buys nothing but shadows. My gallery beats that of the Duke of Devonshire; for it is filled with originals by the oldest masters, and not a copy among them all; and better still, the sheriff cannot seize them, let him do his worst; others may prove property in the same, but they lie safely beyond the reach of trover or replevin.

As we passed Blackwell's Island, I looked with thoughtful sadness on the handsome stone edifice erected there for a lunatic asylum. On another part of the island is a penitentiary; likewise a noble building, though chilling the heart with its barred doors and grated windows. The morally and the intellectually insane-should they not both be treated with great tenderness? It is a question for serious thought; and phrenology, with all its absurd quackery on its back, will yet aid mankind in giving the fitting answer. There has at least been kindness evinced in the location chosen; for if free breezes, beautiful expanse of water, quiet, rural scenery, and "the blue sky that bends o'er all,” can "minister to the mind diseased," then surely these forlorn outcasts of society may here find God's best physicians for their shattered nerves.

Another object which interested me exceedingly, was the Long-Island Farm School, for foundlings and orphans. Six or eight hundred children are here carefully tended by a matron and her assistants, until they are old enough to go out to service or trades. Their extensive play-ground runs along the shore; a place of as sweet natural influences as could well be desired. I thought of the squalid little wretches I had seen at Five Points, whose greatest misfortune was that they were not orphans. I

thought of the crowd of sickly infants in Boston alms-house-the innocent victims of hereditary vice. And my heart ached, that I could see no end to all this misery, though it heard it, in the far-off voice of prophecy.

LETTER X.

VARIETIES OF CHARACTER AND CHANGING POPULATION OF NEW YORK-ANECDOTE OF ABSENT MEN-THE BAGPIPE PLAYER-BURIAL OF A STRANGER IN THE WESTERN FOREST.

October 21, 1841.

In a great metropolis like this, nothing is more observable than the infinite varieties of character. Almost without effort, one may happen to find himself, in the course of a few days, beside the Catholic kneeling before the cross, the Mohammedan bowing to the east, the Jew veiled before the ark of the testimony, the Baptist walking into the water, the Quaker keeping his head covered in the presence of dignitaries and solemnities of all sorts, and the Mormon quoting from the Golden Book which he has never

seen.

More, perhaps, than any other city, except Paris or New Orleans, this is a place of rapid fluctuation, and never-ceasing change. A large portion of the population are like mute actors, who tramp across the stage in pantomime or pageant, and are seen no The enterprising, the curious, the reckless, and the criminal, flock hither from all quarters of the world, as to a common centre, whence they can diverge at pleasure. Where men are little known, they are imperfectly restrained; therefore, great numbers here live with somewhat of that wild license which

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prevails in times of pestilence. Life is a reckless game, and death is a business transaction. Warehouses of ready-made coffins, stand beside warehouses of ready-made clothing, and the shroud is sold with spangled opera-dresses. Nay, you may chance to see exposed at sheriff's sales, in public squares, piles of coffins, like nests of boxes, one within another, with a hole bored in the topmost lid to sustain the red flag of the auctioneer, who stands by, describing their conveniences and merits, with all the exaggerating eloquence of his tricky trade.

There is something impressive, even to painfulness, in this dense crowding of human existence, this mercantile familiarity with death. It has sometimes forced upon me, for a few moments, an appalling, night-mare sensation of vanishing identity; as if I were but an unknown, unnoticed, and unseparated drop in the great ocean of human existence; as if the uncomfortable old theory were true, and we were but portions of a great mundane soul, to which we ultimately return, to be swallowed up in its infinity. But such ideas I expel at once, like phantasms of evil, which indeed they are. Unprofitable to all, they have a peculiarly bewildering and oppressive power over a mind constituted like my own; so prone to eager questioning of the infinite, and curious search into the invisible. I find it wiser to forbear inflating this balloon of thought, lest it roll me away through unlimited space, until I become like the absent man, who put his clothes in bed, and hung himself over the chair; or like his twin-brother, who laid his candle on the pillow, and blew himself out.

You will, at least, my dear friend, give these letters the credit of being utterly unpremeditated; for Flibbertigibbet himself never moved with more unex

pected and incoherent variety. I have wandered almost as far from my starting point, as Saturn's ring is from Mercury; but I will return to the varieties in New York. Among them, I often meet a tall Scotsman, with sandy hair and high cheek bones-a regular sawney, with tartan plaid and bagpipe. And where do you guess he most frequently plies his poetic trade? Why, in the slaughter-houses! of which a hundred or more send forth their polluted breath into the atmosphere of this swarming city hive! There, if you are curious to witness incongruities, you may almost any day see grunting pigs or bleating lambs, with throats cut to the tune of Highland Mary, or Bonny Doon, or Lochaber no

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Among those who have flitted across my path in this thoroughfare of nations, few have interested me more strongly than an old sea-captain, who needed only Sir Walter's education, his wild excursions through solitary dells and rugged mountainpasses, and his familiarity with legendary lore, to make him, too, a poet and a romancer. Untutored as he was, a rough son of the ocean, he had combined in his character the rarest elements of fun and pathos; side by side, they glanced through his conversation, in a manner almost Shakspearean. They shone, likewise, in his weather-beaten countenance; for he had the eye of Wordsworth and the mouth of Molière.'

One of his numerous stories particularly impressed my imagination, and remains there like a cabinet picture, by Claude. He said he was once on board a steam-boat, full of poor foreigners, going up the Mississippi to some place of destination in the yet unsettled wilderness. The room where these poor

emigrants were huddled together, was miserable enough. In one corner, two dissipated-looking fellows were squatted on the floor, playing all-fours with dirty cards; in another, lay a victim of intemperance, senseless, with a bottle in his hand; in another, a young Englishman, dying of consumption-kindly tended by a venerable Swiss emigrant, with his helpful wife, and artless daughter. The Englishman was an intelligent, well-informed young man, who, being unable to marry the object of his choice, with any chance of comfortable support in his own country, had come to prepare a home for his beloved in the Eldorado of the West. A neglected cold brought on lung fever, which left him in a rapid decline; but still, full of hope, he was pushing on for the township, where he had planned for himself a domestic paradise. He was now among strangers, and felt that death was nigh. The Swiss emigrants treated him with that thoughtful, zealous tenderness, which springs from genial hearts, deeply imbued with the religious sentiment. One wish of his soul they could not gratify, by reason of their ignorance. Being too weak to hold a pen, he earnestly desired to dictate to some one else a letter to his mother and his betrothed. This, Captain T. readily consented to do; and promised, so far as in him lay, to carry into effect any arrangements he might wish to make.

Soon after this melancholy duty was fulfilled, the young sufferer departed. When the steam-boat arrived at its final destination, the kind-hearted Captain T. made the best arrangements he could for a decent burial. There was no chaplain on board; and, unused as he was to the performance of religious ceremonies, he himself read the funeral