pernicious doctrines, with consummate ability; and has taken up the cudgels against a school 'which has threatened the corruption of all correct taste, and even the subversion of our old and pure English language.' It inculcates the principle contained in a remark of DRYDEN, that 'it needs all we know, to make things plain,' and the maxim of ROGER ASCHAM, that 'we ought to think like great minds, and speak like the common people.' The reviewer, in reference to Dr. CHANNING'S theory of avoiding to say a plain thing in a plain way, proceeds to remark:

Though we can with difficulty suppose all this nonsense serious, and more than half imagine it is given as the means of showing what the author thinks his power of fine writing, yet as he cer tainly acts upon the principles it contains, we are led to enter our early and decided protest against all and every portion of it. Any thing more pernicious, more hurtful to all good writing, and indeed more prejudicial to accurate thinking, cannot be imagined, than the propagation of such wild absurdities, under the authority of considerable names. For, absurd as such a theory is, it falls very casily in with the careless and loose habits in which shallow thinkers and loose reasoners are prone to indulge. Once persuade them that clearness and distinctuess is not an essential requisite of diction, and there is no end to the propagation of flimsy trash, under the cover of sounding phrases; nor any limit to the prolixity of the ready and wearisome pen. All men beside Dr. Chanuing have held, that perspicuity is the first quality of style; that whatever of ornament it may have beside, shall only be taken cumulatively, and not substitutionally (to adopt in courts critical the language of the courts of law;) as an addition, not a substitute; and whoever would give us fine words for clear ones, the life and soul of composition, does a thing quite as fatal to good writing, as the act of depriving a mau of air, (while you give him fine clothes and rich food,) would be fatal to his natural life. All other critics, in all ages, have deemed the sense the principal object, and the language only accessory, or rather subsidiary and ancillary to the meaning it is intended to convey. Accordingly, a great writer or a great orator will not suffer us to think of the words he uses, and by which he effects his purpose. No,' says the Quintillian of Boston, the language is every thing, the sense nothing; and instead of not detaining us from the ideas, it should always be obscure enough to prevent us from too easily and too quickly getting at them." All other men had thought, that the object of a journey was to reach the end of it: 'No,' says our new guide; 'your true travelling is that which stops you every half mile with the mire or an accident, to make you examine the con. struction of your carriage or your road.' All other men had supposed that words were used for the purpose of telling one person what another meant all but Dr. Channing-who conceives that the great object of authors is the same with that of riddle-makers, to display their own skill in hiding their meaning, and exercise the ingenuity of others in finding it out. His favorite is the enigmatic style; not the lucid, not the perspicuous: his cry is riddle my riddle;' he stops you after a period, with Ha! do you follow me? I'll warrant you cannot tell what that means! And certainly, in one particular, he differs from the old-fashioned riddle-monger, who always had a meaning, and only puzzled you to get at it; while the Doctor sometimes puzzles you when he has not much more meaning than the celebrated person of quality had in writing the well-known song recorded by Dean Swift.

'As to the senseless, despicable trash about 'literature becoming too popular,' and writers now being in danger of sacrificing solid fame (what he is pleased to call very affectedly, the deep, thrilling note of the trump of fame') to gratify the multitude and 'catch the present shout of popularity,' there never was any delirium more complete. Why, it is all the other way! Dr. Channing is the person who is running after empty shouts, and heedless multitudes; for he wraps up his meaning, which is often so successfully concealed that its existence is very questionable; he is trying to pass off tinsel for sterling metal; fine sounding phrases for distinct and valuable ideas; flimsy, vague, shadowy, half-formed, half-pursued ideas, for deep thoughts; as if every thing that looks magnified in the mist he raises round it by his volume of long words, were therefore larger than what we see clearly in broad daylight; and, having thus done, he gravely tells us that it is the attribute of a great genius to be above ordinary comprehensions, and conceal its meaning under such language, until, like the prophetic enigmas of the oracle, their meaning is discovered in some future age of the world.

When we find authors professing, and indeed laying down, such absurd and at the same time dangerous principles of taste, we cannot wonder at their practice betraying the corruption of their doctrine. It is as little to be expected that their writings should be of the purity required by a just standard, as that men who hold and proclaim a profligate code of morality should lead virtuous lives. The natural temptations of passion are not more powerful allies of such a vicious system of ethics, in seducing men to transgression, than the natural indolence and carelessness which render labor irksome, and the natural self-complacency which makes severe revision and the sæpe sylum vertas' distasteful; or the natural impatience to appear before the world which shuts the ear to all advice about a nine years' suppression,' are incentives to sin against the rules of good taste, and fall into that rapid and slovenly style, which proverbially makes easy writing hard read, iug.

To this rule of conduct, we have already seen that Dr. Channing's style affords no exception. In every page we trace its evil influence, in most careless thinking and most faulty diction; a constant mistaking of strange things for strong ones; a perpetual striving after some half-broughtout notion, of which the mind had never formed to itself any distinct picture; a substitution of the glare of words for harmonious ideas; and, we are sorry to add, not rarely that worst vice of bad writers, the assuming to use words and phrases in a sense peculiar to themselves, partly in order to strike by novelty, and partly in order to save the pains of more legitimate and more correct composition.'

After a searching analysis of our author's style, and some comments upon the existing passion for 'unpacking the brain with words,' the reviewer proceeds:

'Sir Walter Scott, whose great art lay in exact descriptions of nature and character, was continually in pursuit of some piece of natural scenery, or some existing character, or some real display

of passion or feeling; and he would only draw on his own fancy for filling up the interstices, or supplying vacancies in the models which nature furnished. So, when the painter has covered his canvass, he spreads over it a clear, pellucid, almost colorless varnish, to soften and harmonize its tints, never to distort or obscure them. But our most clumsy and most inventive artists, despising nature and her works, will have square blue trees, amidst round green rocks, and scarlet lawns watered by yellow streamlets, as far more striking and surprising; and, having so filled in their picture, they must cover it over with a varnish which, by way of giving it expression, is so troubled as to let but little of the outline be seen through it. And so they conceive that, as Dr. Channing hath it, they are following the laws of immortal intellect;' blending into new forms, and according to new affinities;' fulfilling their higher functions of lifting the prepared mind from earth to heaven;' 'placing generous confidence in other ages; uttering oracles which futurity will expound.'

If any one thing can be more preposterous than another, in all this, it is the notion taken up by Dr. Chauning, that plainness and simplicity are inconsistent with force. He says in the passage, the incredible passage above cited, that though simplicity and perspicuity are important qualities of style, there are vastly uobler and more important ones, such as energy and richness;' as if a man were to say, 'Air is good for health, but perfume is far better.' This is exactly the blunder our author has here fallen into. The perfume is useless to inen who are stifled for want of air; and the access of the air, far from excluding the perfume, is required to waft it. Who ever heard before, of clearness and simplicity being incompatible, of all things, with energy? Why, common parlance almost weds the two together. Thus, we say, 'simple energy; simple and energetic;' and did our critic ever hear of one Dante? or. peradventure, of one Homer? Who ever thought that he was solving a riddle, as far as the diction was concerned, when he read the energetic passages of those great masters of the sublime? Not only do the combinations of the words all present the correct solution of the meaning, but the plainest words are always employed in all the passages of greatest energy. To give instances would be endless. We are stating things of proverbial truth, and of every-day observation.'

We commend this article of the Edinburgh to the young writers of our country, and to all such as aspire to be 'baptized into the inner soul of nature,' or in other words, who hanker after German mysticism, as, by contrast, a clear and valuable model for exercitation.

SAINT BRANDAN, OR THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.' - The reader must not infer that the story of the Enchanted Island,' from the pen of Mr. IRVING, in preceding pages, is altogether a sketch of the imagination; or that the 'Seven Cities' are a triumph of aërial architecture. The Island of Saint Brandan is laid down on the globe of BEHEM, projected in 1492, and may be found in most of the maps of the time of COLUMBUS, about two hundred leagues west of the Canaries. In a French map, published in 1704, it is even laid down as one of the Canaries themselves. The belief in the island has continued long since the time of Columbus. It was repeatedly seen, and by various persons at a time, and always in the same place, and of the same form. An unsuccessful expedition, which set off from the Canaries in 1526, to explore it, had no effect in dispelling the illusion. Its appearances were so repeated and clear, that in 1570, another was sent forth. On its return, more than one hundred witnesses, several of them persons of the highest respectability, deposed that they had beheld the unknown island, had contemplated it with calmness and certainty, and had seen the sun set behind one of its points; and there were certain Portuguese, of the island of Palma and Teneriffe, who affirmed that, being driven about by a tempest, they had come suddenly upon the island of Saint Brandan, had anchored in a romantic bay, and landed. A hurricane unexpectedly arose, and they fled to their vessel; and when the storm had subsided, not a trace of the island was to be seen! In 1570, another expedition, on the same quest, was fitted out from the island of Palma, and still another, thirty-four years afterward. Although both were fruitless, a third was despatched in 1721, upward of a century afterward, induced by fresh reports that the island had been again seen. Lemons and other fruits, with the green branches of trees, which floated to the land, from some unknown shore, were considered certain evidences of the existence of such an island. We have no account of any expedition being since undertaken, although the island still continued to be a subject of speculation, and occasionally to reveal its shadowy mountains to the eyes of favored individuals. Some confounded it with the fabled island of the Seven Cities, where seven Spanish bishops, with their flocks, took refuge, on the conquest of Spain by the Moors. The learned Father FEYJOO ('Theatro Critico,' T. IV., D. X.,) attributed all these numerous

and well-authenticated appearances, to certain atmospherical deceptions; yet the populace, even at this day, reluctant to give up any thing that partakes of the marvellous and mysterious, often behold the fairy mountains of the 'Enchanted Island' rising above the distant horizon of the Atlantic. There can be no doubt, that the popular legend of the 'Island of the Seven Cities,' so current during the time of Columbus, may be as implicitly relied upon, as the incontrovertible tradition respecting the island of Saint Brandan. For a more elaborate description of these remarkable regions, the curious are referred to the appendix of the large edition of the 'History of Columbus,' a portion of a book into which the general reader rarely gropes. Mr. IRVING has there gathered together, from divers old Spanish and Portuguese authorities, many extremely curious and amusing facts, relative to this subject.

COMPARATIVE EASE AND GRACE OF THE SEXES. We find, on a dingy leaf of our 'note-book,' of a date some ten years back, a few comments, original and selected, upon the comparative ease and grace of the two sexes. We hold now, as then, that in the quiet self-possession of good breeding and good sense, the fair will always be found to bear away the palm. A married pair, for example, enters a country church. You shall see the husband's head perched stiffly upon his high shirt-collar, conspicuously relieving the burning redness of his huge projecting ears. His spirit is cowed down by the fidgets; while his pretty wife, enters gently, sits quietly down hy his side in the pew, opens her pictured paper-fan, (representing, perhaps, a little boy with blue spencer, red trowsers, and yellow locks, holding a stately mother's hand in one of his, and with the other flying his little kite,) and, nibbling carelessly the while at a sprig of 'fennel' or 'caraway,' that peeps from the folded white 'kerchief which she holds in her hand, she looks calmly around upon her acquaintances and friends. In the drawing-rooms of our cities, the contrast is quite as striking. There is here more of imitatire manner, it is true, on the part of the 'lords of creation;' but as there is no setting another's manners upon one's shoulders, any more than his head, the general result is always in favor of our argument. Look at a young female in the dance or the waltz. How like a sylph she moves! How like a fairy she floats or glides! Glance at the opposite sex: Mercy upon us! Is that what you call dancing? A man of thirty years of age, and with legs as thick as a gatepost, stands up in the middle of the room, and gapes, and fumbles with his gloves, looking all the time as if he were burying his grandmother. At a given signal, the unwieldly animal puts himself in motion; he throws out his arms, crouches up his shoulders, and without moving a muscle of his face, kicks out his legs, to the manifest risk of bystanders or sitters, and goes puffing and blowing back to his place.' Capitally described; and equally felicitously drawn is the picture of the same biped at the dinner-table, putting himself in a perspiration, in trying to be at his ease: 'A glass of wine — can any thing be more easy? One would think not; but if you take notice, the next tinie you empty a gallon with a friend, you will see, sixteen to one, that he makes the most convulsive efforts to do with grace what a person would naturally suppose was the easiest thing in the world. Do you see, in the first place, how hard he grasps the decanter, leaving the misty mark of five hot fingers on the glittering crystal, which ought to be pure as Cornelia's fame? Then remark at what an acute angle he holds his right elbow, as if he were meditating an assault on his neighbor's ribs; then see how he claps the bottle down again, as if his object were to shake the pure ichor, and make it muddy as his own brains. Mark how the animal seizes his glass! By Heavens! he will break it into a thousand pieces! See how he bows his lubberly head to meet half way the glorious cargo; how he chucks down the glass, so as almost to break its stem, a ter he has emptied it of its contents, as if they had been jalap or castor oil. Call you that taking a glass of wine?'

DRAMATIC ACCESSORIES. We take the annexed picture of a Parisian 'claqueur,' from an admirable paper in the last number of the 'Dublin University Magazine.' The principal theatres of the French metropolis, Mr. SANDERSON informs us, in his entertaining volume, 'The American in Paris,' have attached to them a regular troupe of hired applauders, who form an integral part of the corps dramatique. These 'delighted auditors,' when they are thoroughly conversant with their business, can show a great deal more enthusiasm than if they were really pleased, as those who cry at funerals can cry better than persons who are really grieved. They are bribed for their 'most sweet voices,' by every prominent actor, (even TALMA was not an exception,) and whenever a new play is produced; otherwise, their influence becomes 'a scorn and an hissing.' Our accomplished American, we remember, gives the instructions of M'lle MARS, on one occasion, to this clapper-clawing fraternity. She has been absent three months, and requires extra applause. Hence, when she makes her grand entrée, she is to be saluted with a burst of acclamation, which gradually grows louder and louder; she bows, the applause increases, and there must be a great conflict between joy and gratitude, until she has exhausted a clap worth about ten francs. There is another class, however, not mentioned below; the female claqueurs, who do the heavy business, when a deep tragedy is performed. "They are taught, one to sob, another to feign to wipe away a tear, and a third to scream, when a pistol goes off; and they are distributed in different parts of the house. If you see any lady fainting, on these occasions, you are not to pick her up. She is getting her living by it.' But we are forgetting the extract:

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MINUTE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. A facetious correspondent - who has in his eye, we perceive, the ridiculous matters that are sometimes spread before the American public as important items of intelligence- has sent us the following 'Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman just arrived in Liverpool:' 'Here I am in Liverpool. We had a horrid time. The sea yawned as though it had a fit of the ague coming on. Never clamored a nest of young swallows more impatiently for 'grub,' than did the waves for our sixty souls. I proposed to the captain, when we were about half-way across, to let down the anchor, and stop till the storm was over. He laughed as though he would have split. Thus it is, that these captains disregard all reasonable propositions for the safety of the passengers! So we went a-head, and during the storm, 'cut a great swell,' I assure you. Liverpool is a city, and not a country village, as you doubtless supposed. I do not know the number of inhabitants, but I intend to count them before I leave. I should suppose there were more than two hundred thousand people. They live in houses, just as we do at New-York. I have seen females here, likewise, and they eat as heartily as the men. I have been several times into cook shops, and called, as at home, for 'broiled frogs.' Bless me! how they stared. I'm told there are no frogs in all England! Truly, nature is partial to America. Moreover, there are many dishes, luxuries with us, which are not even known, among the English. A servant-maid, at one of the hotels, fell down in a fit, on my asking for 'toad-pie.' Indeed, I have been assured, by a gentleman of great veracity, that rats are not considered as 'delicacies,' and are never eaten, except by the common people; and not even by them, unless cooked. It's all a hoax, that the horses here are tackled behind the vehicle. The contrary is true. The seats for those who ride, (as at home,) are made on the upper, and not on the under side of the carriage; so that people ride with their heads uppermost, just as we do in America. I suppose you are still clinging to the idea, that the English ride on horseback, with their backs turned to the horse's head. You are utterly wrong. I have not seen a single instance to sustain you in your opinion, although I have been watching for some days past.'

LATEST FROM CHINA. - We are indebted to our attentive oriental correspondent for copies of several Chinese journals, which we have not found leisure to read. Being printed in the Chinese characters, and beginning at the end, we feared it would take quite too long a time to peruse them. They are, the 'Canton Red Paper,' a sort of 'vermilion hint,' as we infer, to the Celestials, published on occasion; the 'Canton Court Circular,' about the size of one's hand, published nearly every day; the 'Peking Gazette,' issued tri-weekly, or thereabout; and a number of the 'Chinese Magazine,' published for a time by the missionaries, but finally discontinued for want of patronage; the sons of Han not desiring to be edified, and the authorities ordering the editors, and all other outside barbarians,' who inculcated the 'creed of their chief, named J. CHRIST,' to tarry no longer in the celestial borders, 'waiting, with lingering hopes,' for proselytes, but to go on board the ships, lying in the outer harbor, immediately put up their sails, and at once go away over the top of the ocean. 'Decidedly these were the orders.'

THE FINE ARTS IN AMERICA. In asking attention to the article upon the Fine Arts in the United States, which will be found in preceding pages, we would take occasion to add, lest it should be thought too self-complacent, nationally considered, that it proceeds from the pen of a young ENGLISH artist, a son of Mrs. HOFLAND, an authoress of repute in England, who claims to speak, as well in so far as a knowledge of the state of art in this country is concerned, as on the other side of the water, from personal examination, or experience. The charge of ultra amor patriæ, or undue vain boasting, can scarcely hold valid against the writer.