No water-nymphs these eyes can see, I've traced thee from thy place of birth To quench devouring Ocean's thirst I've followed, with a lover's truth, The gambols of thy torrent youth; Have chased, with childish search, and vain, Thy doublings on the marshy plain; Have idled many a summer's day Where flower-fields cheered thy prosperous way; When rocky troubles barred thy tide, Till thou wert wrought to foaming wrath. The arrested soul turns shuddering back; JOSEPH C. NEAL, AN original humorist, was a native of New Hampshire, where he was born at Greenland, February 3d, 1807. His father had been a principal of a school in Philadelphia, and had retired in ill-health to the country, where he discharged the duties of a Congregational clergyHe died while his son was in infancy, and the family returned to Philadelphia. Mr. Neal was early attracted to editorial life, and was, for a number of years, from 1831, engaged in conducting the Pennsylvanian newspaper. The labor proved too severe for a delicate constitution, and he was compelled to travel abroad to regain man. Joseph C: The forte of Mr. Neal was a certain genial humor, devoted to the exhibition of a peculiar class of citizens falling under the social history description of the genus "loafer." Every metropolis breeds a race of such people, the laggards in the rear of civilization, who lack energy or ability to make an honorable position in the world, and who fall quietly into decay, complaining of their hard fate in the world, and eking out their deficient courage by a resort to the bar-room. The whole race of small spendthrifts, inferior, pretenders to fashion, bores, half-developed inebriates, and generally gentlemen enjoying the minor miseries and social difficulties of life, met with a rare delineator in Mr. Neal, who interpreted their ailments, repeated their slang, and showed them an image which they might enjoy, without too great a wound to their self-love. A quaint vein of speculation wrapped up this humorous dialogue. The sketches made a great hit a few years since, when they appeared, and for their preservation of curious specimens of character, as well as for their other merits, will be looked after by posterity. There were several series of these papers, contributed by Mr. Neal to the Pennsylvanian, the author's Weekly Gazette, the Democratic Review, and other journals, which were collected in several volumes, illustrated by David C. Johnston, entitled Charcoal Sketches; or Scenes in a Metropolis. The alliterative and extravagant titles of the sketches take off something from the reality, which is a relief to the picture; since it would be painful to be called to laugh at real misery, while we may be amused with comic exaggeration. UNDEVELOPED GENIUS-A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF P. PILGARLICK PIG WIGGEN, ESQ. The world has heard much of unwritten music, and more of unpaid debts; a brace of unsubstantial ities, in which very little faith is reposed. The mi- | nor poets have twangled their lyres about the one, until the sound has grown wearisome, and until, for the sake of peace and quietness, we heartily wish that unwritten music were fairly written down, and published in Willig's or Blake's best style, even at the risk of hearing it reverberate from every piano in the city while iron-visaged creditors-all creditors are of course hard, both in face and in heart, or they would not ask for their money-have chattered of unpaid debts, ever since the flood, with a wet finger, was uncivil enough to wipe out pre-existing scores, and extend to each skulking debtor the "benefit of the act." But undeveloped genius, which is, in fact, itself unwritten music, and is very closely allied to unpaid debts, has, as yet, neither poet, trumpeter, nor biographer. Gray, indeed, hinted at it in speaking of "village Hampdens," "mute inglorious Miltons," and "Cromwells guiltless," which showed him to be a man of some discernment, and possessed of inklings of the truth. But the general science of mental geology, and through that, the equally important details of mineralogy and mental metallurgy, to ascertain the unseen substratum of intellect, and to determine its innate wealth, are as yet unborn; or, if phrenology be admitted as a branch of these sciences, are still in uncertain infancy. Undeveloped genius, therefore, is still undeveloped, and is likely to remain so, unless this treatise should awaken some capable and intrepid spirit to prosecute an investigation at once so momentous and so interesting. If not, much of it will pass through the world undiscovered and unsuspected; while the small remainder can manifest itself in no other way than by the aid of a convulsion, turning its possessor inside out like a glove; a method, which the earth itself was ultimately compelled to adopt, that stupid man might be made to see what treasures are to be had for the digging. There are many reasons why genius so often remains invisible. The owner is frequently unconscious of the jewel in his possession, and is indebted to chance for the discovery. Of this, Patrick Henry was a striking instance. After he had failed as a shopkeeper, and was compelled to "hoe corn and dig potatoes," alone on his little farm, to obtain a meagre subsistence for his family, he little dreamed that he had that within, which would enable him to shake the throne of a distant tyrant, and nerve the arm of struggling patriots. Sometimes, however, the possessor is conscious of his gift, but it is to him as the celebrated anchor was to the Dutchman; he can neither use nor exhibit it. The illustrious Thomas Erskine, in his first attempt at the bar, made so signal a failure as to elicit the pity of the goodnatured, and the scorn and contempt of the less feeling part of the auditory. Nothing daunted, however, for he felt undeveloped genius strong within him, he left the court; muttering with more profanity than was proper, but with much truth, "By - it is in me, and it shall come out!" He was right; it was in him; he did get it out, and rose to be Lord Chancellor of England. But there are men less fortunate; as gifted as Erskine, though perhaps in a different way, they swear frequently, as he did, but they cannot get their genius out. They feel it, like a rat in a cage, beating against their barring ribs, in a vain struggle to escape; and thus, with the materials for building a reputation, and standing high among the sons of song and eloquence, they pass their lives in obscurity, regarded by the few who are aware of their existence, as simpletons-fellows sent upon the stage solely to fill up the grouping, to applaud their superiors, to eat, sleep, and die. P. PILGARLICK PIGWIGGEN, ESQ., as he loves to be styled, is one of these unfortunate undeveloped gentlemen about town. The arrangement of his name shows him to be no common man. Peter P. Pigwiggen would be nothing, except a hailing title to call him to dinner, or to insure the safe arrival of dunning letters and tailors' bills. There is as little character about it as about the word towser, the individuality of which has been lost by indiscriminate application. To all intents and purposes, he might just as well be addressed as "You Pete Pigwiggen," after the tender maternal fashion, in which, in his youthful days, he was required to quit dabbling in the gutter, to come home and be spanked. But P. PILGARLICK PIGWIGGEN, ESQ. -the aristocracy of birth and genius is all about it. The very letters seem tasselled and fringed with the cobwebs of antiquity. The flesh creeps with awe at the sound, and the atmosphere undergoes a sensible change, as at the rarefying approach of a supernatural being. It penetrates the hearer at each perspiratory pore. The dropping of the antepeniltimate in a man's name, and the substitution of a 1 initial therefor, has an influence which cannot be defined -an influence peculiarly strong in the case of P. Pilgarlick Pigwiggen-the influence of undeveloped genius analogous to that which bent the hazel rod, in the hand of Dousterswivel, in the ruins of St. Ruth, and told of undeveloped water. But to avoid digression, or rather to return from a ramble in the fields of nomenclature, P. Pilgarlick Pigwiggen is an undeveloped genius-a wasted man; his talents are like money in a strong box, returning no interest. He is, in truth, a species of Byron in the egg; but unable to chip the shell, his genius remains unhatched. The chicken moves and faintly chirps within, but no one sees it, no one heeds it. Peter feels the high aspirations and the mysterious imaginings of poesy circling about the interior of his cranium; but there they stay. When he attempts to give them utterance, he finds that nature forgot to bore out the passage which carries thought to the tongue and to the finger ends; and as art has not yet found out the method of tunnelling or of driving a drift into the brain, to remedy such defects, and act as a general jail delivery to the prisoners of the mind, his divine conceptions continue pent in their osseous cell. In vain does Pigwiggen sigh for a splitting headache--one that shall ope the sutures, and set his fancies free, In vain does he shave his forehead and turn down his shirt collar, in hope of finding the poetic vomitory, and of leaving it clear of impediment; in vain does he drink vast quantities of gin to raise the steam so high that it may burst imagination's boiler, and suffer a few drops of it to escape; in vain does he sit up late o' nights, using all the cigars he can lay his hands on, to smoke out the secret. "Tis useless all. No sooner has he spread the paper, and seized the pen to give bodily shape to airy dreams, than a dull dead blank succeeds. As if a flourish of the quill were the crowing of a "rooster," the dainty Ariels of his imagination vanish. The feather drops from his checked fingers, the paper remains unstained, and P. Pilgarlick Pigwiggen is still an undeveloped genius. Originally a grocer's boy, Peter early felt that he had a soul above soap and candles, and he so diligently nursed it with his master's sugar, figs, and brandy, that early one morning he was unceremoniously dismissed with something more substantial than a flea in his ear. His subsequent life was passed in various callings; but call as loudly as they would, our hero paid little attention to their voice. He had an eagle's longings, and with an inclination to stare the sun out of countenance, it was not to be expected that he would stoop to be a barn-yard fowl. Working when he could not help it; at times pursuing check speculations at the theatre doors, by way of turning an honest penny, and now and then gaining entrance by crooked means, to feed his faculties with a view of the performances, he likewise pursued his studies through all the ballads in the market, until qualified to read the pages of Moore and Byron. Glowing with ambition, he sometimes pined to see the poet's corner of our weekly periodicals graced with his effusions. But though murder may out, his undeveloped genius would not. Execution fell so far short of conception, that his lyrics were invariably rejected. Deep, but unsatisfactory, were the reflections which thence arose in the breast of Pigwiggen. "How is it," said he-"How is it I can't level down my expressions to the comprehension of the vulgar, or level up the vulgar to a comprehension of my expressions? How is it I can't get the spigot out, so my verses will run clear? I know what I mean myself, but nobody else does, and the impu dent editors say it's wasting room to print what nobody understands. I've plenty of genius-lots of it, for I often want to cut my throat, and would have done it long ago, only it hurts. I'm chock full of genius and running over; for I hate all sorts of work myself, and all sorts of people mean enough to do it. I hate going to bed, and I hate getting up. My conduct is very eccentric and singular. I have the miserable melancholics all the time, and I'm pretty nearly always as cross as thunder, which is a sure sign. Genius is as tender as a skinned cat, and flies into a passion whenever you touch it. When I condescend to unbuzzum myself, for a little sympathy, to folks of ornery intellect—and caparisoned to me, I know very few people that ar'n't ornery as to brains and pour forth the feelings indigginus to a poetic soul, which is always biling, they ludicrate my sitiation, and say they don't know what the deuse I'm driving at. Isn't genius always served o' this fashion in the earth, as Hamlet, the boy after my own heart, says? And when the slights of the world, and of the printers, set me in a fine frenzy, and my soul swells and swells, till it almost tears the shirt off my buzzum, and even fractures my dickey -when it expansuates and elevates me above the common herd, they laugh again, and tell me not to be pompious. The poor plebinians and worse than Russian serfs!-It is the fate of genius-it is his'n, or rather I should say, her'n-to go through life with little sympathization and less cash. Life's a field of blackberry and raspberry bushes. Mean people squat down and pick the fruit, no matter how they black their fingers; while genius, proud and perpendicular, strides fiercely on, and gets nothing but scratches and holes torn in its trousers. These things are the fate of genius, and when you see 'em, there is genius too, although the editors won't publish its articles. These things are its premonitories, its janissaries, its cohorts, and its consorts. "But yet, though in flames in my interiors, I can't get it out. If I catch a subject, while I am looking at it, I can't find words to put it in; and when I let go, to hunt for words, the subject is off like a shot. Sometimes I have plenty of words, but then there is either no ideas, or else there is such a waterworks and catarack of them, that when I catch one, the others knock it out of my fingers. My genius is good, but my mind is not sufficiently manured by 'ears." 66 Pigwiggen, waiting it may be till sufficiently manured" to note his thoughts, was seen one fine morning, not long since, at the corner of the street, with a melancholy, abstracted air, the general character of his appearance. His garments were of a rusty black, much the worse for wear. His coat was buttoned up to the throat, probably for a reason more cogent than that of showing the moulding of his chest, and a black handkerchief enveloped his neck. Not a particle of white was to be seen about him; not that we mean to infer that his "sark' would not have answered to its name, if the muster roll of his attire had been called, for we scorn to speak of a citizen's domestic relations, and, until the contrary is proved, we hold it but charity to believe that every man has as many shirts as backs. Peter's cheeks were pale and hollow; his eyes sunken, and neither soap nor razor had kissed his lips for a week. His hands were in his pockets-they had the accommodation all to themselves-nothing else was there. " "Is your name Peter P. Pigwiggen?" inquired a man with a stick, which he grasped in the middle. "My name is P. Pilgarlick Pigwiggen, if you please, my good friend," replied our hero, with a flush of indignation at being miscalled. "You'll do," was the nonchalant response; and "the man with a stick" drew forth a parallelogram of paper, curiously inscribed with characters, partly written and partly printed, of which the words, The commonwealth greeting," were strikingly visi ble; you'll do, Mr. P. Pilgarlick Pigwiggen Peter. That's a capias ad respondendum, the English of which is, you're cotched because you can't pay; only they put it in Greek, so as not to hurt a gentleman's feelings, and make him feel flat afore the company. I can't say much for the manners of the big courts, but the way the law's polite and a squire's office is genteel, when the thing is under a hundred dollars, is cautionary." There was little to be said. Peter yielded at once. His landlady, with little respect for the incipient Byron, had turned him out that morning, and had likewise sent "the man with a stick," to arrest the course of undeveloped genius. Peter walked before, and he of the "taking way" strolled leisurely behind. "Twont do, Posy. I don't understand it at all. You must go and find a little undeveloped bail, or I must send you to prison. The officer will go with you. But stay; there's Mr. Grubson in the cornerperhaps he will bail you." Grubson looked unpromising. He had fallen asleep, and the flies hummed about his sulky copper-colored visage, laughing at his unconscious drowsy efforts to drive them away. He was aroused by Pilgarlick, who insinuatingly preferred the request. "I'll see you hanged first," replied Mr. Grubson; "I goes bail for nobody. I'm undeveloped myself on that subject, not but that I have the greatest respect for you in the world, but the most of people's cheats." "You see, Posy, the development won't answer. You must try out of doors. The officer will go with you." "Squire, as a friend, excuse me," said Pilgarlick. "But the truth of the matter is this. I'm delicate about being seen in the street with a constable. I'm principled against it. The reputation which I'm going to get might be injured by it. Wouldn't it be pretty much the same thing, if Mr. Grubson was to go with the officer, and get me a little bail!" "I'm delicate myself," growled Grubson; "I'm principled agin that too. Every man walk about on his own 'sponsibility; every man bail his own boat, You might jist as well ask me to swallow your physic, or take your thrashings." Alas! Pilgarlick knew that his boat was past bailing. Few are the friends of genius in any of its stages-very few are they when it is undeveloped. He, therefore, consented to sojourn in "Arch west of Broad," until the whitewashing process could be performed, on condition he were taken there by the "alley way;" for he still looks ahead to the day, when a hot-pressed volume shall be published by the leading booksellers, entitled Poems, by P. Pilgarlick Pigwiggen, Esq. RICHARD HILDRETH. RICHARD HILDRETHI was born June 28, 1807, in the old town of Deerfield, Massachusetts. His father was the Rev. Hosea Hildreth, a prominent congregational clergyman, who was the last oldschool divine of latitudinarian views to join the Unitarian from the Calvinistic church of New England. In his profession he always stood in high esteem for ability, public spirit, and active benevolence. During Richard's fourth year his father removed with his family to Exeter, New Hampshire, the seat of Exeter Academy, where the son was fitted for college. Hildreth was graduated at Harvard College in 1826. Here he proved himself a successful student of the prescribed course, without, however, entirely confining himself to it. Besides his extensive readings in history, political economy, and ethics, he became familiar with the whole body of Greek and Latin authors in their original languages. Embracing the pursuit of law he next entered the office at Newburyport, Massachusetts, of L. W. Marston, where his remarkable power of close and long-continued appliIcation excited the astonishment of all who knew him. In 1827, during Mr. Hildreth's residence at Newburyport, his literary life took its commencement in a series of articles contributed to a maga zine then lately started in Boston by Mrs. Sarah Jane Hale. Not long after he became a contributor to Willis's Boston Magazine (the first editorial experiment of that popular writer), and subsequently to Joseph T. Buckingham's New England Magazine. Many of these miscellaneous compositions are worthy of republication in a collected form. In July, 1832, while practising the legal profession in Boston, he was induced to accept the post of editor of the Boston Atlas. For several years Mr. Hildreth's connexion with the new paper gave it a decided pre-eminence among the political journals of New England. A series of ably written articles from his pen, published in 1837, relative to the design of certain influential men in the southwest of procuring the separation of Texas from the Mexican government, prior to any general suspicion of the affair, powerfully contributed to excite the strenuous opposition which was afterwards manifested in different parts of the Union to the annexation of Texas. Ill health in the autumn of 1834 compelled Mr. Hildreth to seek a residence on a plantation at the South, where he lived for about a year and a half. While thus sojourning, his story of Archy Moore, the forerunner of anti-slavery novels, was written. This work, which appeared in 1837, was republished in England, where it received an elaborate review in the Spectator, as well as in other literary periodicals. In 1852 it was given to the public in an enlarged form, under the title of The White Slave. It purports to be the autobiography of a Virginia slave, the son of his owner, whose Anglo-Saxon superiority of intellect and spirit is inherited by him. The period of the story is during the war of 1812 with Great Britain. After passing through the vicissitudes of his servile lot in the household, on the plantation, and on the auction block, Archy, the hero, with others of his condition, is taken on board a vessel for a more southern port. But in the passage the ship is captured by the enemy, who at once liberate them. He then becomes a British sailor, in which capacity he rises to distinction and settles in England, where he finally attains the position of an opulent merchant. The narrative, as continued subsequently to the first publication, proceeds to represent Archy returning about the year 1835 to his native land, where, after a complicated series of adventures, his slave-wife and two children, whom he had left in slavery, are restored to him, and are thence carried to his foreign home. During the summer of 1836 Mr. Hildreth employed his pen in translating from the French of Dumont a work, published at Boston in two 16mo. volumes, in 1840, under the title of Bentham's Theory of Legislation. He also at the same time wrote a History of Banks, advocating the system of free-banking, with security to billholders,- -a plan since introduced successfully into New York and other states. Passing the winter of 1837-8 in Washington, as correspondent of the Boston Atlas, he returned to the editorial chair a warm supporter of the election to the presidency of General Harrison, of whom he wrote an electioneering biography, which appeared in pamphlet form. Abandoning journalism, Mr. Hildreth next published, in 1840, Despotism in America, an ablyprepared discussion of the political, economical, and social results of the slaveholding system in the United States. To this work in 1854 was added a chapter on The Legal Basis of Slavery, embracing the substance of two articles written by him for Theodore Parker's short-lived Massachusetts Review. A letter to Andrews Norton, the Unitarian theologian of Cambridge, on Miracles followed, together with other controversial pamphlets on various speculative topics. These works were marked by keen and vigorous argument, but at times by an unsparing severity of language that materially interfered with their popularity. In 1840 Mr. Hildreth, for the benefit of his health, again had resort to a warmer climate. But a three years' residence at Demerara, in British Guiana, did not diminish his activity. Acting successively as editor of two newspapers published at Georgetown, the capital of the country, he vigorously discussed the adoption of the new system of free labor, and the best policy to be pursued in the circumstances in which the colony was placed. There can be no doubt as to the side which he would join in regard to the former subject. While in British Guiana he also found time to write his Theory of Morals, published in 1844, as well as the Theory of Politics, which was given to the world from the press of the Messrs. Harper in 1853. In the preface to the first mentioned work the author announces his purpose of giving to the world six treatises, bearing the collective title of Rudiments of the Science of Man, and designed to appear in the following order: Theory of Morals, Theory of Politics, Theory of Wealth, Theory of Taste, Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Education. The peculiarity of these treatises, according to Mr. Hildreth's intention, was the attempt to apply rigorously to the subjects discussed the inductive method of investigation, which, he supposed, might be employed as successfully in ethical and kindred science as it has been in the domain of physical discoveries. This may, perhaps, be the case, but such an ex periment often involves a disregard of established doctrines and assumptions, which is much less palatable to the mass of men than any similar contemptuous treatment of their notions of physical science, in consequence of the more decided enlistment of the feelings in matters pertaining to moral, political, and social questions, than in any other. If Mr. Hildreth entertained any doubts on this point, he must, by this time, have been convinced of the fact here stated, by the outcry raised by the North American Review and Brownson's Quarterly against the former of his two volumes-the Theory of Morals and the Theory of Politics. Yet, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, we cannot help looking upon them as among the most original contributions which this country has furnished on the topics of which they treat. In saying this no assent is given to all the doctrines broached in them. The author, like Bentham, of whom he appears to be a strong admirer, is an independent, dispassionate, and patient thinker, but, like him, is too much governed by the test of utility, and too much enamored of his rigid method of investigation, to reach conclusions which shall be entirely satisfactory, in sciences so proverbially inexact and uncertain as those of ethics or politics. Of the two treatises already submitted to the public the Theory of Politics is altogether the most philosophical and best matured. It is divided into three parts, the first part treating of the Elements of Political Power, under which head are discussed the various forms which the political equilibrium, called government, has taken, the forces which produce it, and the means whereby it is sustained or overturned. The second contains a philosophical and historical review of the Forms of Government and Political Revolutions, in which the forms assumed by government du ring the world's history are specified chronologically, and the causes traced which have led to their commencement and overthrow. In part third are considered Governments in their Influence upon the Progress of Civilization and upon Human Happiness in general; and here, in a section entitled Of Democracies, may be found a theoretical vindication of the democratic system of government which will amply repay perusal. The survey is taken from the American stand-point, and the results are developed with a conclusiveness of reasoning little short of mathematical. Finding the public too little interested in his speculative inquiries Mr. Hildreth turned his attention to completing his History of the United States, a work which he had projected as far back as his life in college. This afforded him constant occupation for seven years, during which he wrote little else, with the exception of a few articles in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review. The first volume was issued by the Harpers in 1849, and the entire work, in six volumes, in the course of the three succeeding years. In regard to this elaborate history, which covers the period beginning with the settlement of the country and concluding with the end of President Monroe's first term, we may safely remark that it has secured its author a prominent and permanent place among American historians. He has here embodied the matured results of long-continued and exhausting |