ter Melons-Fourth

es-Mr. Flin

y excellent, the ladies of Cincinnati will probably some years hence be much improved in their powers of companionship. I attended the annual public exhibition at this school, and perceived, with some surprise, that the higher branches of science were among the studies of the pretty creatures I saw assembled

of Cincinnati for the acquirement of these various branches of education would seldom be sufficient to permit their reaching the eminence in each which their enlightened instructor anticipates. "A quarter's" mathematics, or "two quarters" political economy,

d for some days we feared for his life. The treatment he received was, I have no doubt, judicious, but the quantity of calomel prescribed was enormous. I asked one day how many grains I should prepare, and was told to give half a teaspoon

e e'er

e medical gen

Washington, a physician attended one of our neighbours, and complained that he was himself unwell. "You must take care of yourself, Doctor," said the patient; "I do so," he replied, "I took forty grains of calomel yesterday, and I feel

nkle of the watch-light from many windows he might be sure that disease was busy, and the the "location" might suit him well. Judging, by this criterion, Cincinnati was far from healthy, I began to fear for our health, and determined to leave the city; but, for a considerable time I found it impossible to procure a dwelling out of it. There were many boarding-houses in the vicinity, but they were

hem is extremely unpleasant; the huge fruit is cut into half a dozen sections, of about a foot long, and then, dripping as it is with water, applied to the mouth, from either side of which pour copious streams of the fluid, while, ever and anon, a mouthful of the hard black

cruple to leave their beds with the sun, six days in the week, and, prepared with a mighty basket, to sally forth in search of meat, butter,

n festivals. On the 4th of July, 1776, the declaration of the

y but refrain from spitting on that hallowed day, I should say, that on the 4th of July, at least, they appeared to be an amiable people. It is true that the women have but little to do with the pageantry, the splendour, or the gaiety of the day; but, setting this defect aside, it was indeed a glorious sight to behold a jubilee so heartfelt as this; and had they not the bad taste and bad feeling to utter an annual ora

idea of the language which the gods speak when they are angry. Thomson's description, however, will do: it is hardly possible that words can better paint the spectacl

nds them in nature; but the proportions must be just, and the colouring true. Every thing seems colossal on this great continent; if it rains, if it blows, if it thunders, it is all done fortissimo; but I often felt terror yield to wonder and delight

nati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs. The immense quantity of business done in this line would ha

ediately, 4,

000 barrels o

certain noble looking sugar-loaf hill, that promised pure air and a fine view, we found the brook we had to cross, at its foot, red with the stream from a pig slaughter house; while our noses, instead of meeting "the thyme that loves the green hill's breast," were greeted by odour

rick buildings are sometimes treated in the same manner. The largest dwelling that I saw in motion was one containing two stories of four rooms each; forty oxen were yoked to it. The first few yards brought down the two stacks of chimneys, but it afterwards went on well. The great difficulties were the first getting it in motion and the stopping exactly in the right place. This

satire, and even of sarcasm, whose kindness of nature and of manner remained perfectly uninjured. In some of his critical notices there is a strength and keenness second to nothing of the kind I have ever read. He is a warm patriot, and so true-hearted an American, that we could not always be of the same opinion on all the subjects we d

in the company, to whom he seemed to trust for the development of his celestial pretensions, and to me he did the honour of addressing most of his terrestrial superiority. The difference between us was, that when he spoke to her, he spoke as to a being who, if not his equal, was at least deserving high distinction; and he gave her smiles,

l length before, and I listened attentively. It was evident that the noble passages which are graven on the hearts of the genuine lovers of poetry had altogether escaped the serious gentle

isms very amusing. Of Pope, he said, "He is so entirely gone by,

e drawing-room; but, on the mention of this poem, the serious gentleman became almost as strongly agitated as when he talked of Don Juan; and I w

e smile spoke as plainly as a smile cou

m, and these, indeed, are found only in

akspear

ed to have found it out! If we must have the abomination of stage plays, l

inly being au

stood he was a very childish writer. Chaucer and Spenser he tied in a couple, and dismissed by saying, that he tho

erary conversation I

inna

ects, (which I enjoyed in Mr. Flint's family, was a

every American newspaper is more or less a magazine, wherein the merchant may scan while he holds out his hand for an invoice, "Stanzas by Mrs. Hemans," or a garbled extract from Moore's Life of Byron; the lawyer may study his brief faithfully, and yet contrive to pick up the valuable dictum of some American critic, that "Bulwer's novels are decidedly superior to Sir Walter Scott's;" nay, even the auctioneer may find time, as he bustles to his tub, or his tribune, to support his pretensions to polite learning, by glancing his quick eye over the columns, and reading that "Miss Mitford's descriptions are indescr

asted of in the United States; such as it is, the diffusion of it is general e

eir compositions have not that condensation of thought, or that elaborate finish, which the consciousness of writing for the scholar and the man of taste is calculated to give; nor have their dirty blue paper and slovenly types* the polished elegance that fits a volume for the hand or the eye of the fastidious epicure in literary enjoyment. The first book I bought in America was the "Chronicles of the Cannongate." In asking the price, I was agreeably surprised to hear a dollar and a half named, being about one sixth of what I

exception in favo

w. To the eye of

ctly the same thi

erly R