the most obsequious of people; tailors examine with a curious eye the coats of their customers as they meet them in the streets, and inquire most kindly and disinterestedly after their health and prospects; merchants are scattering their ventures abroad, ships are fitting out, much beef is salted down, and many biscuits baked, but a number of hard things said about the tariff notwithstanding; the North river is emancipated from ice, and owners of steamboats are preparing to oblige the public and ruin themselves by vigorous competition; the rustling of silks is heard in Broadway, criticisms upon hats, gowns, and trimmings are much in vogue amongst the fair creatures who pace its fashionable side, and they look upon spring as the most charming season of the year, "it is so delightful for morning calls."

Spring is coming! all good things are coming! and some good things are going-oysters are going -there will soon be no R in the month, and then they are gone; but shad are coming; strawberries and pretty country girls are coming, so is fresh butter; the men of Rochester and Buffalo, and other districts of the "far west" have come, and they wander up and down the streets in "wrapt amazement" at the never ceasing jingling of fortepianos, and the twanging of guitars, harps, and

other stringed instruments; the sons of the South have come, and Virginians, Carolinians, and Georgians are to be seen sauntering along, and gazing with horror at the shocking quantity of freedom enjoyed by the poor black wretches whom they chance to meet, and though they see it every summer, they are never able to get over the astonishment created by beholding a dark dandy or an African coquette-as if white people possessed the exclusive right to make fools of themselves. "Ah!" think they, as a colored gentleman unceremoniously takes the wall of them-"Ah! if I only had you in Savannah !"

But spring has still its sad feelings, and after levity comes heaviness of heart. It is a joyous season to those who, like the year, are in their springtime, just bursting into untried life; but to such as have seen that time pass away for ever, whose spirits are depressed by difficulties, or broken by unavailing struggles, it is a season rather of melancholy retrospection than present enjoyment. The aged or unfortunate are insensible to its influence; they recall their spring, and mournfully contrast the happy past with the dreary present; truly is it said,

"Joy's recollection is no longer joy

While sorrow's memory is sorrow still;"

and deeply do they feel its truth. To those in their prime it is, at times, perhaps sadder still to look back upon the flowery fields of existence through which they have been rambling, and to contrast them with the beaten track they now tread, and the desolate prospect that lies before them. The friends of their youth have passed away, so have their brightest hopes; they feel themselves changed, and their capacities for happiness diminished; they see things full of joy and promise around, and are filled with a mixture of wordly scorn and unavailing regret for what can no more be theirs; and sadly do they enter into the feelings of the poet

"The sky is blue, the sward is green,
The leaf upon the bough is seen,
The wind comes from the balmy west,
The little songster builds its nest,
The bee hums on from flower to flower,
Till twilight's dim and pensive hour,
The joyous year returns-but when
Shall by-past times come back again?"

PHILADELPHIA-NEW-YORK-BOSTON.

SATIRISTS have said that all the concerns, great and small, of this bustling world, its love and war, laws, literature, and business, have self for their beginning and self for their end; and that even charity to others is only a more refined species of self-love. Whether these suppositions be correct or not, will, like the destiny of the lost pleiad, and the powers of the general government, always remain matters of opinion; and far be it from me to attempt to settle, and thereby render of no effect, such interesting topics of conversation and speculation.

In putting pen to paper, it is certainly best to avoid all new and hazardous assertions, and to content one's self with advancing, in a fearless manner, what no one can possibly doubt. I may, therefore, in the language of some writers, who display a large quantity of superfluous valor and determination when there is no occasion for it, boldly

assert, without fear of contradiction, that self-love is no rarity in this world of ours. It manifests itself in a variety of ways, some of which are exceedingly curious and amusing, and as pleasant to laugh at as a friend's misfortunes. One of its most ludicrous forms is the way in which men interest themselves in little localities, the pride they feel in them, and the additional importance which they imagine attaches to themselves, in consequence of the celebrity of the city or district to which they belong, for some small matter or other. Thus, a Philadelphian identifies himself with the breed of horned cattle in the vicinity of that city-he considers their fame and his own as inseparable, and looks down upon a citizen of New-York because the cows of Pennsylvania give richer milk than those of Long Island; a Bostonian thinks he ranks considerably higher in the scale of creation on account of the occult mystery of making pumpkin pies having attained a state of perfection in Boston as yet unknown in the regions of the south, north, and west; while a New-Yorker is apt to be dogmatical on all things connected with canals, though perhaps he never saw one in his life, merely because the longest one in the world was accomplished in his native state.

They say "there is but one step from the sub