The gifts which he proffers, are unvalued by those who have forgotten the dreams of their youth, and wandered away from the primal light of their being. He looks around him; and the mournful fact presses itself upon his 5 conviction, that there is no cover laid for him at Nature's table. His very existence seems to him a mistake. And now begins that fiery struggle in which the temper of his genius is to be tried, and which moves the deepest springs of compassion and sympathy, in the human heart. 10 Poetry has invented nothing more pathetic, history has recorded nothing more sad, than those mournful experiences which are so often the lot of the scholar and the man of genius. The dethronement of kings, and the beggary of nobles, are less affecting than the wrongs, the sor15 rows, the long-protracted trials, the forlorn conditions of great and gifted minds; nobles, whose patents are of elder date than the pyrainids, and kings by the anointment of God's own hand. What tragedies can be read, in the history of literature, 20 deeper than Macbeth, more moving than Lear? Milton, old, poor, and blind, selling Paradise Lost for five pounds; Dryden beaten by ruffians at the prompting of a worthless peer, who, in Plato's commonwealth, would have been changing the poet's plate; Tasso, a creature as delicately 25 moulded as if, like the Peris, he had fed upon nothing grosser than the breath of flowers, wearing out the best years of his life in the gloom of a dungeon; Racine hurried to his grave by the rebuke of a heartless king; Chatterton, at midnight, homeless and hungry, bathing the 30 unpitying stones of London with the hot tears of anguish and despair; Johnson, at the age of thirty-six, dining behind a screen at the house of Cave, because he was too shabbily dressed to appear at the table; Burns taken from the plough, which he had "followed in glory and in joy 35 upon the mountain side," to gauge ale-firkins, and watch for contraband tobacco. LESSON LXXIV.-THE YANKEES. SAMUEL KETTEL. Yankee-land, or the New England portion of the United States, does not make a great figure in the map of the American Republic; yet the traveller who leaves it out of his route, can tell you but little of what the Americans are. It is in New England that you find Jonathan at home. In the other states, there is a mixture, greater or less, of foreign population; but in New England the population is homogeneous and native,—the emigrant does not settle 5 there, the country is too full of people; while the more fertile soil of the west holds out superior attractions to the stranger. It is no lubber-land; there is no getting half-adollar a day for sleeping, in Massachusetts or Vermont ; the rocky soil and rough climate of this region, require 10 thrift and industry in the occupant. In the west, he may scratch the ground, throw in the seed, and leave the rest to nature; but here his toil must never be remitted; and as valor comes of sherris, so doth prosperity come of industry. While the Yankees are themselves, they will hold their 15 own, let politics twist about as they will. They are like cats, throw them up as you please, they will come down upon their feet. Shut their industry out from one career, and it will force itself into another. Dry up twenty sources of their prosperity, and they will open twenty 20 more. They have a perseverance that will never languish, while any thing remains to be tried; they have a resolution that will try any thing, if need be; and when a Yankee says "I'll try," the thing is done. LESSON LXXV.-CUSTOM OF WHITEWASHING.-FRANCIS My wish is to give you some account of the people of these new States; but I am far from being qualified for the purpose, having as yet seen little more than the cities of New Yor: and Philadelphia. I have discovered but 5 few national singularities among them. Their customs and manners are nearly the same with those of England, which they have long been used to copy. For, previous to the revolution, the Americans were from their infancy taught to look up to the English, as patterns of perfection 10 in all things. I have observed, however, one custom, which, for aught I know, is peculiar to this country: an account of it will serve to fill up the remainder of this sheet, and may afford you some amusement. When a young couple are about to enter the matrimo * This piece has been incorrectly ascribed to the pen of Dr. Franklin. Hopkinson possessed much of that ease and humor, which have rendered the writings of the former so universally admired. nial state, a never-failing article in the marriage treaty, is, that the lady shall have and enjoy the free and unmolested exercise of the rights of whitewashing, with all its ceremonials, privileges, and appurtenances. A young woman 5 would forego the most advantageous connexion, and even disappoint the warmest wish of her heart, rather than resign the invaluable right. You would wonder what this privilege of whitewashing is :—I will endeavor to give you some idea of the ceremony, as I have seen it performed. 10 --- There is no season of the year, in which the lady may not claim her privilege, if she pleases; but the latter end of May is most generally fixed upon for the purpose. The attentive husband may judge by certain prognostics when the storm is nigh at hand. When the lady is un15 usually fretful. finds fault with the servants, is discontented with the children, and complains much of the filthiness of every thing about her, these are signs which ought not to be neglected; yet they are not decisive, as they sometimes come on, and go off again, without produc20 ing any further effect. But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the yard a wheelbarrow with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain buckets with lime dissolved in water, there is then no time to be lost; he immediately locks up the apartment, or closet, 25 where his papers or his private property are kept, and, putting the key in his pocket, betakes himself to flight; for a husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during this season of female rage; his authority is superseded, his commission is suspended; and the very 30 scullion, who cleans the brasses in the kitchen, becomes of more consideration and importance than he. He has nothing for it but to abdicate, and run from an evil which he can neither prevent nor mollify. The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls 35 are in a few minutes stripped of their furniture; paintings, prints, and looking-glasses, lie in a huddled heap, about the floors; the curtains are torn from the testers, the beds crammed into the windows; chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles crowd the yard; and the garden fence bends 40 beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, and ragged breeches. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass; for the foreground of the picture, gridirons and frying-pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, spits and pots, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There, a closet has disgorged its bowels, cracked tumblers, broken wine-glasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, handfuls of old 5 corks, tops of teapots and stoppers of departed decanters; from the rag hole in the garret, to the rat hole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom was come, and the utensils of the house were dragged forth to judgment. In this tem10 pest, the words of Lear naturally present themselves, and might, with some alteration, be made strictly applicable: "Let the great gods, 15 That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Unwhipp'd of Justice ! -Close pent-up Guilt, Raise your concealing continents, and ask LESSON LXXVI.-SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.-ID. This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and the ceilings of every room and closet, with brushes dipped in a solution of lime, called whitewash; to pour buckets 5 of water over every floor, and scratch all the partitions and wainscots with rough brushes, wet with soap-suds, and dipped in stone-cutter's sand. The windows by no means escape the general deluge. A servant scrambles out upon the pent-house, at the risk of her neck, and, with 10 a mug in her hand, and a bucket within reach, she dashes away innumerable gallons of water against the glass panes, to the great annoyance of passengers in the street. I have been told, that an action at law was once brought against one of these water-nymphs, by a person who had 15 a new suit of clothes spoiled by this operation; but, after a long argument, it was determined by the whole court, that the action would not lie, inasmuch as the defendant was in the exercise of a legal right, and not answerable for the consequences; and so the poor gentleman was doubly 20 nonsuited; for he lost not only his suit of clothes but his suit at law. These smearings and scratchings, washings and dashings, being duly performed, the next ceremony is to cleanse and replace the distracted furniture. You may have seen a house-raising, or a ship-launch, when all the hands within reach are collected together; recollect, if you can, the hurry, bustle, confusion, and noise of such a 5 scene, and you will have some idea of this cleaning match. The misfortune is, that the sole object is to make things clean; it matters not how many useful, ornamental, or valuable articles are mutilated, or suffer death under the operation; a mahogany chair and carved frame undergo 10 the same discipline; they are to be made clean, at all events; but their preservation is not worthy of attention. For instance, a fine large engraving is laid flat upon the floor; smaller prints are piled upon it, and the superincumbent weight cracks the glasses of the lower tier; but this 15 is of no consequence. A valuable picture is placed leaning against the sharp corner of a table; others are made to lean against that, until the pressure of the whole forces the corner of the table through the canvass of the first. The frame and glass of a fine print are to be cleaned; 20 the spirit and oil used on this occasion, are suffered to leak through, and spoil the engraving; no matter, if the glass is clean, and the frame shine, it is sufficient; the rest is not worthy of consideration. An able mathema tician has made an accurate calculation, founded on long 25 experience, and has discovered that the losses and destruction incident to two whitewashings, are equal to one removal, and three removals equal to one fire. The cleaning frolic over, matters begin to resume their pristine appearance. The storm abates, and all would be 30 well again; but it is impossible that so great a convulsion, in so small a community, should not produce some further effects. For two or three weeks after the operation, the family are usually afflicted with sore throats or sore eyes, occasioned by the caustic quality of the lime, or with se35 vere colds, from the exhalations of wet floors or damp walls. LESSON LXXVII.-SAME SUBJECT CONCLUDED.-ID. I know a gentleman, who was fond of accounting for every thing in a philosophical way. He considers this, which I have called a custom, as a real periodical disease, peculiar to the climate. His train of reasoning is inge5 nious and whimsical; but I am not at leisure to give you |