  DEFINITION OF TRANSCENDENTALISM.The spiritual cognoscence of psychological irrefragibility connected with concutient ademption of incolumnient spirituality and etherialized contention of subsultory concretion. Translated by a New York lawyer, it stands thus:— Transcendentalism is two holes in a sand-bank: a storm washes away the sand-bank without disturbing the holes. THE DOMICILE ERECTED BY JOHN.Translated from the Vulgate. Behold the Mansion reared by dÆdal Jack. See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack, In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac. Mark how the Rat’s felonious fangs invade The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid. Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides, Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides,— Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent. Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault, That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt, Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall That rose complete at Jack’s creative call. Here stalks the impetuous Cow with crumpled horn, Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew The Rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through The textile fibers that involved the grain Which lay in Hans’ inviolate domain. Here walks forlorn the Damsel crowned with rue, Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs, who drew, Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn, The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur Struck the weird rat in whose insatiate maw Lay reeking malt that erst in Juan’s courts we saw, Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth. Behold the man whose amorous lips incline, Full with young Eros’ osculative sign, To the lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn Distort, to realm ethereal was borne The beast catulean, vexer of that sly Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die The old mordacious Rat that dared devour Antecedaneous Ale in John’s domestic bower. Lo, here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct Of saponaceous locks, the Priest who linked In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift, Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift, Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn, Who milked the cow with implicated horn, Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied, That dared to vex the insidious muricide, Who let auroral effluence through the pelt Of the sly Rat that robbed the palace Jack had built. The loud cantankerous Shanghae comes at last, Whose shouts arouse the shorn ecclesiast, Who sealed the vows of Hymen’s sacrament, To him who, robed in garments indigent, Exosculates the damsel lachrymose, The emulgator of that horned brute morose, That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that kilt The rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built. FROM THE CURIOSITIES OF ADVERTISING.TO BE LET, To an Oppidan, a Ruricolist, or a Cosmopolitan, and may be entered upon immediately: The House in Stone Row, lately possessed by Capt. Siree. To avoid Verbosity, the Proprietor with Compendiosity will give a Perfunctory description of the Premises, in the Compagination of which he has Sedulously studied the convenience of FROM THE CURIOSITIES OF THE POST-OFFICE.The following is a genuine epistle, sent by an emigrant country schoolmaster to a friend at home:— Mr M. Connors With congruous gratitude and decorum I accost to you this debonnaire communication. And announce to you with amicable Complacency that we continually enjoy competent laudable good health, thanks to our omnipotent Father for it. We are endowed with the momentous prerogatives of respectable operations of a supplement concuity of having a fine brave and gallant youthful daughter the pendicity ladies age is four months at this date, we denominated her Margaret Connolly. I have to respond to the Communication and accost and remit a Convoy revealing with your identity candor and sincerity. If your brother who had been pristinely located and stationed in England whether he has induced himself with ecstasy to be in preparation to progress with you. I am paid by the respectable potent loyal nobleman that I work for one dollar per day. Announce to us in what Concuity the crops and the products of husbandry dignify, also predict how is John Carroll and his wife and family. My brother and Myself are continually Don’t you permit oblivion to obstruct you from inserting this. Prognosticate how Mrs Harrington is and if she accept my intelligence or any convoy from either of Her 2 progenies since their embarkation for this nation. If she has please specify with congruous and elysian gratitude with validity and veracity to my magnanimous self. I remit my respects to my former friends and acquaintances. I remain D. Connolly. P.S. Direct your Epistle to Pembroke, State of Maine. Dear brother-in-law I am determined and candidly arrive at Corolary, as I am fully resolved to transfer a sufficient portion of money to you to recompense your liabilities from thence to hence. I hope your similar operations will not impede any occurrence that might obstruct your progression on or at the specified time the 17 of March next. SPANISH PLAY-BILL,Exhibited at Seville, 1762. To the Sovereign of Heaven—to the Mother of the Eternal World—to the Polar Star of Spain—to the Comforter of all Spain—to the faithful Protectress of the Spanish nation—to the Honor and Glory of the Most Holy Virgin Mary—for her benefit and for the Propagation of her Worship—the Company of Comedians will this day give a representation of the Comic Piece called— NANINE. The celebrated Italian will also dance the Fandango, and the Theatre will be respectably illuminated. In a medical work entitled The Breviarie of Health, published in 1547, by Andrew Borde, a physician of that period, is a prologue addressed to physicians, beginning thus:— Egregious doctors and masters of the eximious and arcane science of physic, of your urbanity exasperate not yourselves against me for making this little volume. THE MAD POET.McDonald Clarke, commonly called the mad poet, died a few years ago in the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, New York. He wrote those oft-quoted lines,— Now twilight lets her curtain down, And pins it with a star. In his wilder moments he set all rules at defiance, and mingled the startlingly sublime and the laughably ridiculous in the oddest confusion. He talks thus madly of Washington:— Eternity—give him elbow room; A spirit like his is large; Earth, fence with artillery his tomb, And fire a double charge To the memory of America’s greatest man: Match him, posterity, if you can. In the following lines, he sketches, with a few bold touches, a well-known place, sometimes called a rum-hole:— Ha! see where the wild-blazing grogshop appears, As the red waves of wretchedness swell; How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years, The horrible light-house of hell! FOOTE’S FARRAGO.The following droll nonsense was written by Foote, the dramatist, for the purpose of trying the memory of Macklin, who boasted that he could learn any thing by heart on hearing it once:— So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and, at the same time, a great she-bear coming up the street pops its head into the shop—What! no soap? So he died; and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblilies, and the Garyulies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top. And they all fell to playing the game of “catch as catch can,” till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots! BURLESQUE OF THE STYLE OF DR. JOHNSON.While I was admiring the fantastical ramifications of some umbelliferous plants that hung over the margin of the Liffey, the fallacious bank, imperceptibly corroded by the moist tooth of the fluid, gave way beneath my feet, and I was suddenly submerged to some fathoms of profundity. Presence of mind, in constitutions not naturally timid, is generally in proportion to the imminence of the peril. Having never learned to move through the water in horizontal progression, had I desponded, I had perished; but, being for a moment raised above the element by my struggles, or by some felicitous casualty, I was sensible of the danger, and immediately embraced the means of extrication. A cow, at the moment of my lapse, had entered the stream, within the distance of a protruded arm; and being in the act of transverse navigation to seek the pasture of the opposite bank, I laid hold on that part of the animal which is loosely pendent behind, and is formed by the continuation of the vertebrÆ. In this manner I was safely conveyed to a fordable passage, not without some delectation from the sense of the progress without effort on my part, and the exhilarating approximation of more than problematical deliverance. Though in some respects I resembled the pilot of Gyas, Jam senior madidaque fluens in veste, yet my companions, unlike the barbarous Phrygian spectators, forbore to acerbitate the uncouthness of embarrassment by the insults of derision. Shrieks of complorance testified sorrow for my submersion, and safety was rendered more pleasant by the felicitations of sympathy. As the danger was over, I took no umbrage at a little risibility excited by the feculence of my visage, upon which the cow had discharged her gramineous digestion in a very ludicrous abundance. About this time the bell summoned us to dinner; and, as the cutaneous contact of irrigated garments is neither pleasant nor salubrious, I was easily persuaded by the ladies to divest myself of mine. Colonel Manly obligingly accommodated me with a covering of camlet. I found it commodious, NEWSPAPER EULOGY.The following alliterative eulogy on a young lady appeared, many years ago, in a newspaper:— If boundless benevolence be the basis of beatitude, and harmless humanity a harbinger of hallowed heart, these Christian concomitants composed her characteristics, and conciliated the esteem of her cotemporary acquaintances, who mean to model their manners in the mould of their meritorious monitor. CLEAR AS MUD.In a series of Philosophical Essays published many years ago, the author A coincidence between the association of ideas, and the order or succession of events or phenomena, according to the relation of cause and effect, and in whatever is subsidiary, or necessary to realize, approximate and extend such coincidence; understanding, by the relation of cause and effect, that order or INDIGNANT LETTER.Addressed to a Louisiana clergyman by a Virginia correspondent. Sir:—You have behaved like an impetiginous acroyli—like those inquinate orosscrolest who envious of my moral celsitude carry their mugacity to the height of creating symposically the fecund words which my polymathic genius uses with uberity to abligate the tongues of the weightless. Sir, you have corassly parodied my own pet words, as though they were tangrams. I will not conceroate reproaches. I would obduce a veil over the atramental ingratitude which has chamiered even my undisceptible heart. I am silent on the foscillation which my coadful fancy must have given you when I offered to become your fanton and adminicle. I will not speak of the liptitude, the ablepsy you have shown in exacerbating me; one whose genius you should have approached with mental discalceation. So, I tell you, Sir, syncophically and without supervacaneous words, nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me. I warn you that I will vellicate your nose if I thought your moral diathesis could be thereby performed. If I thought that I should not impigorate my reputation by such a degladiation. Go tagygraphic; your oness inquinate draws oblectation from the greatest poet since Milton, and draws upon your head this letter, which will drive you to Webster, and send you to sleep over it. “Knowledge is power,” and power is mercy; so I wish you no rovose that it may prove an external hypnotic. INTRAMURAL ÆSTIVATION.In candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool’s conferva-scum; No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,— Depart,—be off,—excede,—evade,—erump! Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. A CHEMICAL VALENTINE.I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me, Our mutual flame is like the affinity That doth exist between two simple bodies. I am Potassium to thy Oxygen; ’Tis little that the holy marriage vow Shall shortly make us one. That unity Is, after all, but metaphysical. Oh! would that I, my Mary, were an Acid— A living Acid; thou an Alkali Endowed with human sense; that, brought together, We both might coalesce into one Salt, One homogeneous crystal. Oh that thou Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen! We would unite to form olefiant gas, Or common coal, or naphtha. Would to heaven That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime, And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret! I’d be content to be Sulphuric Acid, So that thou mightst be Soda. In that case, We should be Glauber’s Salt. Wert thou Magnesia Instead, we’d form the salt that’s named from Epsom. Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aquafortis, Our happy union should that compound form, And thus, our several natures sweetly blent We’d live and love together, until death Should decompose this fleshly Tertium Quid, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated! Sweet, thy name is Briggs, And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs? We will! the day, the happy day is nigh, When Johnson shall with beauteous Briggs combine. THE ANATOMIST TO HIS DULCINEA.I list as thy heart and ascending aorta Their volumes of valvular harmony pour; And my soul from that muscular music has caught a New life ’mid its dry anatomical lore. Oh, rare is the sound when thy ventricles throb In a systolic symphony measured and slow, When the auricles answer with rhythmical sob, As they murmur a melody wondrously low! Oh, thy cornea, love, has the radiant light Of the sparkle that laughs in the icicle’s sheen; And thy crystalline lens, like a diamond bright, Through the quivering frame of thine iris is seen! And thy retina, spreading its lustre of pearl, Like the far-away nebula, distantly gleams From a vault of black cellular mirrors that hurl From their hexagon angles the silvery beams. Ah! the flash of those orbs is enslaving me still, As they roll ’neath the palpebrÆ, dimly translucent, Obeying in silence the magical will Of the oculo-motor—pathetic—abducent. Oh, sweet is thy voice, as it sighingly swells From the daintily quivering chordÆ vocales, Or rings in clear tones through the echoing cells Of the antrum, the ethmoid, and sinus frontales! ODE TO SPRING.WRITTEN IN A LAWYER’S OFFICE. Whereas on sundry boughs and sprays Now divers birds are heard to sing, And sundry flowers their heads upraise— Hail to the coming on of Spring! Love midst the aforesaid boughs enshrines In household nests, themselves, their heirs, Administrators, and assigns. The songs of the said birds arouse The memory of our youthful hours. As young and green as the said boughs, As fresh and fair as the said flowers. O busiest term of Cupid’s court! When tender plaintiffs actions bring; Season of frolic and of sport, Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring! PRISTINE PROVERBS PREPARED FOR PRECOCIOUS PUPILS.Observe yon plumed biped fine! To effect his captivation, Deposit particles saline Upon his termination. Cryptogamous concretion never grows On mineral fragments that decline repose. Whilst self-inspection it neglects, Nor its own foul condition sees, The kettle to the pot objects Its sordid superficies. Decortications of the golden grain Are set to allure the aged fowl, in vain. Teach not a parent’s mother to extract The embryo juices of an egg by suction: That good old lady can the feat enact, Quite irrespective of your kind instruction. Pecuniary agencies have force To stimulate to speed the female horse. Bear not to yon famed city upon Tyne The carbonaceous product of the mine. The mendicant, once from his indigence freed, And mounted aloft on the generous steed, Down the precipice soon will infallibly go, And conclude his career in the regions below. It is permitted to the feline race To contemplate even a regal face. |
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