ENTERED according to the Act of Congress, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, By PAIGE, NICHOLS & KRAUTH, in the office of the Clerk of the Southern District of New York. TIBBYBA MEM AOBK STEREOTYPED BY VINCENT L. DILL, SHORT PATENT SERMONS. ON BEAUTY. TEXT-Nought under heaven so strongly doth allure Their hardened hearts enured to blood and cruelty. MY HEARERS-I suppose that all of you have often felt the despotic power of Beauty, and have had your obdurate, adamantine, calcined hearts softened down by its omnipotency to the yielding substance of a pan-cake. That which appertains to the flesh, is most arbitrary and soul-fretting in its influence; but that which belongs to Nature alone-such as fills the whole universe with its allurements—is calculated rather to inspire, and raise the thoughts up to that concentrated essence of Beauty which sparkles with loveliness from the beginning to the end of the end. I shall dwell first upon the beauties of Nature; but, as saith the auctioneer, I can't dwell long, for my discourse must be condensed into one column of the Sunday Mercury, beyond which limit, tam seldom allowed to trespass. My dear friends-it matters not upon whichsoever side we turn our eyes, we behold such beauty in its primitive nakedness as cannot fail to captivate the heart of every true worshipper of the God of Nature, and make him feel as though ten thousand pismires were crawling up and down the ossified railway of his back. Look at yonder myriads of stars that glitter and sparkle from the dome of heaven's high concave! Say, is there not beauty in these? Aye, there is beauty, magnificent in these little celestial trinkets that stud the ebon brow of Night--shining, as they do, like a multitude of beacon lights of glory in the blue black of eternity, or like so many cats' eyes in a windowless garret. Observe the silvery moon, pale-faced Cynthia, wandering Luna, or whatever you choose to call her-see how gracefully she promenades the self-same path which was laid out for her at the beginning of the world, and deviates not a particle from it, although she has been maliciously termed the strumpet of the planets. Look at the resplendent sun. See how it has maintained its unsullied brightness through the rust-gathering ages of time. Not a single thread has been lost from its golden fringe, and not even a fly-speck has marred its splendor; but is to-day the same beautiful, lovely object that it was when it first burst upon Paradise, and rolled back the darkness of chaos into the unknown regions of nowhere. There is beauty at sun-set. Who can look at all the glories of an autumnal twilight and not have the furze upon his hands rise up in rapture! O, it is, by all odds, the grandest and sublimest picture in the great academy of Nature! At the festooned gates of the West, angels of peace and loveliness have furled their purple wings and are sweetly sleeping with their heads upon pillows of amber, overcanopied with curtains of damask and crimson, tempting poor mortals like us to climb up the ladder of imagination and steal kisses by the bushel! When the morning, too, as my friend Hudibras observes, like a boiled lobster begins to turn from brown to red, there is beauty of the tallest order. Yes, when Aurora hangs out her red under-garment from her chamber window, prepares her perfumed toilet, and sweeps out the last speck of darkness from the oriental parlor, there is such blushing beauty resting upon the eastern Hilltops as cannot fail to be appreciated by any one whose heart-strings are not composed of catgut and horse hair. My friends-I speak of these beauties of Nature because they are unadorned, and consequently are the most beautiful. You might hang a necklace of diamonds around the sun, and extra-jewel the stars-but would they appear more lovely? Not a bit of it. You Gothamites by dwelling upon these may receive good, and have your ferocious tempers completely subdued; but I don't want to have anything to do with your down-east Yankees. I have understood that their hearts are so inclined to wooden nutmegs and singing psalms, that they have no idea at all of the sublime and beautiful. They won't believe what I tell them, because of their stiff-neckedness. I do think that if an angel were to come down from heaven and swear upon a wagon-load of comic almanacs that what I preach is true, they wouldn't believe it any the sooner. Let them go. Now, my friends, I am about to speak of beauty where it exerises almost unlimited control over the hearts of men. It is when it is concentrated in lovely woman—when it flashes from her dark eye—when it lurks in her raven ringlets-when it mingles with the rose of her cheek and the lily of her brow. By it kings have Deen brought upon their marrow bones at the foot of their thrones -warriors have been spurred on to battle, and kept from it by having their hearts wrapt in fetters of a golden tresse-young biped tigers have been transmografied into peaceable lambs, and their blood-thirsty appetites for ever allayed. But, my young friends, you must also beware of a beautiful woman. She is a snake that has the power to charm such fledglings as you; and when you are once captivated, you are a gone case. The delicious poison which you drink from her eye acts as a stupifying opiate to your reason and lets the pleasure rush recklessly into the wilds of unrestraint. I admire a pretty female face and figure as much as any one; but unless they are unadorned by the flummery of fashion and fancy shops-unless the heart is a casket for the gems of purity and truth-they never can catch this old bird. O, my friends! the real queen of beauty is Miss Morality. Court her as much as you like, but don't set up after midnight to do it-walk in her garden, and cull the flowers of peace and contentment-tread upon her trail even to the dividing line between time and eternity, and you will pay the debt of nature respectably, and in the full hopes of a glorious reward. So mote it be ! ON MODERN GENTLEMEN. TEXT.-Whom do we dub as gentleman ? If they but own full tithe of gold, MY HEARERS-When we come to sort out the vast heap of humanity, belonging to the he creation, we find that three separate and distinct piles are necessary to be made-viz.: one for the common rubbish, or loafers; another for the spurious gentlemen, manufactured by tailors; and another for the real Simon Pure gentlemen, wrought from heaven's best material by the all-skilful hand of Omnipotence. This last heap is always a great deal smaller than the other two, but when placed in the scales of real worth they will weigh down five hundred just like them; and it is upon this principle alone that a pound of lead is heavier than a pound of feathers. The drunken, good-for-nothing loafers are no gentlemen at all, any how you can fix it; and those who are tinkered up of broadcloth, buckram, finger rings, safety chains, soft sodder, vanity and impudence, are no gentlemen either, no more than a plated is solid silver throughout. spoon They are only so called by the foolish votaries of fashion-intended as a cheat and a dead suck-in for the world's great market. Why, my friends, they are mere walking-sticks for female flirts, ornamented with brass heads, and barely touched with the varnish of etiquette. Brass heads, did I say? nay-their caputs are only half ripe musk-melons, with monstrous thick rinds, hollow within, containing the seeds of foolishness swimming about in a vast quantity of sap. Their moral garments are a double-breasted coat of vanity, padded with pride, and lined with the silk of urbanity; their other apparel is all in keeping, and imported fresh from Devil, Beelzebub & Co.'s wholesale and retail ready made clothing establishment. Beneath these trappings of superciliousness and folly may be found hearts, rotting in the scum of licentiousness, and as much blacker than the inner surface of a steamboat pipe, as a chimney sweep is blacker than the mid-day sun in the heavens. And yet these over-blown bladders of iniquitous show are called gentlemen! If I thought I numbered any of these goats in my flock, I would preach them out of the synagogue quicker than ever lightning chased a squirrel down a hickory tree. But let them travel off with their highheeled boots of self-consequence: let them carry their bundles of dry goods down the Broadway of perdition: let them flourish, for a time, like poisonous weeds upon a dunghill: let them spit upon the poor beggar, and kick his dog, as he sits perishing at the golden gate of opulence: let them get so all-defying stiff that they can't bend, like a young sapling, to the gale-and they will find, that, should the storms of penury beat upon their beavers, they will snap as short as pipe stems, and the starch will evaporate from their dickeys of pride in the short space of no time at all. These storms will most assuredly wash out the gravel from the foundations upon which their humbug qualifications of gentlemen rest, and down they will fall, to be reared up again only by the hands |