strange things, which were witnessed in the progress of this incomprehensible disease. If my solutions be not correct, let others find better. The facts are irrefragable, and can be established by the best testimony under oath.

strikingly manifested at this period of the disease: the limbs, though rigid, were moveable--you might bend the arm, extend it, place the hand to the chin, forehead, or any other part of the body, and there it would remain during the paroxysm-the whole body could be made to assume the appearance of statuary, of which it was the finest model I have ever seen.

After spending a night in this way, she would sometimes rise in the morning, dress herself, and go into company as if well. Sometimes, in the midst of conversation, she would be seized with a cataleptic fit, and whether standing, sitting or reclining, she remained in Towards the middle of May, all the symptoms of the the position which she occupied at the moment of atdisease became milder; and some time in that month tack. Her eyes were generally fixed immoveably, with she came on a visit to my house, where I had for many that peculiar expression which I have attempted to dedays an opportunity of watching the changing phases scribe in the preceding part of the protracted history of of the disease. There was still an unnatural vivacity this case-her respiration suspended, and her muscles about her. She seemed, as she expressed it, "inebriat-rigid. The peculiar characteristics of catalepsy were ing at the living spring of bliss, while reeling through a wilderness of joy." The case had excited great interest in the country, and visitors of all descriptions daily called to see her. Most of the physicians of the country, and some from a distance, saw her. Clergymen, lawyers, and judges were often with her, and were sometimes instructed, and always amused, unless something was said to draw from her that keen, biting sarcasm, which none who have felt can forget. I have seen her in conversation with many talented men of the various professions of this country, and her colloquial powers were such that she never for a moment hesitated for a word or an idea on any topic that was started; and I have never known her, in a single instance, defeated in discussing any subject. If she did not by her ingenuity turn the argument against her opponent, she would by her vivid flashes of wit, cast such ridicule upon him that he was soon discomfited. I have seen persons, who have smarted under her keen satire, on account of some peculiarity or some foible, hide their heads, or slip out of the way, to avoid her observation; she was certain to perceive it, and to sub ject them to the severest chastisement that tongue could inflict.

These attacks were alternated with others which were convulsive, in which the body was contorted into a variety of shapes. The trains of ideas succeeding these two forms of the disease, were as separate and distinct as those of two different persons. For instance,—after recovering from a cataleptic fit, she would resume the discourse which she had been engaged in after a former attack, without seeming to perceive that there had been any interruption to it. Sometimes she would be seized in the midst of a sentence, which she would, after the attack, complete with grammatical accuracy. After the attack of convulsion, she would, in like manner, resume the train of conversation peculiar to that attack. And what is remarkable, you never could bring her in one frame of mind to a consciousness of what passed in the other. I have often heard her criticise with severity, and ridicule the ideas and expressions attributed to her under such circumstances.

After some abatement of the symptoms she was moved home, a distance of three or four miles. Here the disease returned very much as it had been at my house, and continued, in spite of all the remedies prescribed by myself and various other physicians, until the 22d of July. About a fortnight before that day she observed to me, that I had frequently proposed to extract a ca

Unfortunately, during this period of high mental excitement, a ball was given, and she of course invited; for, what beau who hoped for future ease in society, would dare to withhold an invitation from one who could wither him into nihility by her sarcasm and wit, which she would not have hesitated to publish in the paper of the town? nor would the editor have dared to refuse publication. I used every argument, and worked every kind of traverse to counteract her intentions of attend-rious tooth of her's: that it had been revealed to her ing the ball, but all in vain. She dressed herself in the gayest and most fantastic attire that she could procure, and in all the dignity and state of a queen,* went to the ball. She was an object of admiration, not only on account of the great notoriety which she had acquired, but the vivid scintillations of her wit, which seemed to enliven the whole assembly, and the ludicrous attitudes in which she placed some of the dandies and coquettes who were present. She indulged not only in dancing, but in the rich and savory viands that were offered-and on her return to my house she soon relapsed into her cataleptic state. Night after night have I watched by her bedside-often without sleeping a wink. Sometimes I would fear, much as I had become accustomed to the various changes of her disease, that life was almost extinct; and just as I thought my fears were about to be realized, she would revive, and entering into the most lively conversation, would keep me and the attendants convulsed with laughter. The excitement of preparing, dressing, &c. for the ball, had induced a return of this hallucination.

that if she would have it drawn on the 22d day of July, precisely at three o'clock, (I think that was the hour,) it would instantly relieve her; but that it would be dangerous to draw it at any other time. I could not possibly prevail on her to consent to an earlier period, and she often seemed alarmed Jest I should attempt it forcibly, declaring that it would kill her. Before the arrival of the day, we determined to muffle the clock, the ticking of which, though in the room below her chamber, often alarmed her; and I directed the family to set it back, if any accident should prevent my arrival before the appointed hour. I, however, arrived before that hour; when I went into the room, she seemed agitated, but resolved to submit to the operation. When the hour arrived, she permitted me to examine the tooth, &c. When all was ready for the operation, she swooned off, and I extracted the tooth without difficulty. She laid a short time in the swoon, which terminated in a convulsion. So soon as she opened her eyes, she expressed great relief; looked more composed than I had before seen her-in

the course of an hour she called for her work, and from | put on paper. I told her one day that she was an angel, that time forward attended to it and her studies, as and she laughed at me for my folly. I deserved it. But if they had never been disturbed. She never had any whether she laughed with me or at me, it was the same return of the disease that I heard of. She married a music to me. I was infatuated, just as a great many worthy gentleman four or five years since, and is the striplings of eighteen are, when they dream every night mother of one or two children. of pretty faces and bright eyes. We grow older, and I will only add one other remarkable circumstance to perhaps wiser-but the wisdom that comes with years this extraordinary case, that physiologists, phrenolo-is not happiness. gists, the disciples of animal magnetism, and others, may be better able to reconcile it to their various theories. Soon after she had resumed her usual occupations, she found the manuscripts which had been locked up in her bureau. She happened to take up first, one of the lighter production: after glancing at it, she ran off to her older sister, and told her that she had found some love letters of another sister, which were the rarest productions she had ever seen and urged her to read and enjoy them with her. Of course she never was undeceived, and is to this day, no doubt, unconscious of having written them, as she is of every thing else that transpired in her cataleptic state.

A STRAY LEAF

M.

I must not moralize,-unless I want to be sad. I told Katrinah I loved her. She blushed a little, and turned away with a laugh. What thoughts passed in her mind I cannot tell. The next moment, I saw her in the topmost boughs of a cherry tree, plucking the blushing fruit and throwing it in the apron of a younger sister, who stood beneath her. She never looked lovelier. “I must win her or die," said I to myself, as I walked meditatingly towards my home.

Poetry and love are Siamese twins. My passion betrayed me into rhyme. That night I paced my room till long after the ghostly hour of twelve, while my thoughts were as busy as a bee in selecting loving words, and arranging them in forms poetical. The result of my toil was some half dozen amatory stanzas, written in a stiff, positive copy hand, upon doubtful pink paper, folded in a love-letter style, and addressed to Katrinah. I felt very solemn as I impressed the seal with the image of a heart, stuck through with an arrow from the quiver of Dan Cupid,—for thus, thought I,

FROM A BACHELOR'S NOTE-BOOK.* thus, oh cruel Katrinah! have you impaled my heart;

"I was only eighteen, Katrinah was one year my junior, and never had I met with such a laughing, romp. ing, mischievous she-devil as that Dutchified English girl. Her father was an Englishman, as poor and as proud as a Spanish Don; but the business qualities of her German mother were of such a character as kept pinching Want at arm's length, though Poverty was a constant inmate of her dwelling. Katrinah had a superabundance of vivacity, but how she came by it, I never could guess; for her father was grave, and her mother was German. So it was, however. Nature is a little capricious sometimes, and occasionally plays as strange pranks as Dame Fortune herself.

I have been thinking, that at eighteen the imagination is apt to overbalance the judgment, and unless checked by chance or circumstance, plays the devil with one's wits. It was so in my case. I very foolishly fell in love. Katrinah's clear, musical voice, with melody in its every modulatiog, whether it were mocking the birds in the spring time, or ringing with wild laughter, became to me a joy,-and its tone haunted alike my sleeping and my waking moments. Without flattery, she might have been called a very pretty girl. I shall not describe her-for her sunshiny face, her dazzling blue eyes, and her rich red lips,-these can never be

We select this sprightly article from the "Pittsburg Saturday Evening Visiter," with the charitable intent of putting our read. ers into a good humor, if perchance any thing in our pages should have inclined them to sadness. If they do not smile at the Bachelor-poet's Courtship, we have conceived altogether erroneously of our own organ of mirthfulness. By the way, the Visiter, from the taste and ability with which it is conducted, affords gratifying proof that the Muses are not without a pleasant dwelling place even amidst the din and smoke of the American Birmingham.-[Ed. Sou. Lit. Mess.

and no hand but yours can heal the wound. But the
madrigal-here it is:

Unkind art thou, Katrinah!-yet
My love is still the same,

As fervent as when late we met-
For time may never tame
The flame that glows within my breast,
Nor hush this throbbing heart to rest,

While I can breathe thy name.
Thy name!-it is a magic word
By which the founts of love are stirred.

Thine image, dearest! is enshrined
Within my youthful heart,
And stamped so deeply on my mind
It never can depart!

I might, perchance, have loved thee less
But for that winning gentleness

So purely free from art-
'Twas that which won the heart that ne'er
Had worshipped aught that grovels here.

No image upon earth but thine

Had tempted me to kneel,
A worshipper at Beauty's shrine,
To breathe of what I feel.

I might have mingled in the dance,
And coldly met the warmest glance
That woman's eyes reveal,
For never could I bend the knee
To less than I behold in thee!

Thine is the beauty of the soul,
A something undefined,-
A loveliness which might control,

Or tame the sternest mind!
And what thou art, Katrinah! be-
From passion's taint and folly free-

Still gentle, artless, kind-
Seeming like one of heavenly birth,
Too brightly beautiful for earth.

Be free--nor bend your soul to her--
Let not her spells be round you thrown;
I'd rather meet the sepulchre,

Than trust her love, her smile, her tone.
Be free--and let thy spirit dare

To rise above her winning arts,
To break away from every snare

She spreads to capture human hearts!

Anthony Thompson did not take the advice that I gave to myself in particular, and every body in general, in the above lines. He fell in love with Katrinah-and wooed and won the girl from whom I could obtain nothing more serious than a laugh. Katrinah did not poison him. She used my last poem as she did my first, only she kept it for her wedding day, as if reserving it for that very purpose. When I last saw her she laughed about it, and I had the good sense to laugh

covering the period from January, 1774, to September, 1781, the compiler of the work under notice, Mr. WILLIAM DUANE, Jr., has selected many new facts in relation to public affairs, and the progress of the revolu tion, with so much of the private history of the author as throws light upon the manners of the times.

"It is pleasant to trace the brief and fresh records of such eventful occurrences as the Battle of Bunker's Hill, Washington's passage of the Delaware, the burning, by the provincials, of the light-house at the entrance of Boston harbor, and the pulling up of the piles that were the marks of the shipping, etc. Here, an account from Boston informs us, that 'BURGOYNE is in a deep, settled melancholy,walking the streets frequently, with his arms folded across his breast, and talking to himself;' and again, that 'General GAGE is often out of his head, and that he and Admiral GREAVES have publicly quarrelled, so that he told Gage it was a cowardly action to burn Charlestown.' Then we have accounts of certain public rebukes, administered by the committee of safety at Philadelphia, to sundry citizens, for refusing to take continental money; with adver tisements, calling upon the ladies' to come to the American manufactory, at the corner of Market and Ninth streets, and get cotton, wool, or flax, 'thus casting their mite into the treasury of the public good,' and exhibiting that distinguishing characteristic of an excellent woman, as given by the wisest of men: 'She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh diligently with her hands. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hand holdeth the distaff. There is a quiet, dry humor in some of our journalist's entries; such, for example, as the annexed, which sounds oddly enough, as recorded of a sober Friend: 'Took a walk down town, to see BENJ. BETTERTON, who, last First Day, in a jovial humor, jumped over a man's shoulder, and broke his leg about the small. What would our present neighbors of the drab city say, to see Friends jumping over one anothers' shoulders, and breaking their legs, 'in a jovial humor,' on Sunday! Another amusing incident is thus pithily recorded: Account came, that while Parson Stringer, with his eyes shut, was at prayer Andrew Steward, in the dungeon of our prison, the

with

CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL'S said Steward took that opportunity to walk up stairs,

REMEMBRANCER.

We had intended before this to notice the Revolutionary diary of Christopher Marshall, edited by William Duane, jr., of Philadelphia, having experienced much pleasure in reading it. The following notice from the Knickerbocker, expresses so justly and appropriately our own views of the merits of the work, that we are saved the task of attempting, what has been already done, and well done, by another pen.

go out at the several prison doors into the strect, and without any ceremony, walked off with himself, without bidding Robinson, the prison-keeper, farewell, although he was sitting at the front door, on the step, when he passed him!' This looking out for his temporal safety while the worthy clergyman was attending to his spi ritual welfare, is a striking proof of the condemned criminal's forecaste and presence of mind. Aside from the interest of many of its details, the little volume ia question must prove valuable as a historical record, of convenient reference."

APHORISM BY HEINSE.

"CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL'S REMEMBRANCER.-Mr. CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL, whose ancestors came to America with WILLIAM PENN, resided in Philadelphia, from the age of thirty until his death, in 1797, at the age of eighty-seven. He was a member of the Society of Friends, but his devotion to the liberties and rights of the colonies procured his excommunication All constitutions are bad, if the government is not in the hand's from a body which denied the lawfulness of defensive of the wisest; all the difference between a democracy and a me narchy is this-that in the former 500,000 and some odd fooli warfare. In his sixty-fourth year, he commenced a may decide against 400,999 sensible people, and in the latter, be diary; and from five volumes of this "Remembrancer," | fool may run 999,999 philosophers, it they will let him.

EDUCATION.

BY A NATIVE VIRGINIAN.

Before we give the arguments which have led us to the conclusion just announced, we will point out the source whence those arguments have been drawn. When we deserted the philosophy of the schools, from a consciousness that it was unsound and pernicious, we were compelled to look at facts alone as our last resort in the search after truth. We were compelled to observe men as we saw them living and acting around us. We collected our materials from actual observation, and studied them. We consulted our own experience—and from these sources

To make a successful prosecution of an inquiry into the right method of education, we shall be compelled to enter upon a field of investigation entirely new to most of our readers; and on that account, it will require a considerable effort of attention to follow through, and to comprehend fully, all the arguments which may be advanced. But we hope this effort of attention will be ex-alone-observation and experience-we have endeaerted-because the subject we are about to enter upon, is one of vital importance, not only to the teacher and his pupil, but to the parent, and to all those who are endeavoring to improve themselves.

Education is not a thing of chance, to be conducted according to the crude notions of each individual. It is a science, based on philosophical principles, deduced from a consideration of the human mind, the subject of education.

Instead of amusing, therefore, with a few trite and general remarks on this hacknied theme, we have determined to go to the very bottom, and unfold the principles which should govern every one, both in the education of himself, (the most important,) and in the education of youth.

The main object of education is to develope, and to strengthen all the faculties of the mind.

The first question, then, which we have to determine is, What are the faculties of the mind? The second, What are the best means of improving, or, (in words already used,) of unfolding and strengthening these facul

vored to draw all our conclusions. We have carefully avoided, so far as it was possible, all a priori deductions from abstract theories-they are as unsafe in morals as in physical science. It is by a collection and observation of facts alone, that we can hope to arrive at truth. By following this humble way, the student of natural science is making most rapid and unparalleled advances-by neglecting it, the student of our moral and intellectual nature stands where he was more than two thousand years ago-involved in mystery, and be wildered in the mazes of abstract speculation.

As we proceed with this subject, we shall advance no opinion which cannot be illustrated by a living example, and the soundness of which cannot be attested by the experience and common sense of all.

Attention, Memory, Conception, &c., so far from being primitive, innate faculties of the mind, are nothing more than the different modes by which the capabilities manifest their activity. We can form no idea of the mind, except through its capabilities—just as we have an idea of the Deity by his attributes. All we know about the Almighty is, that he is an invisible being, Writers on the philosophy of the human mind have possessed of infinite power, infinite wisdom, and infidivided what they call the faculties into two divisions-nite goodness-separate from these attributes we have the intellectual and the moral faculties. To this division we have no objection. The intellectual faculties, they say, are Perception, Attention, Conception, Memory, &c.

ties.

On this philosophy have been based all our systems of education. The elementary books of instruction-the course of studies projected in our schools and colleges, have been in reference to this subdivision of the mind into faculties. Such a study, we are told, is intended to improve the memory-such another, to improve the attention and so on through all the faculties, as they understand them :-for it is a well known fact that education, in every country, is conducted in exact accordance to the opinions entertained as to the nature of the mind and the number of its faculties. Not only is education influenced by the speculations of the metaphysician, but morality also derives her practical lessons from the same source. Hence, an unsound philosophy

makes an unsound scholar and an unsound man.

Now, we say, that the system of philosophy, which we have received into this country-taught in our colleges held as infallible—as based on a correct idea of the constitution of the mind, and necessarily true in the nature of things; we say that this philosophy, this Scotch metaphysics, is entirely erroneous, founded on a limited view of the human mind-a mistaken idea as to what constitutes the original faculties; and has, consequently, been the cause of many errors in education, and the cause of much disastrous evil to the morals of our country.

VOL. V.-56

no idea of a God-they are, in truth, God with us. So with the mind-it is an invisible, immaterial thing, possessed of certain faculties or capabilities—which capabilities manifest greater or less activity by a greater or less degree of memory, attention, conception, &c. If the mind of any individual possesses an original faculty, strongly developed, it will manifest that superior strength or development by an accurate perception, a retentive memory, and a distinct conception of all the subjects which come within the scope of that faculty.

It is a common observation, that when a man pos sesses a strong and unconquerable propensity to any one pursuit in preference of all others, he has a natural bent for that pursuit, or, that he has a genius for that kind of occupation.

When this inclination is very strong, the mind manifests extraordinary capability on all those subjects which nourish and gratify that inclination. The man learns with astonishing rapidity every thing that has any connection with the natural inclination of his mind-he retains them longer--has a clearer insight into their nature he even goes beyond the present acquired knowledge on the subject, and makes new discoveries of his own. All this too, without any previous education whatsoever. Take an example.

When James Ferguson, the celebrated astronomer, was about seven or eight years of age, he discovered an extraordinary talent for mechanical pursuits. The roof of the cottage having partly fallen in, his father, in order to raise it again, applied to it a beam, resting on