Lord! this bosom's ardent feeling JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, one of the most prominent journalists of New England, was born at Windham, Connecticut, on the 21st of December, 1779. After working upon a farm till he was sixteen years old, he obtained a situation in the printing-office of David Carlisle, the publisher of "The Farmer's Museum," at Walpole, N. H.; which he left in a few months, and apprenticed himself in the office of the "Greenfield Gazette." In 1800, he went to Boston, and in 1805 he commenced the publication, on his own account, of a magazine, under the title of The Polyanthos. It was suspended in 1807, resumed in 1812, and continued till 1815. In January, 1809, he published the first number of The Ordeal, a political weekly, of sixteen pages, octavo, which was discontinued in six months. In 1817, he commenced, with Samuel L. Knapp, a lawyer of Boston, a weekly paper, entitled The New England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine, which was conducted with great spirit, talent, and independence, and obtained a large circulation. In 1828, he sold it in order to devote his entire attention to "The Boston Courier," a daily paper which he had commenced in March, 1824. He continued to edit the "Courier" with great ability till 1848, when he sold out his interest in this also. In 1831, Mr. Buckingham commenced, in conjunction with his son Edwin, The New England Magazine,—a monthly of ninety-six pages, octavo, and one of the best of its class ever published in our country, containing articles by some of the best writers and most popular authors of the day. In less than two years his son Edwin died at sea, in a voyage undertaken for the benefit of his health; and, in 1834, the magazine was transferred to Dr. Samuel G. Howe and John O.. Sargent. Mr. Buckingham was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for seven years, (four from Boston and three from Cambridge,) and of the Senate four years from Middlesex County. Since he retired from the press, he has published Specimens of Newspaper Literature, with Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes, and. Reminiscences, in two volumes, and Personal Memoirs and Recollections of Editorial Life, also in two volumes. These are very interesting and instructive books, and give us a high opinion of the author, as an industrious and upright man, never discouraged by difficulties; as a writer of pure and nervous English; and as an editor, truthful, independent, courageous, and loving the right more than the expedient. As a legislator, Mr. Buckingham did himself lasting honor by the re ports he presented as chairman of committees on Lotteries, on the Mexican War, on the Fugitive Slave Bill, and on many other questions of public interest. NATIONAL FEELING-LAFAYETTE. The incidents of the last few days have been such as will pro bably never again be witnessed by the people of America,-such as were never before witnessed by any nation under heaven. History cannot produce the record of an event to parallel that which has awakened this universal burst of pleasure, this simultaneous shout of approbation, that echoes through our wideextended empire. The multitudes we see are not assembled to talk over their private griefs, to indulge in querulous complaints, to mingle their murmurs of discontent, to pour forth tales of real or imaginary wrongs, to give utterance to political recriminations. The effervescence of faction seems for the moment to be settled, the collision of discordant interests to subside, and hushed is the clamor of controversy. There is nothing portentous of danger to the commonwealth in this general awakening of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the old and the young,-this "impulsive ardor" which pervades the palace of wealth and the hovel of poverty, decrepit age and lisping infancy, virgin loveliness and vigorous manhood. No hereditary monarch graciously exhibits his august person to the gaze of vulgar subjects. No conquering tyrant comes in his triumphal car, decorated with the spoils of vanquished nations, and followed by captive princes, marching to the music of their chains. No proud and hypocritical hierarch, playing "fantastic airs before high Heaven," enacts his solemn mockeries to deceive the souls of men and secure for himself the honor of an apotheosis. The shouts which announce the approach of a chieftain are unmingled with any note of sorrow. No lovelorn maiden's sigh touches his ear; no groan from a childless father speaks reproach; no widow's curse is uttered, in bitterness of soul, upon the destroyer of her hope; no orphan's tear falls upon his shield to tarnish its brightness. The spectacle now exhibited to the world is of the purest and noblest character,-a spectacle which man may admire and God approve,—an assembled nation offering the spontaneous homage of a nation's gratitude to a nation's benefactor. There is probably no man living whose history partakes so largely of the spirit of romance and chivalry as that of the individual who is now emphatically the guest of the people. At the age of nineteen years, he left his country and espoused the cause of the American colonies. His motive for this conduct must have been one of the noblest that ever actuated the heart of man. He was in possession of large estates, allied to the highest orders of French nobility, surrounded by friends and relatives, with prospects of future distinction and favor as fair as ever opened to the ardent view of aspiring and ambitious youth. He was just married to a lady of great worth and respectability, and it would seem that nothing was wanting to a life of affluence and ease. Yet Lafayette left his friends, his wealth, his country, his prospects of distinction, his wife, and all the sources of domestic bliss, to assist a foreign nation in its struggle for freedom, and at a time, too, when the prospects of that country's success were dark, disheartening, and almost hopeless. He fought for that country, he fed and clothed her armies, he imparted of his wealth to her poor. He saw her purposes accomplished, and her government esta blished on principles of liberty. He refused all compensation for his services. He returned to his native land, and engaged in contests for liberty there. He was imprisoned by a foreign government, suffered every indignity and every cruelty that could be inflicted, and lived, after his release, almost an exile on the spot where he was born. More than forty years after he first embarked in the cause of American liberty, he returns to see once more his few surviving companions in arms, and is met by the grateful salutations of the whole nation. It is not possible to reflect on these facts without feeling our admiration excited to a degree that almost borders on reverence. Sober history, it is hoped, will do justice to the name of Lafayette. It is not in the power of fiction to embellish his character or his life. New England Galaxy, 1826. THE EVILS OF LOTTERIES. A lottery is gaming. This is against the policy of society, and there are few civilized nations that have not adopted means to restrain or entirely prohibit it; because it is seeking property for which no equivalent is to be paid, and because it leads directly to losses and poverty, and, by exciting bad passions, is the fruitful original of vice and crime. It is the worst species of gaming, because it brings adroitness, cunning, experience, and skill to contend against ignorance, folly, distress, and desperation. It can be carried on to an indefinite and indefinable extent without exposure; and, by a mode of settling the chances by "combination numbers," -an invention of the modern school of gambling, the fate of thousands and hundreds of thousands may be determined by a single turn of the wheel. Lotteries, like other games of chance, are seductive and infatuating. Every new loss is an inducemert to a new adventure; and, filled with vain hopes of recovering what is lost, the unthink. ing victim is led on, from step to step, till he finds it impossible to regain his ground, and he gradually sinks into a miserable outcast; or, by a bold and still more guilty effort, plunges at once into that gulf where he hopes protection from the stings of conscience, a refuge from the reproaches of the world, and oblivion from existence. If we consider the dealing in lottery-tickets as a calling or employment, so far as the venders are concerned, it deserves to be treated, in legislation, as those acts are which are done to get money by making others suffer; to live upon society by making a portion of its members dishonest, idle, poor, vicious, and criminal. In its character and consequences, the dealing in lotterytickets is the worst species of gaming, and deserves a severer punishment than any fine would amount to. If it involves the moral and legal offences of fraud and cheating, does it not deserve an infamous punishment, if any fraudulent acquisition of mere property should be punished with infamy? Considered in its complicated wrongs to society, it certainly deserves the severest punishment, because it makes infamous criminals out of innocent persons, and visits severe afflictions on parents, employers, family connections, and others, who in this respect have done no wrong themselves; and thus the innocent are made to suffer for the guilty, an anomaly which is revolting to all our notions of justice, and to all the moral and natural sympathies of mankind. Legislative Report, 1833. WASHINGTON ALLSTON, 1779-1843. "The element of beauty which in thee Was a prevailing spirit, pure and high, And from all guile had made thy being free, Now seems to whisper thou canst never die! For Nature's priests we shed no idle tear: Their mantles on a noble lineage fall: Though thy white locks at length have press'd the bier Death could not fold thee in Oblivion's pall: Majestic forms thy hand in grace array'd Eternal watch shall keep beside thy tomb, And hues aerial, that thy pencil stay'd, Its shades with Heaven's radiance illume: Art's meek apostle, holy is thy sway, From the heart's records ne'er to pass away!" H. T. TUCKERMAN. WASHINGTON ALLSTON was born at Charleston, S. C., on the 5th of November, 1779. He was sent to New England to receive his education, and graduated at Harvard College in 1800. Throughout his collegiate course, he showed his innate love of nature, music, poetry, and painting; and though, from his strong aspirations after the beautiful, the pure, and the sublime, he led what might be called an ideal life, yet he was far from being a recluse, but was a popular, highspirited youth, and passionately fond of society. As a scholar in classical and English literature his rank was high; and on taking his degree he delivered a poem which was much applauded. On leaving college, he determined to devote his life to the fine arts, and embarked for London in the autumn of 1801. He at once became a student of the Royal Academy, with whose President, Benjamin West, he formed an intimate and lasting friendship. After three years spent in England, he went to Paris, and thence to Italy, where he first met with Coleridge. In 1809, he returned to America, and remained two years in Boston, his adopted home, and there married the sister of Dr. W. E. Chanhing. In 1811, he went again to England, where his reputation as an artist had been completely established. In 1813, he published a small volume entitled The Sylphs of the Seasons, and other Poems, which was republished in this country, and gave him a rank ameng our best poets. Soon after this he passed through a long and serious illness, from which he had scarcely recovered when he suffered the loss of his wife. These trials, however severe, were truly sanctified to him: he became an earnest and sincere Christian, and to the close of life preserved a beauty and consistency of Christian character rarely equalled. In 1818, he again returned to America, and again made Boston his home. "There, in a circle of warmly-attached friends, surrounded by a sympathy and admiration which his elevation and purity, the entire harmony of his life and pursuits, could not fail to create, he devoted himself to his art, the labor of his love." In 1830, he married his second wife, the daughter of the late Judge Dana, and removed to Cambridge, and soon after began the preparation of a course of lectures on art. But four of these he completed. His death occurred at his own house, Cambridge, on Sunday morning, July 9, 1843. "He had finished a day and week of labor in his studio, upon his great picture of Belshazzar's Feast,2 the fresh paint denoting that the last touches of his pencil were given to that glorious but melancholy monument of the best years of his later life."3 1 In one of his letters he thus writes:-"To no other man do I owe so much, intellectually, as to Mr. Coleridge, with whom I became acquainted in Rome, and who has honored me with his friendship for more than five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome the silent city; but I never could think of it as such while with him; for, meet him when and where I would, the fountain of his mind was never dry, but, like the far-reaching aqueducts that once supplied this mistress of the world, its living stream seemed specially to flow for every classic ruin over which we wandered. And when I recall some of our walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I have once listened to Plato in the groves of the Academy." 2 This embodiment of a sublime conception, magnificent even in its unfinished state, may be seen in the Picture Gallery of the Boston Athenæum. 3 Memoir of Allston prefixed to an edition of his works, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. "Allston's appearance and manners accorded perfectly with his character. His form was slight and his movements quietly active. The lines of his countenance, the breadth of the brow, the large and speaking eye, and the long. white hair, made him an immediate object of interest. If not engaged in conversation, there was a serene abstraction in his air. When death so tranquilly overtook him, for many hours it was difficult to believe that he was not sleeping, so perfectly did |