suddenly suspended; and after a good deal of coquetting as to who should lead the way, we all shambled out into the next room, where the tea-table was spread, at which we sat down, looking very stiff and very serious, as though tea-drinking was not to be laughed at. The ladies all sat on one side, with the gentlemen opposite, and cast down their eyes very devoutly while one of my companions, a vestryman, implored a blessing. We are by no means disposed to object to an appeal to the Throne of Grace at any time; but it has always seemed to us that the form of supplications used at tea-parties is extremely ill-placed. If we should ask for grace to go through with the infliction on such an occasion with patience, and ask to be forgiven for misspending our time, there would

be some sense in it.

Mrs. Pederson sat at the head of the table, and "poured out;" but before passing the cups she inquired of each of her guests whether they drank sugar and cream; and as some took one without the other, and some both, and some neither, it followed as a matter of course that nobody was exactly suited. Those who drank sugar but no cream, got cream but no sugar; while those who drank neither, got both, and those who drank both, got neither. But they all said it was very good, when Mrs. Pederson asked if the tea was "agreeable," although they suggested a slight alteration when they passed their cups a second time; but as the tea-pot had been replenished with hot water, the second cup gave as little real satisfaction as the first.

The table was covered after the most approved fashion; and if Mrs. Pederson had been ill-disposed towards her guests, she could not have contrived a more ingenious plan for making them particularly wretched. It is an understood point at all tea-parties, that the guests must commence with bread-andbutter, and end with cakes and preserves; and the first business of the tea-table was passing overloaded plates

of hot rolls and buttered toast up and down from hand to hand, until all the guests were supplied: next came little plates of smoked beef, cut into thin slices like a leather-dresser's shavings; and these were followed by plates of cheese cut in little square lumps; then plates of crackers were handed round, and one said that the butter was "beautiful," and another that the bread was "elegant;" and as the remarks were not addressed to Mrs. Pederson, but intended for her ear, the gratified lady, as soon as she heard them, said, "she was sure the butter was not fit to eat, and that the bread was not nice at all." Somebody having conceived that a sufficient quantity of bread had been eaten, took up a plate of crullers, and set them a going, while two or three more guests took up plates of sponge cake, and plum cake, and citron cake, and put them in circulation, while others began to dish out preserved quinces, and gages, and plums, and peaches, and the whole table was alive with glass saucers and little plates. After a time, the company had “eaten sufficient," and Mrs. Pederson "was sure nobody had eaten anything;" and then followed a few minutes of very solemn looks, and upon a signal given by somebody, we all got up from table and retired into the parlor again, where the ladies took their old subject afresh, and the gentlemen returned to their oats. And after spending two or three hours more in this pleasant manner, we all took leave of Mrs. Pederson and went home. As the night was dark, and the roads were miry, we had abundant time to moralize with our wife about tea-parties; but she would not look upon the subject with our eyes, and maintained that people must live like other people, or it "would be no use;" and that, for her part, she not only liked to go to parties but she meant to give one herself.

When we found that she was resolutely bent on giving a tea-party, we made use of all our rhetorical abilities in trying to persuade her to surprise her guests with something a little dif ferent from what they had been accustomed to get at other houses; but she would not consent to the slightest deviation, alleging, what perhaps was very true, that if she did not do as other people did, she would be the talk of the whole county. In truth, she gave us to

understand as the Peruvians did their conquerors, that she wanted no change, and least of all such change as we should be likely to recommend. We soon perceived that our wife was a staunch conservative, and that like all other conservatives, she preferred a bad old practice to a good new one, and we determined to let her manage her idols in her own way.

The invitations were issued nearly a week a-head, and the intervening nights and days were devoted to preparations, which, considering our moderate income, were on a scale of frightful extravagance. At last the day arrived, the rooms were put in order, the fires lighted, the candles were all decorated with paper frills, and our wife, dressed in her best gown, sat down to wait for her company. We had calculated on all the guests arriving before five o'clock, but five o'clock came and was succeeded by six o'clock, and not a soul had come. Our wife was on the point of hysterics; she kept running to the door, and casting anxious glances up the road and down the road, but no one came; the children were crying for their sup per, the cook was scolding, the hours were flying, but the guests came not, and at nine o'clock we sat down to supper, amazed, confounded and horrorstruck. Not a soul had sent an excuse, and the whole matter was shrouded in the deepest mystery. What could it mean! Towards midnight we retired to bed, but not to sleep, for our minds were too much engrossed by the strange event to rest. Our wife was very serious, believing that the world was coming to a speedy end, for we could not persuade her that it was one of those strange coincidences that sometimes occur, and not some rare convulsion of nature which had kept her invited guests at home.

The sun rose as brightly as ever the next morning, exactly at his appointed time, the birds chirped as gaily, and all nature looked as steadfast and composed as though nothing unusual had taken place. In the course of the day the mystery was cleared up, although not without creating another. It appeared on inquiry that every one of our invited guests had received a note the night before the party was to take place, stating that in consequence of a case of small-pox in the family the party had been deferred to an indefinite pe

VOL. XII.-NO. LIX.

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riod, and our house had, in consequence, been shunned like a pest-house. Here was an instance of rancorous party spirit. It was impossible to guess at the individual who had done us so great a wrong. Our wife was in an ecstasy of passion; but for ourself, we considered the thing a capital joke, and enjoyed it much more than we should have enjoyed the party had it taken place.

It was a long while before she regained her usual spirits; the disappointment and mortification affected her deeply, leaving out of consideration her feverish curiosity to learn who the author of the outrage was; but in time she began to recover, and as she was one of those neat persons who are never happy but when employed in “ 'cleaning up," that is, in the midst of a wild confusion of mops and dusters, whitewash brushes and black Nannies, her returning cheerfulness first manifested itself by her engaging with great vigor in her favorite employments, and she continued her labors to so late an hour in the afternoon, that she was surprised in the middle of the hubbub by the unusual call of the minister's wife and her three daughters, who were dressed in quite a remarkable style for a call, and showed an evident disposition to stay to tea.

The confusion of our household may well be conceived by those who have been similarly caught, but the confusion of our wife it would be impossible for anybody to conceive, because nobody but herself can know in what awe she held the minister's wife. The lady and her daughters had hardly seated themselves in the parlor when a carriage stopped at the door and discharged Mrs. Pederson; who was immediately followed by a succession of visitors, until half the county were assembled in our rooms and about the house. Here was another mystery. They had all received cards of invitation to tea for that very day. To entertain them was impossible. No preparations had been made, and they were all packed off supperless, and for the most part in a dreadful state of ill humor.

We tried in vain to discover the author of these pleasant little freaks, notwithstanding that a considerable reward was offered for his detection. But a year or two afterwards the perpetrator was discovered. During a

THE universality of taste for reading in this country, stimulated and satisfied as it is by the immense supply of reading material which it calls into existence the demand and the supply having a mutual action and reaction, in the double nature of cause and effect-although exceedingly favorable to authors, in one sense at least, operates unluckily for us Reviewers-it gives us but shortest space in which to avail ourselves of that mainly attractive feature, novelty. In England, where books are dear and a sale of two or three thousand copies is considered great success-where not one person in fifty buys the new books as they come out, and not more than one in twenty reads them, even by the dilatory aid of a circulating librarywhere the circulation of quarterlies and monthlies is in like manner limited, and even the daily or weekly newspaper is to a vast majority of the population a far-off and unattainable existence, from want of ability either to buy or read in England, we say, where each review and magazine and newspaper has its regular set of readers, who read that and nothing else, as must always be the case when the habit of reading is limited and the material is expensive, the gentleman who finds sustenance for his literary life by dissecting the works of others, can always reckon upon a sure market for his ware, however deliberate he may be in performing his task of criticism. He knows that his choice collection of extracts, even though it be made from a recent production of some very popular author, will come fresh and racy to the circle in which he revolves, and that there is little or no danger of his "article" being disgracefully "skipped" as antiquated, by a set of impertinents who have been so inconsiderate as to read the whole book while he was ingeniously culling its best bits to enliven his connecting chain of common-places. But with us the case is widely different. Here books are published, not by hundreds, but by thousands and tens of thousands; nine.

tenths, probably, of those who read the monthly or the quarterly read also the new works of which it discourses; and even those who do not happen to read any given work itself, are morally certain to have become tolerably familiar with its character, long before the monthly or quarterly comes out, through the abominable officiousness of the dailies and weeklies, which have got into the way of taking strange liberties with our rights and privileges, and exercise their pens and scissors as freely upon new books as though literature was not our exclusive province. It is a melancholy truth that the business of criticism is in a declining way, like banking; cheap publishing has given it a terrible blow; and if we continue to furnish our readers, from time to time, with an elaborate and extended review of some new work, it is more out of respect for an ancient and venerable custom than from any hope or belief that what we can offer in that way will have much attraction, either of novelty or otherwise, for our readers.

Consider these superb volumes on the ruins of Yucatan, for example. They have been before the public a whole month-an eternity as it were, reckoning by the brief existences of most books that are now-a-days published. Within that month who has not devoured them at ease in the quiet possession of his own or a borrowed copy? Who has not curiously scanned the multitudinous engravings in which the skill of Catherwood and the marvellous fidelity of the daguerreotype have given perpetuity, in representation at least, to those magnificent relics of ancient American architecture and art which the terrible energy of tropical vegetation is hurrying so rapidly to destruction? Who has not accompanied the adventurous author and his companions through all the dangers and privations of their devious route among crumbling ruins, underground vaults, caves, ranchos, desert islands, convents, haciendas, casas reales, fleas,