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small stream makes from it, which, after working its way through the sands, reaches the clay upon which these 'dunes' are based, and tumbles, a perfect cascade, into the recipient lake. A dense forest of fine maples and pines covers the whole country on the east of this stream, with a clay soil, while on the west commence abrupt cliffs of driven sand, rising to an immediate height, which far overlooks the woodland; and commences the great and almost leafless waste of the Sablés. Instead of a dark mass of verdure, by a transition as sudden as it is opposite in character, every feature of the landscape seems as if buried beneath huge drifts of snow; or you seem as if walking upon the ocean, and about to be overwhelmed by its rolling billows; only that the undulations are more vast, and the wave-crests loftier than Ocean ever raised, in its wildest fury. Looking upward from one of these immense basins, where only the lofty sand-waves meet the sky, the beholder is impressed with a sense of sublimity: an awe unmixed with that degree of terror which accompanies a storm upon the Alps, or on the Atlantic.' Right happy should we have been, to have composed one of the fishing party among the hollows of the rocks, at the foot of the rapids of St. Mary's river, where the delicious white-fish are so numerous, that the bow's-man takes his scoop-net and literally dips them into the boat; we should have rejoiced to listen, in a night of storm, while snug in camp, to the roar of the mad breakers on the lonely shore; to that voice which was 'not alone the sound of dashing waters, however loud; but distinct from the rush of the waves, and the howling of the wind; a deep bass under-tone, the lowest conceivable note in the music of nature; incessant, distinct, prolonged, and filling up every pause in the awful harmony;' we should have revelled for hours in the enjoyment of the scene, where between the lofty and picturesque bluff-points, that, like the pillars of Hercules, guard the pass of the river, crowned with tall pines, rising like church-towers covered with ever-greens - Lake Superior pours out the St. Marys; but we could scarcely have relished even these sublime sights and sounds, if they were to be purchased only by such dreadful annoyances as are here recorded by our correspondent:

"You have known what it is to have a half dozen mosquitoes singing around your head the dirge of your comfort, during a warm summer's night. Judge then what your sensations would be, when these insects come in countless swarms, to which even a handkerchief around the head, gloves on the hands, and a half-inch thickness of grease on the face, are but a poor protection. While I am now writing, though mid-day, I am fighting mosquitoes with my left hand, while I continue to make scratches for you with the other. I can hear F who is in another tent, brushing the rascals from off his book and one of our party, who is out fishing with the boat, carries a face swelled out of all shape and proportion, by the rapacious attacks of these 'birds of prey.' A bite still more poisonous is inflicted by a small black fly, which holds sway during a portion of the season. While on Drummond's Island, my ears and neck became so swelled by a few hours' exposure to the attacks of these flies, that more than a week elapsed before the soreness had subsided. But of all the tortures of this nature, that inflicted by the gnat, (sand-flies, punkies, brulos, for they bear all these appellations,) is the least endurable. These are so small as to be almost microscopic, and about as innumerable as the particles of vapor in a mist. In this fly-fog, one must of course be completely enwrapped, and the burning sensation produced by it is absolutely intolerable. Nothing but a thick coat of grease is a protection. They will enter through the pores of linen, as if no obstacle interposed. I have seen men's faces puffed out by their insidious poison, as if they had the 'mumps,' while blood ran down in streams. Some are so badly affected, that they will throw themselves upon the ground, and roll in agony. These are met with only during a warm day, when we are seldom on shore; and unlike mosquitoes, are seldom out at night. So you will see that there is a kind of hourly succession of these little tormentors of our race. Patience and habit will nevertheless render all these in a degree endurable; though, to speak truth, I should not have troubled you with so long a chapter on such small affairs, had not an unusually fat mosquitoe been pitching at me with such diligence and effect, that I could not well divert my mind. Thank for

tune! he is floored at last. I should not omit to add, that we may be nearly freed from our enemies during sleep, by closing the tent perfectly tight, with brush heaped all around the lower portion, to prevent them from creeping in through the grass; then, with a candle, singeing to death those that were already within.'

We shall hope to keep our readers advised of the entertaining adventures of our correspondent, which will have at least the merits of freshness and natural limning, to recommend them to general acceptance.

OUR YOUNG ARTISTS. Our friend 'H.,' to whom we are indebted for a letter touching the productions and genius of CRAWFORD, the young American sculptor at Rome, will find much of his information anticipated by an article from the pen of Consul GREENE, in a previous number. We are glad to learn that Mr. CRAWFORD has been very successful, and that his works 'have won high praise from the best artists and amateurs in Italy, including TENERANI, who, next to THORWALSDEN, is the first Italian sculptor in Rome.' Of The Catching of the Stag,' ordered of Mr. CRAWFORD by Prince DAVIDOFF, of Russia, our correspondent speaks in the highest terms; but owing to a lack of time and space, we reserve a consideration of his remarks upon this effort, and other topics connected with the fine arts, until a subsequent issue. Our young painters, too, are doing themselves great credit in Rome, if we may judge from a few pictures which we have been kindly permitted to examine. Mr. HUNTINGTON, whose productions were so justly commended in the National Academy last season, has sent home two or three pictures worthy his reputation, and evincing a ripening of his fine talents; while Mr. GRAY, but recently a mere amateur, who accompanied him to Italy, bids fair to emulate his success with no faltering hand. His 'Roman Girl,' in its variety of positions, so to speak, in its coloring and expression, and in its minor accessories, would do credit to a far more experienced pencil, and reflects honor upon the artist. But while we keep in view such native artists as POWER, CRAWFORD, and others, we must not forget to chronicle the advancement of some of our American sculptors and painters at home. CLEVINGER is executing several orders, with his accustomed success; and soon leaves us, as we learn, to prosecute his studies in Italy. KNEELAND, a native of our Empire State, and a companion with CRAWFORD in his studies in America, has devoted his leisure from pursuits of kindred art, in which he has been eminently successful, to the thorough study of sculpture; and the benefit of the severe discipline which he has taken upon himself, is visible in the few busts which he has modelled, or sculptured in marble. We have often admired the little group, wrought in the latter matériel, which Mr. ASTOR had the good taste to secure, and which forms so pleasing an ornament of his mansion. With his fine genius, and an uncompromising determination not to rest satisfied with a superficial knowledge of his art, we must regard Mr.KNEELAND as one of our most promising artists; and we cannot but believe that his ultimate success will be marked and triumphant. Mr. BRACKETT, a clever Cincinnatian, has modelled several busts, including a recent one of General HARRISON, which some of our journals have much commended. Mr. BRACKETT needs but study, to acquire that additional mastery of the details of his art, which will place him in that van-rank to which his ambition naturally aspires. We have pleasure in bearing our renewed testimony to the improvement and success of Mr. C. G. THOMPSON, whose eventual triumph we were the first to predict in this community. Beside several clerical and scholastic dignitaries, he has succeeded in attracting to his canvass the beautiful faces of sundry of our most charming belles; and having established himself a favorite painter with the fair, in our first metropolitan circles, it is not surprising that he should be 'riding on the tide.' We have had an eye, let us add, in conclusion, upon a very promising young painter in town, who, if he be true to himself, will yet create a sensation among his compeers. We allude to Mr. CLOVER, Jr., whose 'Phrenologist' was so much admired at the recent exhibition, and whose 'Idle Servant,' recently painted, evinces still higher excellence. Let him persevere. 36

VOL. XVI.

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DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON KNOWLEDGE. As we stood recently upon the high bluff of the Telegraph station, at Staten Island, and beheld the gigantic steamer President trailing her smoky banner along the western borders of the vast watery ways' she had traversed, and proudly entering the haven where she would be, the power of KNOWLEDGE WAs forcibly impressed upon our mind. We had just been conversing with an estimable citizen, who stood on the wharf at New-York, but a comparatively little while ago, and heard the jeers that were cast upon ROBERT FULTON, as he was trying the first experiment of a rude steam-boat on the Hudson; his face streaming with perspiration, partly from anxiety of mind, and partly from contact with that uncontrolled vapor which was so soon to take the wings of the wind; so soon to annihilate space and time. Without enlarging upon the history of the inception and progress of steam, let us ask, what is it but KNOWLEDGE what but study, investigation, research that is now yoking the subtle elements to the sea-chariot ?- that is propelling floating palaces hither and thither on the great waters, swifter than weavers' shuttles, and like the weaver's shuttle, weaving distant nations into one social and intellectual fabric? The reign of all barbarous people in and about the shores of the Bosphorus, the Nile, and the coast of Syria, says a recent English correspondent, is at an end. 'The time has arrived, when Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the lovely banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, will teem with an European population. This will be the next grand era in civilization, and the steam-engine will accomplish it all in a very little time. Steamers are already ploughing the Red Sea; and soon their puffing and smoking will be seen on the bosom of the Euphrates, and on every other river, sea, and harbor of the habitable globe, to the utter astonishment, and annihilation ultimately, of every heathen. The steam-engine will do far more toward spreading civilization than the missionary. Fulton and James Watt were the Goliahs raised up by God for this great purpose; and still the march of science and art is onward.' On one of the distant rounded slopes beneath us, then covered with ten thousand children from the Sunday schools of the metropolis, we heard, many months since, our excellent friend Governor SEWARD enlarge, in clear and simple phrase, upon the democratic tendency of knowledge. 'Schools,' said he, in substance, 'are the great levelling institutions of the age. The secret of all real aristocracy, is, that knowledge is power. Knowledge, the world over, has been possessed by the few, and ignorance has been the lot of the many. The merchant - what is it that gives him wealth? The lawyer what is it that confers upon him political power? The clergy- what is it that gives them influence, so benign for good purposes, so fatal for mischievous ends? Knowledge. What makes one man a common laborer, and the other a usurer; one man a slave, and the other a tyrant? KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge can never be taken from those by whom it has once been obtained; and hence the power which it confers upon the few cannot be broken, while the many are uneducated. Strip its possessors of all their wealth, and power, and honors, and knowledge still remains the same mighty agent, to restore again the inequality you have removed.' Speaking of the progress of steam, as a concomitant and forcible example of the power of knowledge, in one department only of human science, we are reminded, especially in this connection, of an anecdote related by the same speaker from whom we have quoted above, in the recent centennial celebration at Cherry Valley, Otsego county. It seems,' said Gov. SEWARD, 'as if it was but yesterday, since we learned that burthens may be more cheaply carried on parallel iron rails, than on the rough and unequal surface of the ground; and now rail-roads are common thoroughfares, and animal force is too feeble an agent for locomotion. A gentleman upon whom age seemed to have lightly laid his hand, told me that less than forty years since he dined with Chancellor LIVINGSTON at Paris. The party was composed of statesmen and men of science. The patience of the guests was exhausted by a visionary youth named FULTON, who engrossed the conversation by an argument to prove that if he could obtain a small fund, he could construct a boat to be propelled by the power of steam, and navigate the Hudson river with the velocity of four miles an hour!'

From the same unpremeditated performance, we take the subjoined comprehensive and eloquent passage:

'Our gifted orator has given us your entire local and domestic history. Does it not seem strange that so many extraordinary changes, so many important events, and so many thrilling incidents, have occurred in the lapse of one hundred years? An hundred years! how short a period! That life is considered short which does not reach fifty years, and that one is only very long, which comprises au hundred. An hundred years! An hundred times this period of twelve months which the Earth requires for the irrigation of its soil and production of fruits; an hundred times this circle of three hundred and sixty-five days: days that so often pass like a dream, and are noted but by their loss.' Who that places a tomb-stone in the village church-yard to the memory of a departed friend, would not sigh to think that that monument of his affection must sink to the earth, and his friend occupy an undistinguished grave within an hundred years? Who that establishes a constitution, invents an engine, teaches a new science, or founds a new sect, would be content that his community, his invention, his science, or his creed should give place to new discoveries within a hundred years? Yet an hundred years is no unimportant portion of time. It includes the period of four generations. In a single century four thousand millions of human beings appear on the earth, act their busy parts, and sink into its peaceful bosom! A little more than half that period carries us back to the time when this great and free empire, now respected in every land, had no place among the nations of the earth. Only an hundred times has the scythe passed over this valley, since your ancestors pursued their weary way up the Mohawk, and ever those hills, and planted here the first settlement of the Anglo Saxon race west of the Hudson. They found the Six Nations here as confident of perpetual enjoyment of this fair land as we now are. And yet so soon the tide of emigration has flowed over this valley, and filled the valleys of the Ohio and the Wabash, and the Mississippi, and the Missouri, and now scarcely the name of the Six Nations remains. Only twice an hundred years have elapsed, since the first navigator entered the Bay of New-York, and not four centuries have passed, since Columbus astonished the world with the discovery of this great continent. It is only ten centuries since all Europe, moved by wild fanaticism, poured her embattled hosts upon the fields of Palestine; and less than sixty times an hundred years, according to our accustomed chronology, carry us back to the epoch when there was no time, nor light, nor life, nor earth, nor beavens, and God said let all these be, and they were.'

'SUMMER: A RHAPSODY.'

We had wasted a single dip of ink from the nib of one of HAWKINS' golden-pens upon the glories of the waning summer, when the annexed rhapsody reached us from the hand of an estimable correspondent, whom it is our pride and happiness to cherish, in more regards than one. Arriving too late to be a guest at the table d'hôte, we make room for our friend, with pleasure, at our own humble side-table: 'Bright and glorious Summer! The morning breaks in beauty; the soft and balmy west wind breathes its gentle influence over the face of nature; the tears of the night, lingering upon the green grass, are clothed with the beauty of the rainbow, and the brightness of the diamond. The swallow, with its cheerful whistle, springs from the eaves, and darts with rapid flight across your path: the mocking-bird, that feathered mime, pours forth its thousand notes. There is no spot in the firmament of heaven; there is no blemish on the face of Nature. All is bright, and soft, and beautiful; and entranced with delight, you stand, the gentle air fanning your brow, and the glorious scene elevating your soul. Alas! that man's beauty and happiness should so quickly pass away; that life should be but a succession of cheerful moments and of gloomy hours; that the softness, the freshness, the verdure, of the morning, should so soon be lost and destroyed by the heat, and toil, and aridity, of the parching noon! Yet so it is, with nature and with man. While you stand in full enjoyment of the scene, its softness has passed away- the diamond hues have vanished. You feel no more the gentle zephyr upon your cheek; the swallow has crept back to its lofty mansion; the mocking-bird has retreated to its leafy shelter. The burning sun pours down his golden flood of light; but the spirits droop beneath the fervor and glory of his influence; the beasts of the field hasten, with eager steps, to the shelter which Providence has prepared for them; and drooping and weary, you retire from a view which but a few moments ago you thought you could linger with for ever. Happy is he, who in the noon of excitement and of struggle, has the desire and the ability to retreat from the burning scenes of strife and contention, to the retired and shady walks of domestic happiness! 'But the noon-day has vanished, and the evening hour has arrived. Again softness and beauty preside over the scene. Once more the swallow chirps, and flits along, and the birds send forth their notes. Step by step, minute by minute, the light

and the beauty vanish. You feel as though some kind friend, who had long blest you with his gentle, endearing presence, was about leaving you for ever, and your heart grows sad and dispirited. Ah, gentle reader! if it has been your fate to see that hour pass away, and with it the spirit of one who was treasured up in the inmost heart; whose smile was the delight of life, and whose affection the pearl beyond all price; then indeed will the shadows of the twilight bring with them the sadness of the heart, when the memory of the past almost overwhelms the prospect of the future; and the soul, forgetful of the joyous meeting that is to come, looks back weeping and despair. ing to the last sad parting !

'Have you ever asked yourself the question, whether there are any pleasures in memory? They have been said and sung; but do they exist? Do we turn our backward gaze upon the joys of other days, and does that look bring pain that they have past, or pleasure in reviewing them? Is the form of misfortune softened, when we gaze at it from a distance? Do scenes gloomy and afflicting, lose any portion of their darkness, when a few strides along life's highway has carried us from their immediate influence? Would you trace back a single step? Would you live over a single day of your past career? Would you drink again the cup of misery that had been held to your lips, or hear once more the twice-told tale of pleasure? Ah, gentle dreamer! your pleasures have been sweet indeed, your sorrows but as the summer cloud, if you answer these questions in the affirmative! Well will it be for him who seeks to forget the past, and to press onward to the future; and who, amid the retreating twilight, gathers his robe around him, and lies down in hope, and peace, and righteousness, for the slumber of the grave!... How many changes occur in our opinions of the character of mankind, as we pass through the avenue that leads to the 'Valley of the Shadow of Death!' In early youth, when all is rose and sunshine; when evil is unseen, unheard, unfelt; we look upon our elders as beings formed after a divine image the world seems an Eden of delight, and its inhabitants pure and guileless creatures, clothed with innocence and beauty, and rejoicing in deeds of purity and benevolence. Vice puts on her mask of comeliness, and our unsuspecting eyes see not the deformity that is beneath. Pleasure surrounds us with its enchantments, and the beauty of life with its witchery. Το us, all men are gods, and all women something more than angels. But the dream has ended! Some fellow traveller, some passer-by, more hasty than the rest, has given us a rude shake, and aroused us from our pleasant vision. We are awake now! Our senses are unclouded. The hues of beauty are passing away, and we see clearly and thoroughly into the surrounding prospect. Vice has lost her mask, and stands forth in her own disgusting nakedness. The heart of man is revealed to us. We trace back the apparently bright and crystal stream of hypocrisy to its source, and find the polluted fountain from which it flows. We see the sordid feelings of self-interest pressing down and strangling the gentle spirit of benevolence and charity: we mark the cold, calculating abandonment of principle; the betrayal of friendship; the sale of love; the barter of the soul's salvation for the mess of worldly pottage; and our own hearts grow bitter, and misanthropic, and distrustful: to us all men are devils, and all women something worse.

'But again a change comes over us. The torch that has been held up before us, that we might gaze at others, is reversed, and we are compelled to look into our own bosoms. The light falls upon the dungeon, and the secrets of our own hearts are revealed to us. Alas for the sight! The passions we have been condemning in others, are rioting uncontrolled within our own bosoms. The demons of envy, hatred, malice, lust, covetousness, ambition, are holding their mad revelry in the inmost recesses of our hearts. Vice is the ruling potentate, Sin the prime minister, of the throne. Gaze long and earnestly, reader, ere you turn away, for on that look rests your everlasting fate! If in disclosing to you your own imperfection, it also casts a light upon a path that will lead you afar off from the evils of the flesh; if it give you resolution to follow in that straight and narrow way, well will it be for you that you have learned in time the history of

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