it not for the kind folk just named, I should find what I want in my native city. These annoyances remind me of a grievance which an old black man used to suffer, and tell me of when I was a boy. He was poor, as other colored people sometimes are, and a decayed gentleman about town, who could not well pay his small scores, used to give Scipio, (we called him Sip) his old clothes. Mr. L. was very tall, Scipio short, and it was a caution to see him with his coat-tail dragging the streets. But S. cared not for this. There was something, however, he did care for. Almost as soon as S. came forth with the new old coat, persons were constantly stopping him,- Unknown Acquaintances, were they indeed to him; with an earnest request, that Mr. L. would pay them that small trifle. Now the poor negro hated debt as I do, and, to beg was not ashamed. To be thus annoyed year after year by these demands, supposed by him in earnest made, determined him to refuse Mr. L.'s old clothes, and to conclude to go ragged in dress rather than to be so dreadfully out at elbow in repute. Now I do not suffer precisely in the same way, but quite as severely, considering my sensitiveness, and our comparative positions. I will give you a few examples, for facts are sometimes much better than arguments, or theories. I am in the streets on my customary beats.

"Good morning, Mr. Oldcastle."
"Good morning," (sotto voce.)
"Is Mr. Oldcastle well to-day?"
Yes." (ditto.)

"Is the Squire looking for any thing? (No answer.)

The other day, a very warm day at noon, I was trudging through street, which

is always crowded at such times, when my progress was suddenly impeded by the side, or rather the edge of a female just before me. I looked up, and saw a "woman in the way,' sometimes a lion to me. She was looking at a shop window very earnestly, but as I approached she looked round, and a queer looking body was she. She was for a woman, very tall, and as thin and as flat before and behind, as two perpendicular and parallel clapboards separated a little from each other. She wore a black silk bonnet as large as, and the shape of a two-dollar coal scuttle, and which, in her earnest speculations on signboards, and shop-window attractions, had got thrown somewhat backwards. She wore also large spectacles with very broad black bows. Her face was quite thin, and being about sixty-six, say seventy, in appearance, and having probably forgotten the dentist, or the brush, (the former is the best forgotten, if you would keep your own teeth,) what was principally designed to separate the jaws had dropped out, and her nose and chin were in most striking juxtaposition. Now what a

"Now you don't!" she began bawling. "I believe in my soul it must be! Why it must be! How do you do, Mr. Oldcastle? Its forty year since I see you, and you look just as you did. Bless me, the same silver buckles and all! I raly believe you've forgotten me. I am Miss Holdeen, that lived on the corner of Frog lane. You knew my husband, Jonathan Holdeen. We went to the West, and there he died of the shakes and fever, and his Doctor said his liver was as big as himself, but I never see it. How is the girls?"

This question attracted me. Miss Holden, as she styled herself, had known the three spinsters with whom I board, when she and they were girls. After an early marriage, she had gone to Kentucky, (I should have said, she knew me when a boy,) and though so far away, she contrived to keep the run of things at home. She did so by means of an old crony, who about twice a year filled a sheet about home, quite as large as that which my Uncle Toby ordered the Corporal to get to contain the catalogue of the widow Wadman's virtues. She had known those three only as girls, and now that forty and more years had gone by since she last saw them, they came back to her memory, and so did I, as children still. She took me for a boy, and saw in me the appearance, the apparition only of my blooming, happy youth. The boys then dressed very much like men, and this helped the deception. She had no present, no future, when the long past came so freshly back; and though I was never before so wholly, utterly, annoyed by an Unknown, she screamed so loud, attracted the attention of every body, and by her sharp figure more stopped the way, than half a dozen of the rounder and larger but infinitely more yielding forms of her sex's youth and beauty on the sidewalk,—I confess with all this double distilled annoyance, my kinder nature began to move, and I became, under the kindly influences brought into action by this hard-looking woman, as gentle as a dove. What is it, what is it, that in this same truth has such power over us? Why is "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" of our early days, so powerful with us on every page, and in every movement of the coming, the remoter years? Is it that then there is more truth, more love, more

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goodness in us, -more of that which is from above," of Heaven heavenly," - and which by the stir and hard conflicts of life is made to be of the "earth earthy?" Why it is I cannot tell; but whenever, and as by this same Prudence Holden, I am for the moment carried far back into the past, or rather that remote time is brought back to me, I feel as if, a boy again, I was finding infinite felicity in the smallest occasions, -a satisfaction with the present so entire, that I craved no future. It was then always present. I asked then for no more, would it not have been happy for me then to have died?

The street dialogue, which had been sustained wholly by one, and which may remind you of the monologue, so called by Mad. de Staël, which she once had with Mr. Coleridge, the same Mr. C. having talked the whole time,

this street talk was now brought to an abrupt close, by my desiring Mrs. Holden, (I could not trifle with her own appellative of herself,) to call and spend the next day, which would be Sunday, with us, to go to church with the Misses Fox, with whom I board, and about whom I doubted not she felt most kindly.

How easily might I not add instances to the above? I am in the habit of walking on the common before breakfast. The hour I pass there, I appropriate especially to myself, and how I use it, is the business of no man. Washington, I have heard said, had an hour of the early morning of every day, which nothing was allowed to disturb, except the public business imperatively called for its disturbance. In my morning hour, and in that quiet place in the early day, I am alone. The birds whistle and sing, and the insects fill the air with their universal voice, the trees utter their various language, and the still clouds speak from their deep bosoms. I sometimes see there clouds of a resplendent whiteness which the yet unrisen sun pours upon them in their vast altitudes, arching towards each other, like angels' wings, brooding over the infant day. All these never disturb me. What treasures of beauty are around us, and would, nay, press to be, of and within us, -our souls' inalienable wealth, did we but give them an open entrance," did we not contrariwise, shut ourselves up, keeping the poor, the often sinful, and the never-satisfying, and laboriously excluding what could only make us blest!

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It was the finest morning in June, which found me in my daily haunt. I was deeply buried in my early thoughts. Suddenly, somebody stepped briskly towards me, and with a "good morning, good morning, Mr. Oldcastle! I am glad to see you, very glad! and suiting the action to the word, seized my somewhat reluctant hand. "Up early, sir, -up very early, -is it common, common,

sir?" I was greatly troubled, my whole mind seemed filled with bruised, broken thoughts, whether I was in the body or no, I could not tell. The word common, brought me to my entire senses. "Yes," I replied, "it is the common. Are you a stranger in these parts ?" (affecting a little innocent ignorance) "for we who are native here,' very soon know what it is. In our boyhood we slide and skate on Frog Pond there, in winter; and sail our boats in the summer. In manhood, we seek the shady malls for idle saunter, and pleasant chat, and in our old age, lie down in peace in that graveyard, yonder."

My disturbing companion looked, in his turn, greatly disturbed. He knew me, it seems, perfectly well. I knew him not. He was an unknown acquaintance. I knew his form, and face, to be sure; but never before had exchanged a word with him. Society is of all things the most unsocial. We pass daily by hundreds, and thousands, it may be, and for a long life, too, and in the same place, and grow as familiar with their looks as with the paving stones; but know nothing more of them intellectually, or morally, than we do mineralogically of the stones beneath our feet. I had often seen this person, and as he approached me somewhat rapidly, the thought passed me that he might have news to tell. It soon came out that I was right.

"Mr. Oldcastle, I am sorry to hear that Miss Pollifox is dead."

Bonaparte was alive at the time, and of course was fighting, and I had often seen in the paper the name of a General, which sounded so nearly like that just given, that I supposed it was Palafox, whom also I had just heard was dead. I answered carelessly,

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very well, if people will be such fools as voluntarily to put themselves in the way to be shot, I do not see any good cause for sorrow on our part.' My companion looked utterly non-plussed; but soon finding his voice, showed he had more to say.

"Mr. Oldcastle, I said I was sorry that Miss Polly Fox, one of the ladies with whom you board,". (dwelling with some emphasis on this same word board, as if it was not quite the same thing as to keep house,) was dead."

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your neighbors, a military friend of the Colonel's."

"Do you know anything of the doctor you just named?" asked I.

"Nothing special. He wrote a book, which was so well thought of that it was first translated into French, then into English, in which last dress I have read it. It is rather German, but Bell says in his last gazette, that it is very well received in England, and I hear we are to have a notice of it in the Anthology. I have heard who reviews it, but am not authorized to name him. And, and,”

I saw there would be no end to this, and knew that it was near my breakfast time. The Old South struck six, and I drew forth my old gold repeater, as big as a small warming-pan, as if to compare my time with that "regulator of the sun," as some call the old clock. He took the hint, said "good morning," and was off, no doubt regarding me as the most unfeeling man in the world, seeing that I could hear of the sudden death of one of my own household, and who had been so, so long, and so kindly too, without a thank for his sympathy, or a sigh for the loss. The truth is, I had by a strange chance anticipated him in getting the news; I knew,

and he did not, that the General was dead, and that Miss Polly was alive, and live long to be.

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But I will no longer trespass on your patience. Let me add, that I sometimes walk the streets with head and form erect, standing good five feet eight; and at such times take a small boy with me, a neighbor's son, who shall have the old stone house, if he turn out as well as he promises. It may be I walk erect because of the beauty, and childly innocence of my companion. These little ones," said to me one day an older man than I am, who was also leading a child by the hand, bring love with them; otherwise God only knows what would become of them in this hard world." Yes, old man, they do bring love, and if I ever know of a man, or woman, who does not love them, and their smiles, I will keep him farther from me than Lavater proposes in his well-known aphorism. My boy, as I call him, as we walk, is constantly exclaiming, "Mr. Oldcastle, everybody we meet, knows you. Everybody bows or speaks to you. How could you find out so many folks?" With a sigh, almost a groan, I answer, Ah, dear William, these all are UNKNOWN ACQUAINTANCES."

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THE UNITED IRISHMEN, THEIR LIVES AND TIMES. By Dr. R. R. Madden. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard.

We have been disappointed in this book. Dr. Madden has a reputation as an author, which had led us to suppose that his book would be a welldigested history of the very interesting movement of which he wrote. The virulence of party has heretofore rendered the history of the Irish rebellion more obscure even than recent history usually is. Its events too, were of such a character, that it was always difficult to take any connected view of them. There was no reason to suppose, however, that it was impossible to do so, and there seemed reason to hope, that at this distance from the time of their occurrence, a gentleman of Dr. Madden's acknowledged literary skill might have given us an interesting and instructive view of the whole course of those transactions.

He seems to have been successful in collecting his materials; but there his labors ceased, and we find these materials heaped together without any distinct arrangement, as if edited by some one who knew nothing of the subject and took no interest in it. There is the material, of which the reader may make for himself the history of the United Irishmen, the history itself is not there. It is pleasanter to read Dr. Madden's book than to search for the same facts in Annual Registers and files of old newspapers, because it is easier, not because we find them presented with any skill or force of illustration.

He has had, however, apparently, access to some sources of information not open to the public. The era and the movements of which he writes were in the highest degree interesting, and we do not mean to say that his book is not entertaining; although it is not what the reader has a right to expect in a book which professes to be a history. A book on such a subject could not be dull; whatever the negligence of the author. The Irish patriots of the close of the last century, have not, perhaps, been fairly estimated, the movements in which they were engaged have not been understood; at the present time they have an interest, from their bearing on contemporary affairs. Much of the feeling which gives rise to the movements of different parties in Ireland at the present time, had its origin in the unsuccessful Irish rebellion.

We understand that the edition which we have named at the head of these remarks, is published under Dr. Madden's direction, and that he receives a share of the proceeds arising from its sale.

POEMS, BY ALFRED TENNYSON, 2 vols. Boston: W. D. Ticknor, 1842.

THESE Volumes, published without preface or introductory note, form a new collection of Tennyson's works reprinted from a recent London edition, including nearly all the pieces formerly published at different times in two volumes, and a considerable number printed in that edition for the first time. The admirers of Tennyson will regret a few of the omissions which he has made, in forming this collection, but the places of their old favorites are well supplied by some of the new poems.

We are aware, that, in some quarters, the title of "poet" is not allowed at all to our author, and we can easily see in some, especially of his earlier productions, the causes which have led to this prejudice against him. We have no room for extracts, to bring against this wholesale condemnation, which, we are confident, is supported only by an ignorance of Tennyson's finer poems, on the part of his critics; we are sure that no one who reads these volumes with candor, will be willing to allow any other cause to exist for the sneers with which our author's poems have sometimes been alluded to. In many of the poems, especially those which are built upon a narration, there is too much prolixity, and the reader is apt to feel sometimes the affectation of an over-simplicity of language, but there are very few in which these faults are not entirely overshadowed by the beauties which lie between them. "Enone," "The Miller's Daughter," "Margaret," 'Mariana," among the older poems, find rivals in "Ulysses," "The Talking Oak," and the little ballad of "Lady Clare," among the new; and, as we recall these names, many others come to our mind, for leaving which unmentioned, we fear that the reader, who is already familiar with the volumes, will not pardon us.

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We cannot refrain from noticing the very handsome mechanical execution of the reprint before us. It is the most beautiful of the elegant series of volumes which its enterprising publisher has of late brought forward, and may fairly compete with its English original.

A MANUAL OF GOLD AND SILVER COINS OF ALL NATIONS, STRUCK WITHIN THE PAST CENTURY. By J. R. ECKFELDT, and W. E. DUBOIS, ASsayers of the Mint of the United States. Philadelphia: Published at the Assay Office. 1842. 4to. pp. 240.

A NEW book of coins, as we learn from the introduction to this very interesting and valuable