such an infinite variety of tortures in this world, that it is no place for him, and the sooner he huddles his worried spirit off elsewhere, the better will it be for him. If there is any man in whom the original curse attains to perfection, it is he. If suicide were ever justifiable, it would be so with him.

sense. There are so many tedious passages in "Paradise Lost," that it requires the mind of an Hercules to take a reader through it. Byron, he thinks, might have been a poet, if his talent and taste and heart had been greater and better than they were. As for Rabelais, his obscenity is insurmountable, and Swift In "fresh lipped youth," the fastidious and Sterne are but little better in that respect, man goes into society, his heart swelling and infinitely less in every other. Scott he within him with visions of beauty, and his deems scarcely respectable, and Bulwer is brow radiant with the morning beams of altogether a bundle of glittering mistakes. hope. He has a beau ideal of every thing, Dr. Johnson was so savage, and Bozzy was and he expects every thing to realize it. He such a toady, and Burke was such a traitor, is first shocked, and then disgusted, with the and Sheridan such a profligate, that he thinks spectacles which greet his vision. Some in- each and every one of them should be banishgenious milliner has taxed her talents and ed from the hearts of men. In fact, if he the result is seen attaching itself to, and de- had to say who should enter the Pantheon forming, the fair forms of loveliness which of Genius, scarce one of the literary giants glide like visions of poetry before his ad- who tower like the Anakim of old in the miring gaze. Henceforth, he sees nothing shadows of the past, would find entrance but it. It haunts him like a woe-denouncing within its hallowed precincts. He is dubiphantom. In the ecstacies of an outraged ous of Lamb's pretensions to humor, and taste, he deems Fashion the most senseless calls the whole Lake school "inspired idiof deities, and her flaunting votaries the sil- ots," as Walpole called Goldsmith before liest of idolators. Such an one, he says, him. His exquisite taste finds entire gratiwould be beautiful, but for an unbecoming fication nowhere. There is no book, and ribin, or tress. Nothing on this side of scarcely a page in any book, which is unobabsolute perfection can please him, and his jectionable. With him, the legitimate object search is as protracted and as fruitless as that for which reading is instituted, is neither to of Diogenes for a wise man. He looks for find wisdom, or pleasure, or amusement, but what is sprightly, and the most meaningless to find fault with words, and styles, and senabsurdities alone are to be seen. There is tences; and to question the propriety of the no beauty that is not blemished-no good world's verdict in regard to those who have that is unshadowed-no grace which does flung halos of glory around nations and eras. not approximate to affectedness-no action In philosophy he finds nothing but false logic, which does not strongly incline to awkward- jargon and error. In history he perceives ness-no smile that might not be sweeter-nothing but lies, and flattering pictures of the no glance that might not be brighter-no tigers of their species. Biography he convoice that doth not lack melody, and no person around whom some gross impropriety is not discoverable. He soon arrives at the consolatory conclusion, that he alone is an embodiment of all the human excellences, and that all others are in some important respects incurable fools.

Your fastidious man is the most unfortunate of critics. The Alexandrian Library itself could not have presented him with a work in which he would not have discovered a thousand glaring faults. Talk to him of favorite authors, and he thanks his stars that he has none, and that his sagacity is too discriminating to suffer imposition and quackery in literature to be practised on him. Not a play of Shakspeare can be mentioned, in which his acute eye hath not discovered errors in plot, and character, and rhythm, and

siders but another term for improbable fiction, and poetry is what Locke called it, "ingenious nonsense," or only the half of that. He will candidly confess that some authors are tolerable, but as to the great mass of those whose names are fixed stars in the heavens of literature, he can see but little to admire and less to respect.

A friend asks a fastidious man for his opinion of a house he has lately built and the grounds he has laid out adjacent thereto, and he finds the one utterly destitute of comfort and the other of beauty. He is not a profound admirer of the Doric, the Corinthian, or the Ionian order of architecture. There is neither city, town nor village in the land, whose streets do not exhibit spectacles which cause him intense agony-for the streets are too wide or too narrow-the houses are too

high or too low-and the general appear-¦ If a lady should sneeze, or laugh too loud, ance of things is a very burlesque on beauty or yawn, or utter a sillyism, it would fling and taste. He thinks the clouds are too fiery the cup of pleasure from his lips, even if it at eventide, and too purplish at morn. No were sparkling there the moment before. storm cloud rises with consummate majesty. Lightning is too vivid, and thunder is too coarse. The rose has too many leaves and the lily too few. Summer is too hot-autumn too somber-winter too cheerlessand spring too fickle. The rainbow is not devoid of beauty, but then it is susceptible of improvement. The winds either lack heat or cold, gentleness or fury. The music of birds wants melody and sentiment. Flowers are too gaudy or too grave. In fine, not one of the ten thousand beauties of sight and sound, which nature presents to the contemplation of philosophers or the fancies of poets, is perfect, and therefore it fails to afford him that exquisite gratification he had a right to look for.

Neither does a desertion of nature and an entrance into the haunts of men, enhance his enjoyments an iota. Wherever he meets a man, he is sure to encounter that which his fastidiousness abhors. If he goes to church, he is sure to hear some absurd doctrine, or some specimen of unmitigated stupidity. He looks around him and sees nothing but indications of a "vanity fair." If he goes to the theater, the matter is worse. In box, pit, stage and elsewhere, innumerable improprieties present themselves to his attention. Indeed, here the catalogue of horrors is almost endless. Specification would be quite impossible. Betterton, Garrick and Siddons united, could not charm his notice away from what is so glaring and so outrageous. He goes to a concert. But some violin is out of tune, or some singer's voice is harsh, or loud, or so low as to be inaudible, or so inconsiderate as to jumble its sounds together with a most horribly discordant effect. It is a mere Babel of sound, unmeaning and most unmelodious, or a mock Bedlam where the lover of symphony must have his ear split with tones, that may be good enough for the groundlings, but are unfit to fall on the tympanum of a man of taste. In every little social circle, into which he is so imprudent as to enter, he sees nothing to give him unalloyed satisfaction. The talk is wishy-washy, or profoundly dull. The ladies think of nothing but the snares they are setting to catch boobies, and the boobies think of nothing but their own exquisite legs, or the more exquisite tights which hug them.

Perhaps your fastidious man gets in love, for Cupid is no respecter of persons, and has a spare dart even for such a heart as beats in his bosom withal. If he gets into such a predicament, his is a most perplexing destiny, for the time being. A perpetual conflict is waged between passion and disgust for the object of his affections. He sees in her so much to love and so much to loathe, that his bit of brain becomes perfectly bewildered in the excitement of contending convictions and feelings. The slightest defection from propriety in any word, look, or action, committed by his inamorata, flings a gloom over his whole after destiny. In the delirium of his emotions, he speaks the words which bring tears to the eyes of his sweetheart, or stern reproofs from her insulted spirits. A lover's quarrel ensues. Your fastidious man always fares the worse for these little ripplings in the stream of love. He cannot bear to apologize, or if he does, the recollection of what inspired his disgust is an ever-present and all-torturing memory. The crisis approaches which is to seal his destiny to irretrievable shadow or sunlight. Visions of the former preponderate. He hesitates what to do. He staggers-he blunders-he falls, and the lady casts him off as she would a worn-out ribin. He mourns the cruelty of his fate. In after times, he is temporarily enamored of different imagined angels, but something always comes up in time to rescue him from the fangs of an evil destiny. At length, weary of himself and of his disgusts-out of hope, and bankrupt in expected joys-with a mind soured by disappointments, and a heart long deserted by its visions of pre-eminent lovelinesshe unites himself with one who is the very consummation of all his fancy in its darkest moods pictured, and he lingers on, a subdued and a saddened man, a mark for all that is direful in destiny and overwhelming in misfortune, until the spirit is fairly and unfairly fagged out of him, and his head reclines upon the bosom of his mother earth, songless and epitaphless, the victim of fastidiousness, which hath no kindly star in all the onlooking heavens.

Experience, however beneficial her lessons on other subjects may be, does not of ten correct one's fastidiousness. The older

Some gay creature of the elements,
That in the colors of the rainbow lives,
And plays in the plighted clouds-

we grow, the more fastidious we become. An acquaintance with the world, by which we are informed that the fairest and loveliest and noblest specimens of our race are not turns out to be a being much less spiritual. entirely free from blemishes, and which as- He retires in disgust, and in proportion to sures us that absolute perfection is unattain- his previous hopes and delights is his disapable on this side of heaven, but seldom serves pointment. The lady has uttered a sarcasm to rationalize a fastidious taste. Your fas--she has smiled on the attentions of a fool tidious man, borrowing energy from his re--she has turned down her under lip in scorn peated disappointments, presses forward on and bitterness--she has been guilty of some his hopeless enterprise with additional vigor, indelicacy of thought, some vulgarity of until despair has claimed him for a victim. speech, or some ungracefulness of action, We begin by being particular-we grow to and in consequence, she is utterly disparabe squeamish-we become fastidious, and ged in his estimation, for it is the peculiar end in despair. Through these successive province of fastidiousness to overlook an stages the fastidious man passes, and he who hundred beauties to dwell on the solitary at twenty was silly, is at forty a fool. The blemish. eye accustomed to dwelling on blemishes, soon loses its power of discerning beauties. beautiful and fascinating, but who, unfortuThe restless spirit, yearning for companionship, roves hither and thither, and not finding that which it craves, at length, in its despairing moments, links its hopes and its fears with one which is wholly uncongenial, and unfitted to be its minister through the ever-changing scenes of life.

"As the lone dove to far Palmyra flying

From where its native founts of Antioch beam, Wearied, exhausted, panting, longing, sighing, Stops sadly at the desert's bitter stream,

"So many a soul o'er life's drear desert faring,

Love's pure congenial spring unfound, unquaffed,
Suffers, recoils, then weary and despairing
Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest
draught."

I have a friend who is exceedingly fastid-
ious in his tastes. In the silence of his study,
or in his ramblings abroad in the solitudes
of nature, he, at times, gives himself up to
visions of loveliness, such as the young heart
loves before its sensibilities have been
blighted by the evil experiences of life. He
is an adorer of the Ideal; some pure "being
of the mind," some unshadowed Egeria of
the fancy, comes up before him, and to it he
yields the incense of the spirit. Fresh from
his visions, and with the memory of their
beautiful phantoms vivid before him, he en-
ters the society of women, in the hope of
realizing in substance what was enchanting
in his musings.
Occasionally he fancies he
has discovered the object of his search, and
temporarily luxuriates in all the hopes and
lights and gay dreams which such a discov-
ery never fails to awaken. But his delight,
ecstatic while it lasts, is of only short dura-
The truth soon becomes apparent,
and she who to his fancy seemed

tion.

I knew a lady who, when young, was

nately was also fastidious. Her numerous admirers strove to woo and win the favors of the bright eyed goddess in a thousand ways, but there was always something in the devotion, or the manner of offering it, which to her fastidiousness was unpardonable. She dismissed admirers by the score. The older she became the less charity she felt for blemishes. In course of time her power to fascinate diminished. Adulation and idolatry were less frequently offered at her shrine. Instead of being softened, she was only hardened by her previous experience, and her fastidiousness became consummated. She soon failed to receive pleasure in society, because of the manifest and manifold shortcomings of those around her. In her desires for happiness and her inability to find it amid the dissipations of fashion, she flew to the sanctuary for relief, and is now a withered member of the church, and at the head of innumerable benevolent institutions. Finding nothing beautiful and perfect on earth, she feeds her love of the Beautiful and the Perfect on the forms of the angels as they swarm before her mind's eye in her visions of Paradise.

Such are some of the miseries which attend the fastidious. A thousand other afflictive evils might be pointed out, but they will probably suggest themselves to every one. How different is it with one who is blessed with a catholic taste. He discovers angels and delights every where. His fancy, fired with the spectacle of beauty, takes no note of blemishes. In every man he perceives materials which fit him for companionship —in every woman he perceives an angel.

Louisville, Ky.

T. H. S.

UNION OF THE STATES.

Is

He spends his days surrounded by beauties | from history of less moment to men, in and pleasures of every hue and kind and reference to their public than their private dreams not that earth is not the Paradise he affairs. The same general laws of action, imagines it to be. The creature of blissful which govern man as a separate and distinct delusions through life, which stern reality member of his species, regulate, also, the cannot remove from him, he dies regretted concerns of societies and nations. The by all, and in his last moments gives one fortunes of the mass are equally as variable glance over past joys and another towards and uncertain, as are those of the isolated those which he is rapidly approaching, and individual: and no extraneous resource feels them to be kindred in nature as they whatever, can preserve them unharmed meet and mingle together in bliss about his against the operations of similar accidents. heaven-tending spirit. A boundless extent of territory, a prolific population, munitions of war, embattled hosts, and all the imposing paraphernalia of aggression and defence, are not always an effectual preservative against a nation's decline, and ultimate and entire extinction. it not so? The proudest and the mightiest empires of earth, have met with the most It is a sage, no less than trite aphorism, signal, and decisive, and tremendous overand one, too, that bears the impress of in- throw. Where is Thebes, with all its trinsic truth and value, that excessive pros- splendid monuments and its hundred gates? perity, in the course of events, necessarily Where is "Babylon the great," with its begets disastrous adversity. If we care- magnificent towers and bulwarks? And fully inspect the career of a single individual, where are Nineveh, and Sparta and Palmyor the embodied history of the human race, ra, and Troy, and the long list of mighty we shall inevitably discover the most indu- cities which flourished in the olden time, bitable evidence of the correctness of this and whose names are heralded by the trump maxim, An exception to this almost univer- of fame? They have all been leveled in sal rule, would be peculiarly a "rara avis," the dust, and their pomp and glory have and much more difficult to be found than vanished into the distant night. The very those verdant oases which are so sparse over spot they occupied has become, in some the arid bosom of the desert. Such being instances, despite of their imagined immorthe case, that individual evinces the utmost tality, a matter of extreme uncertainty. stretch of wisdom, who, conscious of the And thus their history exhibits, in characmutability of external objects, never permits ters of light, the solemn and momentous the dreamy listlessness of a presumptuous se- truth, that political prosperity invariably curity to overpower his spirit. He is most generates those countless forms of corrupprudent and sagacious who fondly grasps, tion which weaken, and impair, and, in the and eagerly appropriates to his own use, event, violently prostrate the edifice of those precepts of experience which are national power and grandeur. "At length legibly traced on every page of the recorded the young disease, which must subdue, transactions of men of like infirmities and grows with the growth, and strengthens passions with himself. By scrutinizing the with the strength." origin, the progress, and the termination of human conduct, he will be able to perceive the obscure relations of cause and effect; and will often discern the most abrupt contrasts firmly united in the impenetrable mysteries of providential enactment. And thus, by marking the unerring course of the "Divinity, who shapes our ends," he will learn, in his own province of duty and usefulness, to select and to avoid, to choose and to reject, as the experience of by-gone ages may direct.

If the preceding suggestions are correct, it is highly fitting that we should occasionally survey the condition and the prospects of our favored Republic-it is peculiarly appropriate that we should examine our present propitious circumstances as contrasted with the earliest and gloomiest periods of our country's history. The "tide of time" is continually bearing us on farther and farther from the auspicious era when our freedom was achieved, and we are becoming rapidly contaminated by the malignant influNor is the priceless wisdom derived ence of the same giant power, which trampled