time, and then (to all worldly intents and purposes) we are as if we had never been!

There is, however, to counterbalance the many pleasures and advantages of traveling, one peculiar unpleasant sensation, which nearly all who have journeyed must have felt. It is, in passing away from any place where you have been warmly welcomed and hospitably treated-where you have interchanged good offices, and eat and drank and held pleasant communion with kindly pieces of humanity--the thought that you pass away for ever-that you will see then no more! Their joys or sorrows, their smiles or tears, are thenceforward nothing to you--you have no further portion in them-you will know them no more! It is, in truth, a most unpleasant feeling; but a man had better suffer from it, than be without it. I do not, however, relish that easily excited, indiscriminating kindness, awakened on every occasion; that unvarying civility-that ready-made sympathy so common in this world of ours. I dislike your polite smilers, on first acquaintance; fellows who will shake you by the hand, bow, and smile at meeting; and shake you by the hand, bow, and smile at parting, with equal indifference. Though not altogether to be commended, I rather prefer their opposites-the race of unapproachables; persons of

cloudy and uninviting aspects, who station themselves in the less frequented parts of steamboats, and odd corners of stage-coaches; who speak when they cannot help it, and with whom a civil sentence seems the prelude to suffocation. When the ice is once broken, when you do get acquainted with them, there is often much good fruit under the rough rind; and when the time for separating arrives, they look half sulky, half sorrowful, as they give you their hand-as much as to say, "we might have been better friends, but your road lies that way-and mine this, and so-good-by." I would be bail for one of those personages; I would put my hand to a bond for him, (which I look upon to be the extreme test of human confidence,) but for your ever-ready smilers, they have, in general, no more heart than an infantile cabbage-all leaves and husk, husk and leaves--"let no such men be trusted."

DEBATING SOCIETIES.

There are many evils in the present state of society, which it is much easier to censure than eradicate.”—Modern Moralist.

ONE of the most pernicious mischiefs of the present times, and one most pregnant with the seeds of individual discomfort and general unhappiness, is the rapid increase of Debating Societies; or, rather, societies for the annoyance of the community -night-schools for the education of youth in flippancy and sophistry-seminaries for the full developement of the organ of self-sufficiency-arenas for the exposure of the weakness of the human intellect, and the depreciation of heaven's creatures in the opinion of all considerate people. These excrescences are springing into existence on every side, and are productive of the most lamentable consequences. When I see (as I have seen) a meek, diffident juvenile of eighteen or nineteen, of the right age to imbibe wholesome, quiet wisdom and nutritious instruction-seduced from his darling books, and peaceful solitary chamber, to attend one of those

pestiferous places, where, what they call " questions," are regularly discussed; when I see such an one led on, step by step, by a little empty applause, to exchange the modest diffidence that would gladly learn, for the misplaced confidence that would boldly teach, until he becomes, in the course of time, a confirmed, hardened debater, lost to all sense of shame and idea of propriety--a perpetual torment to his more immediate relatives and connections, and an unceasing nuisance to all the other members of the great human family with whom he may be brought into juxtaposition, I confess I cannot but feel a strong distaste for those reprehensible nurseries for bad speeches and worse arguments.

Reader! didst thou ever misspend a few hours at a debating society? If so, then hast thou seen แ pitiful ambition" in all its infinite varieties, and almost every stage and degree of folly, froth, and fatuity. How didst thou preserve thy serenity? Thou mightst have looked, indeed, with calm, contemplative benevolence on some piece of leadenheaded ignorance, who, after a week's cogitation, gravely and seriously set about building up a reputation by announcing that "virtue was its own and best reward," "vice eventually its own punishment," and other similar originalities; but there is a species of reptile to be met with in those congre3

VOL. I.

gations of raw intellects, that is, to me at least, peculiarly and distressingly repulsive. It is generally in the shape of a good-looking, smooth-faced, self-sufficient, young gentleman, the leader, the looked-up-to of the society, one skilled in quibbles, quotations, and paradoxes; who thinks truth beneath his advocacy, and makes a point of taking what is called the "difficult side of the question," in order to show off his surplusage of uncommon qualities, by confuting his humble satellites, who ingloriously content themselves with a homely, obvious view of the matter in dispute. I am not naturally blood-thirsty; but still, when I have seen an unwholesome piece of mortality of this kind get up, all smirk, amiability, politeness, and complacency, to refute, in the most urbane manner, some truism lineally descended from Shem, Ham, or Japhet, or, it may be, antediluvian, I confess I have felt the destructive principle rising within me--I have acknowledged my consanguinity to Cain—I have--but no man is bound to be his own accuser. "Our worser thoughts heaven mend."

Yet there are people who contend that these dens for the dislocation of grammar, for the maltreatment of metaphors, and the ill-usage of all tropes and figures whatsoever, these very debating societies, are not only perfectly innocuous, but positively be