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EDITORS' TABLE.

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THE TRAITOR ARNOLD. It was our purpose, in the present number, to have compiled an article of some length, embracing incidents connected with the later career of BENEDICT ARNOLD, as well as one or two important events in our national history; but as we are promised by the gentleman from whom we received the autograph letters to which we have before alluded, a number of others of equal interest among them two or three which were addressed by Major ANDRE to Arnold- we shall postpone the article in question, until our friend shall have obtained these documents from the papers of a near relative, who was the traitor's executor. One of ARNOLD's letters, now before us, is dated at Crown-Point, 19th May, 1775. It is endorsed Addressed to Congress,' and was doubtless read by WASHINGTON himself. It is much worn and defaced by time; but the following extract, so unlike the treason which subsequently handed the writer's name down to infamy, will be found to possess not a little interest: 'My last was of the 14th inst., by Mr. ROMAN, via New-Haven. I then acquainted you with the occasion of delay in not carrying your orders into execution. The afternoon of the same day, being joined by Captains BROWN and OSWALD, with fifty men enlisted on the road, they having taken possession of a small schooner at Shrewsborough, we immediately proceeded on our way to St. Johns, and at eight o'clock, A. M., the 17th inst., arrived within ninety leagues of the town. The weather being calm, we manned but two small batteaux with thirty-five men, and the next morning at six o'clock arrived at St. Johns, and surprised and took a sergeant and his party of twelve men, and the king's sloop-of-war of seventy tons, with two brass six-pounders and seven men, without any loss on either side. The captain was gone to Montreal, and hourly expected with a large detachment for Ticonderoga, and a number of guns and carriages for the sloop, which was just fixed for sailing. Add to this, there was a captain and forty men at Chamblé, twelve miles distant from St. Johns, who were expected there every minute with his party; so that it seemed to be a mere interposition of Providence, that we arrived in so fortunate an hour. We took such stores on board as were valuable, and the wind proving favorable, in two hours after our arrival we weighed anchor for this place, with the sloop and four of the brig's batteaux, having destroyed five others; so that there is not left a single batteau for the king's troops, or Canadians, or Indians, to cross the lake, if they have any such intention. I must, in justice

to Col. ALLEN, observe, that he left Crown-Point soon after me, for St. Johns, with one hundred and fifty men; and on my return from there, I met him five leagues this side, and supplied him with provisions, his men being in a starving condition. He informed me of his intention of proceeding on to St. Johns, with eighty or an hundred men, and keeping possession there.' (ETHAN ALLEN, 'all over !') 'It appeared to me a wild, impracticable scheme; and even provided it could be carried into execution, of no consequence, so long as we are masters of the lake, and that I am determined to be, by immediately arming the sloop and schooner.' 'I wrote you, gentlemen, in my former letters, that I should be extremely glad to be superseded in my command here, as I find it next to impossible to repair the old fort at Ticonderoga, and I am not qualified to direct in building a new one. I am really of opinion that it will be necessary

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to employ one thousand or fifteen hundred men here this summer, in which I have the pleasure to be joined in sentiment by Mr. ROMAN, who is esteemed an able engineer. I am making all possible provision of wheeled carriages, to carry such cannon, etc., to Albany as can be spared from here, and will be serviceable to our army at Cambridge. . . I beg leave to observe, that I have had intimations given me, that some persons had determined to apply to the Provincial Congress to injure me in your esteem, by misrepresenting matters of fact. I know no other motive (cause) they can have, only my refusing them commissions, for the very simple reason that I did not think them qualified. However, gentlemen, I have the satisfaction of imagining I am employed by gentlemen of so much candor, that my conduct will not be condemned until I have an opportunity of being heard. I am, with the greatest respect, gentlemen, your most devoted, humble servant,

B. ARNOLD.'

In reading the first draft of such a letter as this, in ARNOLD's own hand-writing, and reflecting upon his subsequent wickedness and folly, the fate of 'Lucifer, Son of the Morning,' will be the first simile that will suggest itself to the mind of a true-hearted American.

ARNOLD seems not to have been considered altogether frank and trust-worthy, even at this period. General GATES, in an autograph letter now before us, dated 'HeadQuarters, 25th August, 1775,' writes, among other things, to ARNOLD: 'SIR: I am confident you told me last night that you did not intend to leave Cambridge entirely, until the express sent by your friend returned from General SCHUYLER. Lest I should have been mistaken, I am directed by His Excellency, General WASHINGTON to request you to resolve to wait the return of that express. I have laid your plan before the General, who will converse with you upon it, when you next meet,' etc.... That the traitor did not lack the virtuous inculcations of a fond and pious parent, is evinced by a tattered and almost illegible letter, written by his mother, and dated at Norwich, (Conn.,) in April, 1754, and addressed to him at Canterbury, 'Dear child,' she writes, 'I received yours of the 1st inst., and was glad to hear that you was well. Pray, my dear, let your first concern be, to make your peace with God, as it is of all concerns of ye greatest importance. Keep a steady watch over your thoughts, words, and actions. Be dutiful to superiors, obliging to equals, and affable to inferiors. . . I have sent you fifty shillings. Use it prudently, as you are accountable to God and your father.'

The 'Robinson House, or Reminiscences of West-Point and Arnold the Traitor,' in our last issue, has attracted much attention, and has been widely copied throughout the Union. A friend has sent us a communication from Dr. HALL, of East Hartford, Connecticut, a surgeon in the army of the revolution, and who stood within four or five rods of Major ANDRE, when he was executed. He notices some statements of our correspondent, which he considers a little inaccurate. He informs us that ANDRE walked to the place of execution behind the cart, accompanied by two officers, one on each side, and stopped under the gallows. Arrived there, he immediately stepped up into the cart, when the officer of the day, Colonel SCAMMELL, said to him, 'If you have any thing to say, you now have an opportunity.' He replied, 'I have nothing to say, but to have you bear witness that I die like a brave man.' Colonel SCAMMELL then said to the hangman, 'Do your duty.' He went to work so awkwardly in attempting to put the noose over ANDRE's neck, that ANDRE took it from him, and made an effort to do it himself. But his hat being in the way, he let go the rope, took off his hat and stock, and laid them on the coffin, and unbuttoned his shirt collar, and turned it down. He then put the noose over his head, and adjusted it to his neck; took out of his pocket a white handkerchief, with which he bandaged his eyes; and a blue ribbon, which he handed to the executioner, requesting him to tie his hands behind him. This being done, Colonel SCAMMELL directed the cart to be driven away. ANDRE was a small man, and seemed hardly to stretch the rope, and his legs dangled so much, that the hangman was ordered to take hold of them and keep them straight. The body was cut down after

hanging fifteen or twenty minutes, and buried near the gallows. From the location of the grave, ANDRE must have passed it in going to the place of execution. The Doctor thinks the account relative to the attempts made by WASHINGTON to secure ARNOLD and liberate ANDRE, must be incorrect. The court which sentenced ANDRE to death having been held on the 29th of September, only three days before his execution, the time allowed was not, he imagines, sufficient to permit such plans to be successfully carried out, especially the one in which CHAMPE was said to have been concerned.

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THEATRICALS: NEW THEATRES, ETC.-. An apology is due to 'A Thirty Years' Theatre-Goer, and a Lover of the True Drama,' for the none appearance of his communication in the present number; but its insertion would have excluded much of our usual variety in this department, and compelled us to omit various matters to which we had promised to advert. We agree entirely with our correspondent in his views of theatricals in general, and especially of the policy of founding new theatres, to divide and temporarily dissipate that patronage which, directed to two or three well-established houses, would increase the edification of play-goers, and reward deserving managers for their enterprise and expenditures. This the public have discovered, sooner or later, to be the invariable result. How many theatres,' so called the hobbies of ambitious and unattractive actors, out alike of favor and of place- have arisen, struggled, and fallen, within the recollection of our readers, in the principal cities of the Union! And yet, did they ever know or hear of one that was not in the full tide of success,' until the very last night before the concern' was sold out by the sheriff? BLACKWOOD has a capital paper upon this subject, which we recommend to the attention of the reader. No sooner, says that journal, in effect, is a vacant establishment to let, by an unlucky owner, than some ultra-adventurous performer, who has ceased 'to draw,' comes forward, and pronounces his predecessors fools, and their failures natural consequences; vows with vows that his mode is the only sure way to wealth; expends his small capital in the first three months; his credit, if he has, or can obtain any, in the next three; reserving the remainder of the year for quarrels with his actors, suits with his creditors, and vain attempts to get new terms from the owner, by new 'promises to pay.' We ask, is not this a true picture?—and is it not a familiar one in many of our principal cities? cities, too, that are not particularly dramatic, or theatrically inclined? 'But,' the reader will ask, 'are not the public naturally attracted to new establishments, when reports of 'unprecedented success!' 'unbounded applause!' and 'crowded houses!' fill the journals of the day? Perhaps so: but read the late work of Mr. BUNN, a gentleman whose long experience enables him to 'speak by book,' for a description of the modus operandi by which these deceptions are practised upon the play-going public, to the division of theatrical support, and the serious injury of the drama. Among the expedients, he tells us, that are resorted to -for the first few months of a new and 'successful establishment' to obtain probationary audiences, and 'nightly applause,' are a liberal issue of gratuitous 'orders,' and a judicious disposal abont the house of the 'sons of freedom' who enter by their aid. On the strength of this unproductive auditory, and the 'immense favor' bestowed by a planted party of claqueurs, the editors of public journals are enabled, 'from the appearance of the house, to congratulate the manager upon his good fortune!' The moral of all this-which will apply even more forcibly here than in England is, that while 'competition is the life of business' in general, the apothegm is one which will not apply to the business of PLAYING; that established theatres, linked with the recollections of play-goers, from childhood up to man and womanhood, have claims for past as well as present enterprise and exertion, and should not, even temporarily, be defrauded of their natural support by unfounded pretension and deceptive appearances.

*Metropolitan Stage:' Number for August.

'VITA INCERTA, MORS CERTISSIMA!''Death,' says an eloquent and quaint father, 'is continually walking the rounds of a great city, and sooner or later, stops at every man's door. Ever he steppeth onward, with iron foot, treading down all that comes in his way; heedless whether it be the young seedling or the swelling blossom, the lordly tree or the withering plant, that he crushes. Therefore remember this: a mortal of fourscore is young enough to live; an infant of a day is old enough to die.' Doubtless we have but shared the lot of many of our readers, in being called to witness, within a brief space, two illustrations of the admonitory truths of the quaint moralist. .. Children and grand-children stood by the lifeless remains of A MOTHER, who, full of years and full of honors, was called, 'in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,' to lay down her blameless life. It was not difficult to trace the thoughts of the weeping daughter by that coffin's side. Childhood, and youth, and womanhood, and the various vicissitudes of each, were all connected with the thousand endearments and tendernesses, the cares and anxieties, of that departed being, who could never more return! The scenes of life's morning were again fresh in remembrance; its endearing associations thick-clustering in that almost bursting heart. And mingled with these, came recollections of Nature and its phases, at the old homestead, which could seem never like home again; the blue lake, in calm or storm, the winding-path by its breezy shore; the garden-walk, the bloomy orchard; and twined with these, thoughts of the first separation from so beloved a scene; the absence at a far-distant school; the letters, full of maternal affec tion the glad return! Close linked with ALL, was that pale corse, so cold and still, that loved as none else can love! And when other affections held divided empire in that daughter's heart, and the depths of a MOTHER's love were no longer mysteries, still was that deathless affection unchanged, or changed but to be mingled with a love like its own. But hard by, there is another and a different scene. A young mother is bending over the little coffin of her infant boy. She is disposing a few white roses around his sweet face, and tears, like 'drops of the morning,' bedew them as they fall. She is thinking, alas! of that cherub smile, which no more can inform those faded features with a heavenly light; of the joyous glee that sparkled ever in those dear eyes, whose surpassing lustre even disease itself could not dim; she is thinking of the time when the thin, wasted hands that are now folded upon that quiet bosom, sought a mother's neck; and of the unspeakable love with which she pressed that pale, cold baby to her yearning heart! Thoughts of his lingering illness, his patient suffering, his last dying glance, are seen in her quivering lip, her heaving bosom, her burning tears. Yes:

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Yet Time, the restorer, will enable thee, fond mother! to look back with a 'sweet sorrow' upon this bitter hour; to think without grief of thy babe, as he lay in calm and sinless peace in his little shroud; and of the sad day in which his body

- to the grave did go, Larded all with flowers;'

while his innocent spirit found repose in the bosom of his Father in Heaven.

-

'TAILORS AND THE TAILORED.'- We saw not long since, in an English magazine, a paper entitled, if we remember rightly, 'A Quarrel with certain Old Acquaintances,' in which a variety of dusty apothegms, that have been promulgated as law and gospel from generation to generation, were sifted of the errors which they contained, and exposed to the contempt they deserved. There is a wonderful vigor of constitution in a popular absurdity; and many a custom and many a saying is perpetuated, against reason and common sense, and not unfrequently against common propriety and decency. Who can inform us who that 'DICK' was, that had so odd a hat-band? or that 'BETTY MARTIN,' who is never mentioned without allusion to the speaker's eye? And what, to come at once to our subject, was the origin of the slur upon that most respectable body of citizens whom we denominate TAILORS?- and why has it been handed down to this late day? Why is it, that artizans who are 'the making' of one half of the great community of young bucks among us, cannot hear a play, or read a humorous story, without finding their profession held up to ridicule, and their brethren loaded with insulting and disdainful epithets? What sanctions such an outrage, but a hereditary freak of the tyrant Custom? Why is so unjust an amber immortalization permitted, in a country where all are free and equal? Take this profession as a mass, and where will you find a more respectable class of men? Unworthy exceptions there doubtless are, and not a few, it may be; but as a class, for intelligence, gentlemanly bearing, and the qualities that go to constitute good men and good citizens, where do you find their superiors? And yet many a smart young 'gentleman' without brains, many a star among the minor fashionables, who lives upon the minimum of gentility, thinks himself entitled to look down, in a social point of view, upon the tailor who made him; and we see the unworthy prejudice which actuates him repeated in every form of dullness in print, and varied in every attitude of burlesque on the stage; where this useful, this indispensable tradesman is invariably represented as low in stature, meagre in person, and feeble in intellect? Verily, this is 'a sore evil, and to be punished by the judges.' It is an abuse, especially in a republic, which calls for the whip and the branding-iron. Reader, did you ever encounter that rigid churchman, of goodly presence, and pleasing port, G N, now retired to the steady land? Did you ever hear him converse?- or read the Declaration of Independence?· or speak on a public occasion? No? Then have you missed a rich repast. He has a head in which nonsense could never vegetate, and a heart in which meanness can never abide; and we hardly know of a general reader, for whose literary opinion we should entertain more respect. S, once in 'the trade' among us, you would have sworn was born polite what the French expressively term placé ; and yet his was no shallow courtesy: his heart was full of benevolence; he possessed a variety of self-acquired erudition; was always cheerful and in good humor, without noise or uproariousness. There is J E, too, one of the most popular artists in the profession; with the quiet self-possession of good-breeding; a delicate and refined taste ; manners modest without bashfulness, frank and affable without impertinence, and obliging and complaisant without servility: yet such men as these are nightly held up to indiscriminate ridicule, by the 'supes' of a theatre, who at night 'vend their lavish grins and tricks for gain,' and call for the pay the next morning at the box-office, to buy beer with We hope this article will meet the eye of the young gentleman' who persuades himself that he fills a large space in the public eye, but who is indebted to the incomparable JOYCE for the graceful 'outer man' which constitutes his only attraction; and that he will not again disturb a whole box at the Park Theatre with prolonged and enthusiastic comments upon the faithfulness of one of the grossest caricatures of a tailor that ever disgraced the stage. And having done battle for the defenceless and the right, we here doff our armor - first acquitting POWER, the inimitable, of any part or lot in the offensive burlesque to which we refer. His 'Irish Lion' is sui generis, and portrays an individual, and not a class, indiscriminately; or in his own words, 'a distinct ganus of a different specie,'

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