forced into existence as easily as mushrooms; and it is really curious to observe, as soon as a five hundred dollar premium is offered, what a flood of inspiration deluges the whole land! The mere

reading of the advertisements created hundreds of tragic poets who never before dreamt of such a thing; and a speculator in quills realized a very handsome profit by buying up all the stock within his reach on the first announcement of the business.

The ploughman quitted his plough and wrote a tragedy, the drygood-clerks neglected their customers and wrote tragedies, the frequenters of ten-pin alleys, and similar elegant places of resort, stayed at home o' nights and wrote tragedies; and it is understood that some of them were the most unique things of their kind that were ever submitted to the eye of man. To say nothing of the grammar or the chirography, the violations of the simple rules of Webster's spelling book were grievous in the extreme; and towards the latter end of the fifth act

"Murders were done too terrible for the ear."

In some instances the carnage was immense.— Two or three of the much-enduring committee have scarcely recovered from the shock which their intellects received, and yet retain a perfectly excusable

and natural antipathy for the very name of tragedy. Considering the manner in which they had to addle their brains by perusing all this perilous stuff, there ought certainly to have been a benefit for the remuneration of the sufferers-that is, the committee. This was the prevailing character of the pieces, the authors of whom had taken for their guide Othello's exclamation, "blood, blood, Iago!" and cut short the mortal career of their dramatis personæ with the most unrelenting pens. Others there were of a more lady-like and lachrymatory turn, who dealt in

"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-piled hyperbole, spruce affectation,"

and preferred tears to blood; but they also, in selfdefence, were obliged to make away with a great number, as the depth of a tragedy now-a-days depends upon the mortality that takes place among the persons brought together; consequently there is twice as strong an infusion of the tragic in a play where ten people are killed, as there is where only five expire. Soldiers, citizens, peasants, and such plebeian parts as are enacted by supernumeraries whose names are not in the bills, are, however, not taken into account; just as in real life, a great outcry is made about a dead general, while

the rank and file rot quietly away without any thing being said about the matter.

But Mr. Forrest, Mr. Forrest, what excuse can be made for thee? Thou who didst profess to admire the Indian character, and venerate their great and noble qualities. Was it well done in thee to single out this persecuted race of beings from the nations and communities of men on the face of the earth, as fit subjects to be hacked and tortured by all the poverty-stricken and unfledged poets in the country? "Call you this backing your friends ?" Is it not enough that they have been ruthlessly driven from house and home, that their lands have been forcibly wrested from them, and the graves of their fathers violated, but you must, by holding out a five hundred dollar inducement, hound on all sorts of people to dramatize the lives of their warriors, and put into the mouths of their sachems and orators, bad grammar and bombast, which when living they would have blushed to utter? Think, Mr. Forrest, of the number of noble chiefs that have been resuscitated through your means, and transformed into senseless ranting braggadocios. They may not, to be sure, appear in public; but will not their several vainglorious authors distribute the manuscripts of their unsuccessful efforts among their friends and connexions all over the country,

merely to show the incapacity of the committee, thus rendering the Indian character ridiculous, and adding, as it were, insult to injury? If you want more prize tragedies, make the affair general, give the money to the best, but play all that are sent, and let us have a laugh at the whole world. Make no more invidious selections, but let there be classic victims, Grecians and Romans, of whom antiquity furnishes an inexhaustible supply. Besides, it would be a very difficult matter to make another aboriginal tragedy. Indianisms, such as "smoking the pipe of peace," and keeping the "chain of friendship bright," sound very well when judiciously and sparingly introduced; but it does not answer to compound many long speeches entirely of such figurative fragments.

OYSTERS.

MAN has been styled a speaking animal, a laughing animal, a bargaining animal, and a drunken animal, in contradistinction to all other animals who neither speak, nor laugh, nor bargain, nor get drunk; but a cooking animal seems after all to be his most characteristic and distinguishing appellation. In the important art of cooking victuals he shines pre-eminent; here he taxes all his faculties, racks his invention, and gives unbounded range to his imagination. Nature has given to every other animal a peculiar taste, and furnished three or four kinds of food to suit that taste, but this sense in man accommodates itself to an innumerable quantity of materials. He has made copious selections from all things that dwell upon the face of the globe-from the birds of the air, from the fish of the sea, from the inhabitants of lake and river, yea, from the bowels of the earth has he extracted substances to minister to his palate, and the