estate upon the island, and anxious only that others of our citizens should realize the things which we do know,' we shall ask attention to a slight sketch, which has for its sole object the awakening of metropolitan attention to, and a proper pride in, the beauties of nature, which are spread with such a lavish hand along the whole south-western border of the Bay of New York.

Sitting at high noon, on our ever memorable 'Independence Day,' beneath a tree which crowns one of the upland summits, that swell so gently and gracefully around New-Brighton and the Quarantine-Ground, a fervid sun tempered mean time by passing summer clouds, we looked around upon this varied scene: To the South, the Narrows, that gate which opens upon the old world, across the Atlantic, spread wide its guarded pass, to afford us a view of 'old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,' partly relieved by the dimly blue Highlands of 'Neversink,' but beyond, swelling in the imagination from the vast almost to the infinite; while between you and its nearest border, villas gleam among the trees, from the crests of wooded hills, and collections of white dwellings brighten in the sun. Farther 10 the east, follow the “ribbed sea-sand' of Coney-Island to the verdant shores of Long-Island, where the yellow wheat-fields and green meadows are diversified with rich patches of forest, over which rise heavenward the spires of a peaceful inland village. Passing Brooklyn, swelling proudly from its prominent heights, and our own noble city, with its numerous steeples, domes, and turrets, 'sitting like Tyre in the midst of the sea' – reposing in beauty beneath the transparent veil of haze, which but adds enchantment to the view — the eye rests upon the glorious Hudson, stretching in majesty beyond the abrupt walls of the Palisades, and widening into the Tappan Sea. On the north and west, undulation after undulation, rise the blue hills, growing fainter and fainter, until terminated by the range that carries the Catskills onward to Pennsylvania, on a visit to their near relations, the Blue Ridge Family ; while, coming toward the sea-board, the beautiful city of Newark .sparkles all revealed,' in its green lap, and along the end of its picturesque bay. Westwardly, opens a little vale of Tempe, with wide meadows along 'The Kills,' and rich woodlands, lovely landscapes, and pastoral villages, steeple-crowned, filling the eye, onward to where the distant mountains bound the view. Then pause, for a moment, to glance at the bay beneath you. All is life and animation. Broad bands of sunlight thrown across it in the distance, give you the hue of our western fresh-water lakes; more near, the 'cat's-paw ripples of the fitful breeze are painting irregular purple shadows; gay steamers are leaving behind them long tracks of foam, or ploughing the wave before them; while, like the faint drum of a partridge, in the stillness of the woods, comes up the subdued sound of their wel. tering wheels. Ships, and water-craft of every description, are crossing and re-crossing each other's path, or reposing idly at anchor, before you — their sails now bathed in sunlight, now lying in shadow; while beneath your feet spreads out the chaste and elegant settlement of New-Brighton, reclining picturesquely upon its green and sloping bank, with the beautiful and spacious Pavilion rising in the midst. Now, reader, we have drawn, as we think, a faithful sketch; and would simply ask, if the scene be not one of surpassing loveliness? An English gentleman, whoin we recently accompanied to a Liverpool packet, off Sandy-Hook, dwelt with admiration upon the view we have attempted to depict; and declared that, for natural capabilities and attractions, he had seen nothing, in any country, superior to the uplands of Staten-Island, along the Bay and the Narrows. With a rich soil, then ; without local désagremens of any kind; within a distance from town less than that of some of our streets from the business marts; with countless building-sites, and with air of the purest and freshest; what should hinder, that New-Brighton, and its environs on all sides, should be sprinkled with country-seats ? It cannot be otherwise; and we close our hurried paragraph with the prediction, that before six years shall have elapsed, the whole high water-borders of the island will be covered with villas; and we look to see them well shaded by transplanted trees, of a large growth. “These are the anticipations. Let them not be disappointed !'

GERMAN MANNERISMS.-The Foreign Quarterly Review claims, in a recent number of that established periodical, to have toiled long and successfully, and with an almost German devotion, to render German literature popular in England; to transplant the strongest shoots and fairest flowers of that soil; and to 'impart the lavish wealth of its opened mines of learning, to adorn and improve the British mind.' The Review has come at last to think, however, that the general feeling has of late run too violently into the extreme; that many English writers have imbibed a Germano-mania, and transferred the praise due to their plethoric scholarship, into an indiscriminating admiration for every thing that bears the shadowy, subtile, and meditative impress of German peculiarity; until even the faults and excrescences of German taste and style have come to be expatiated and insisted upon, and urged vehemently upon the public, as eminent beauties. If, as our reviewer reasons, England is too practical in her habits; too constantly kept in straight-forward vigilance and bold existence, to allow time, to any extent, for ultra metaphysical niceties; is not America much more so? It is still more undeniably true of our own country than of England, that 'all the elements of material life and action are so unceasingly whirled together, combining and conflicting in the crucible of a positive chemistry, that the lighter vapors, the sublimations and sublimities of alchemical expectations, float away into the air, while the caput mortuum is left at the bottom, and the general extract retained for practical purposes.' There are numerous eager enthusiasts of German literature, whose praises are heard and suffered to sink in the mysticism that envelopes them, who, in their writings, seem to act upon the advice of Mephistophiles to the student, in 'Faust;' namely, not to be 'over anxious about having meaning connected with words, since it is precisely where meaning fails, that words come in most opportunely.' GOETHE says, elsewhere, that 'it is with the fabric of thought, as with a weaver's master-piece, where one treadle moves a thousand threads; the shuttles shoot backward and forward, and the thread flows unseen.' If a man, in walking along Broadway, were to reveal every thread of the fabric in his brain, what a conglomeration there would be! What a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark! And this is precisely the error of the more eminent authors of Germany. While they have any thing to spin, the wheel goes; and sometimes, long after, 'Her writers,' says our reviewer, 'are not satisfied, unless their readers know all they have done, and dreamed, in the progress of their labors; every portion of their course is held to be of equal importance; every turn and gesture of the inner and the outward man equally deserving the reader's most anxious admiration.' There are certainly bright stepping, stones along the muddy road which many German writers tread; but those who follow after, instead of selecting these, oftentimes 'slump' into holes and shallows, but are yet so blind in their admiration of the way, as to consider it very delightful travelling. Forced and fantastic expressions can never atone for the freshness and strength whose place they usurp. Clearness and simplicity of thought,' says the Quarterly, 'will always induce, with the least practice, a corresponding clearness and simplicity of diction; and according to the imperfections of the latter, we can determine, with sufficient accuracy, whether the mind that puts it forth is turgid or verbose; inert from indigestion of overcrowded reading, or thinking, or smoking.' The reviewer enters his protest against the

Ir may not be amiss to mention, in this place, that the remarks in our last number, upon the 'Germanic infections' of the day, were not intended to apply, as some have seemed to infer, to the general style of Dr. CHANNING. We were rejoiced to find a severe critique upon the Germanosities of the time,' in the Edinburgh Review, because an uncanvassed verdict in their favor, from so high an authority as Dr. CHANNING, would be likely to increase them an hundred fold, through the license which would at once be taken by inferior intellects. It was the new and pernicious doctrine, born, we believed, of the Germano-mania, and sanctioned by Dr. CHANNING, that we were glad to see assailed; and not the talents of an author, to whose distinguished aid, in the extension of our literary repute abroad, this periodical has borne frequent and cordial testimony. EDs. KNICKERBOCKER,

excessive exaggeration of praise that has followed the name of GOETHE. Like the critics who

'were wont to view

In Homer more than HOMER knew,'

Goethe's commentators often puzzled him greatly, by proving to him how much he had intended, which he never imagined! For examples of comparative criticism upon the merits of this author, from which may be gathered a fair estimate of his beauties and defects, we would refer the reader to an article upon German literature, in Black wood's Magazine, some three month's since, a paper upon 'Faust,' in the current number of the 'New-York Review,' and the article in the 'Foreign Quarterly,' which we have been considering. Having perused, as we believe, all the translated productions of GOETHE, we are compelled to hold, with the latter authority, that he has been greatly overrated. He is called 'the German Shakspeare,' whereas the distinction between the two may well be termed 'boundless.' The German was a man of vast acquirements, whose works all bear the trace of study; a giant only in national peculiarities; a genius, but of artificial life; an artist of nature, not her worshipper. Moreover, the disgusting obscenity, from which the best of his productions are not free, and which literally teens in many of them, should not be lost sight of in the account. A writer who never hesitates to paint the grossest depravity, and even depicts it with a sort of zest; whose sensual scenes and sentiments debauch the understanding, inflame the sleeping passions, and prepare the reader to give way so soon as a tempter appears; to be compared with the immortal SHAKSPEARE! 'Shakspeare ruled the heart, and swayed the sympathies of mankind; his thoughts open the intellectual world of man; and all his aspirations ennoble the mind.' The blaze of GOETHE's reputation may not soon be blown out; but we can readily believe with the Quarterly, that ‘Germany will surpass him yet.'

AN OLD FRIEND IN A NEW PLACE. - Some fifteen years ago, there was commenced in the 'Trenton (New-Jersey) Emporium,' a series of village tales and sketches, which gradually acquired extensive popularity, in every quarter of the United States. Scarcely a newspaper in the country, but bore over its miscellaneous columns, 'From the Trenton Emporium.' This initial line was always a token of good cheer, and never failed to insure a perusal of the article which it heralded. Who does not remember 'The Pet Lamb,' 'The Social Glass,' 'The Sprout Family,' 'The Silver Sixpence,' 'The Last Herring,' and the rest of the charming Alesbury family? They were all remarkable, not less for their plain and attractive style, and simple dramatic interest, than for the useful lessons which they invariably inculcated. In this regard, they bore a strong resemblance to the well-known stories of 'Poor Richard,' by Hon. CHARLES MINER, of Pennsylvania. The writer presented us with sudden and lively pictures of nature. His incidents were few and simple, but there was nothing of jejuneness in his simplicity. It was the artlessness of nature. Some ten or twelve years since, the tales and sketches in question were collected into a volume, and published at Trenton, by Mr. JOSEPH JUSTICE; and this little book, through the kindness of a friend, now lies before us. A glance at its pages has revived a recollection of the boyish eagerness with which we were wont to peruse their contents, in the journals of the day, and awakened anew a feeling of gratitude toward the good 'OLIVER OAKWOOD,' from whose pen they proceeded.

We have spoken of the style of these unpretending stories, and allude to it again, to say, that of all others, it is the most entertaining to the merely general reader, and worth all the cumbrous, misplaced description, and crowded melo-dramatic incident, so common at a later, and even the present, day. Whatever be the locale chosen by the writer, he gives it with the faithfulness of an artist's pencil, in a few happy touches. Take, for

1

example, the opening lines of 'A Winter's Night,' a story of a benighted father, rescued from impending death, by the lover of his daughter. The dusky aspect of the western horizon betokens an approaching snow-storm: 'at length, the sun went down in clouds; the winds arose higher and higher, until the cottage trembled like a leaf. Caroline opened the window, and looked out. It was a dismal night, and the snow was beginning to fall in large dry flakes around; the thick clouds almost shut out even the faint moonlight from the evening, and the lofty forests frowned darkly, on every side.' The first sentence in 'The Village Belle,' is an equally felicitous picture: 'If ever you should come to Alesbury, you will see a sweet little cottage in the meadows, toward the river, half hid away amid a cluster of black alders, with its white chimney and snowy paling peeping through the foliage.' Here lived the village belle,' an arrant coquette, who trifled with the feelings of her suitors, until she lost them all. 'Time rolled on, and the grass at length began to grow in the path that led over the meadows to the cottage;' and this bit of natural description fully prepares the reader for the sequel. Look at this summer scene, dashed in with one stroke of the pen: 'A heavy but refreshing shower was just over, and a clear and beautiful rainbow lay pencilled on the breaking clouds, extending its token of promise from the mountain-top in the east, to the buttonwoods on the distant river banks.' Glance, too, at this autumnal etching: 'It was late in the month of September, when the shrill note of the locust, the harbinger of decaying vegetation, had long been heard, and here and there a dry and solitary leaf hung upon the fading foliage, like the gray hairs upon the head of waning manhood.' Does not this brief passage suggest to the reader's mind a complete picture of the advent of an American fall; the audible stillness of the noontide air; the quail whistling in the stubble field:

And on the breath of autumn-breeze,

From pastures dry and brown,
Far floating, like an idle thought,
The fair, white thistle-down?'

Our author's portraitures of human passion and feeling are not less true to nature; but of these we can afford space for only a solitary passage, from a story entitled 'The Home-Gathering :'

There is more of spell-work about the home of our fathers, than he who has never been a wanderer, imagines. Ask the poor exile on a foreign shore, what visions flit across his bosom, and enchain his fancy, and call forth the deep-drawn sigh, as he gazes, sileut and lonely, on the sweet midnight moou, and he will tell you, in the fulness of his heart, they are the visions of his early home. Though his path be across the ocean; though he wander among the icebergs of Lapland, or sit down in the far-off islands of the sea; he feels that he can never out-travel the memory of his native village, nor forget the delights of his paternal cottage. Though ambition lead him into foreign lands, or fortune tempt him into the world of business, he will often pause, even when success has gratified his wishes, and linger whole hours over the memory of days gone by, as they steal, in the language of the bard of Morven, like music to the soul. He will delight in every bush, and tree, and flowering landscape, and singing bird, that resembles those he saw and loved in youth; and if, in the farthest corner of the globe, he hears the gentle breathings of a strain with which on his native hills he has been familiar, what a world of sweet yet half melancholy joy does it kindle in his bosom! Yes, home is still dear to our hearts; and like the comet exiled from the sun, we would still go but to return; and seldom grow so old, and never wander so far, as to be beyond the reach of its attractions.'

A brief passage from the sketch entitled 'The Beggar and Banker' - in which, 'philosophically speaking,' as GREGORY THIMBLEWELL would say, the former has a decided advantage over the latter, in an instructive street colloquy-and we have done. 'In the first place,' reasons the village gaberlunzie man :

"Do you take notice that God has given me a soul and body, just as good for all the purposes of thinking, eating, drinking, and taking my pleasure, as he has you; and then you may remember Dives and Lazarus, as we pass. Then again, it is a free country, and here too, we are on an equality; for you must know that here even a beggar's dog may look a gentleman in the face, with as much indifference as he would a brother. You and I have the same common master; are equally free; live equally easy; are both travelling the same journey, bound to the same place, and both have to die and be buried in the end."

But,' observed the Banker, interrupting him, 'do you pretend there is then no difference between a beggar and a banker?'

Not in the least,' rejoined the other, with the utmost readiness; 'not in the least, as to essentials. You swagger and drink wine, in company of your own choosing; Iswagger and drink beer, which I like better than your wine, in company which I like better than your company. You make thousands a day, perhaps; I make a shilling, perhaps; if you are coutented, I am; we're equally happy at night. You dress in new clothes; I am just as comfortable in old ones, and have no trouble in keeping them from soiling. If I have less property than you, I have less to care about. If fewer friends, I have less friendship to lose; and if I do not make as great a figure in the world, I make as great a shadow on the pavement, I am as great as you. Beside, my word for it, I have fewer enemies; meet with fewer losses; carry as light a heart, and sing as merry a song as the best of you.' But then,' said the Banker, who had all along been trying to get in a word, is the contempt of the world nothing?"

The envy of the world is as bad as its contempt; you have, perhaps, the one, and I a share of the other. We are matched there too. And beside, the world deals in this matter equally unjustly with us both. You and I live by our wits, instead of living by our industry; and the only difference between us in this particular, worth naming, is, that it costs society more to maintain you than it does me. I am content with a little, you want a great deal. Neither of us raise grain or potatoes, or weave cloth, or manufacture any thing useful; we therefore add nothing to the common stock; we are only consumers; and if the world judged with strict impartiality, therefore, it seems to me I should be pronounced the cleverest fellow.''

Our readers, we are sure, will be glad to learn, that OLIVER OAKWOOD is yet extant, and that the pleasant old gentleman has yielded to the solicitations of the KNICKERBOCKER, and the inclinations of his very intimate friend, STACY G. POTTS, Esq., a gentleman belonging to his native town, who has great influence with him, and consented to let the public hear from him, through these pages, 'now and ag'in;' and as an evidence that our 'old friend in a new place' is still but in his prime, and as an earnest, moreover, of what may be expected at his hands, we must ask the reader's attention to the history, in a preceding sheet, of "The Man who had Nothing Else to Do.'

THE LAW AND THE PROFITS.

We have received at sundry times, and from divers places, several communications, the writers of which we should be glad to favor, and one of whom, especially, we should be sorry to disoblige - upon the general themes of law, lawyers, and courts of justice. One contends that law, one of the noblest sciences that can engage the human mind, is employed by a majority of its professors in this country, not for the laudable object of protecting the poor man against the attacks of the opulent, or the wiles of the crafty, but for the mercenary and selfish purpose of pocketing costs; that these 'lawyer-crimes' are winked at by the public; and that thus an institution designed to guard the innocent, and secure punishment to the guilty, is often so perverted, as to reverse its object entirely. This, it is argued, is done by defeating the honest man's claim through some 'flaw'. which, like a hereditary disease, may have trailed from generation to generation, in some of the ridiculous legal forms that have been handed down from time immemorial—or through the criminal assiduity of lawyers, (callous to right and wrong, when the question is to gain or lose a cause,) who labor to render gilded vice triumphant. Our contributor seems to speak feelingly, as though he himself were a victim. He professes to be a firm believer in the theory of the living principle, in its progress through the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which SOUTHEY has recorded of an eccentric character. A lawyer, ready to avail himself of every advantage which his profession afforded, he traced from a bramble into a wasp, thence into a butcher-bird, and lastly into a fox, the vulpine character being manifestly retained in his countenance. There was another, who, from sweeping his master's office, and blacking his shoes, had risen to be a noted pettifogger, who was his particular abhorrence. His living principle, he affirmed, could never have existed in any other form than that of a nuisance. Another correspondent draws a portrait of a village lawyer, so evidently faithful, that before it finds a place in the KNICKERBOCKER, we must inquire, with the queen in Hamlet, 'Is there no offence?' - a thing to be thought of, while 'the greater the truth, the greater the libel' is the law of the land. We allude to the elaborate history, by 'T. H. W.,' of a Massachusetts state legislator, from the time his name was first gilded on a strip of tin, to his occupancy of a seat in the 'General Court;' a very spirited picture of a man who, instead of raising himself up to