Neither is it a proper grammar of politics.

When it becomes a debator, it is an essayist, bought to write up an opinion, instead of a newspaper. Old Lang was right. In place of reading the bought opinions of party hirelings, who would write on the other side for sixpence more to-morrow, let men go home and study the Constitution, and the early history and splendid debates of their old Congresses and Conventions. From them they can imbibe an honest and fervent draught of the freest spirit of freedom, the holiest mounting-foam of liberty, truth untrammelled, glory—"

"In excelsis, Jack, keep down lower, or I shall lose sight of you. You mean to say a man may mis-spend his time in reading newspapers ?"

"I do. If he reads them all, and pays attention to onetenth of the saints' days, he'll have no time for the duties of personal life, contract wrong ideas, hurt his health, and crack his brains. A constant reader of newspapers, instead of wholesome authority, that speaks without party influence, is like an idiot boy who would plunge into a green mantling cow-pool, in preference to bathing in the ocean."

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Jack, you're right. I'll put your sentiments down. I don't wonder that Cooper is compelled to sue them."

"Nor I. Farewell once more."

"Good bye."

CATACOUSTICS.

"The sensation which we perceive through the organ of hearing is called sound, such as the sound of a human voice, the sound of a bell, &c. The science which treats of sound in general is called "Acoustics,"-from the Greek word for hearing,-or phonics,-from the Greek word which means voice, or sound.-And most of the other terms which are used in treating of sound, are derived from the above-mentioned words; such as Diacoustics, CATACOUSTICS, &c."

THAT is the philosophy with which Cavello commences his Chapter IX., Part II., entitled-" of Sound, or of Acoustics."

I have been led by reflection upon an intercepted letter, lately embodied in the "Spirit," written by some foreign trollop, touching "The cries of New York," to look a little further into the matter than that shrewd but doubtful specimen of English ladyship had means or ability to snoop. I am glad I have done so, for I have found at least one American peculiarity" that must be defended from foreign abuse. Corlærs Hook, the Five Points, and all those interesting situations in the suburbs, which have been planted with innocent-looking village churches,-all spire and no body,-put up on ragged sticks on barren fields marked out with a sign post, and glorified with the titles of Avenues "A," B," "C," and "Promise Place," and "After date Square," and "Cashier Row," and "Texas Stroll," and such like;-gemmed with a grogshop, and occasionally honored with a post-office !-PostMaster save the remark !-by some "enterprising" speculator upon the capital of his glib and queer tongue;-and all the plausible "enterprise" of us Yankees to take in friends and fools with solemn assurances of the silver rivulets that are always going to begin to run from Penobscot to Lake Pon

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chartrain; and all the other tricks and cheateries of the "Enterprise" part of my people, and all the vulgar vices which foreign debasement has brought here ;-these I give and yield in tribute to any trollop who will aspire to criticism, and create for herself a character, by abusing them. These things I surrender. Let deformity illustrate vice. Let vulgarity vomit out the proof of its associations.

But no trollop must abuse the Cats of my native city, either by direct libel or by sarcastic inuendo. The tiger spirit possesses me on this subject, and I scream for cats.

I am for cat-acoustics, only.—I have heard of cock-crowing. I have read about the early lark at matin dawn, striking his head against the top of the cage, and of the robin's silver whistle, playing upon wires, and the wren's shrill joyfulness, uplifted from some straggling smoke-dried poplar, and of many other of the varieties of the creaking, piercing, fifery performances of our most cherished city of Neo Eboracensis. I have heard a band of music. I went to a Roar-atorio,—or Oratorio as they call it, once, at the Tabernacle. I have heard a woman sing "Oft in the stilly night." My next-door neighbor is a Frenchman who has an educated parrot that talks like a judge, who decides by instinct before he hears the argument, and prates and anticipates, and cries his own praises incessantly, "Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll!" in constant and earnest reiteration, interrupted only when he stops to drink-for he is a marvelous member of the temperance society. I have been to a Methodist Camp Meeting. I have been "high," and have sung myself. Whether I heard myself, "de hoc non." Probably more "Hoc" than "non." Over the way, and opposite to me, two little infants are learning “Isle of beauty, fare the well," from a spinster teacher; who, when she gets through her instructive department, goes

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into the amusing,-like farce after tragedy, and screams una voce poco," in such a way, that your enraptured judgment cries out "fa!" before she has poked her "vice” fully into you. In fact, I have the advantage of great musical experience, even from the booming thunder of a cannon, down to the maiden squeal of a mouse. I am a musician. I affect not Hayden. I love not Handel. They have sublimity, but no dramatic action in their stately glories. They march in column of attack. Where they strike, they do terrible execution, but they preserve too close a column.

To keep up the military phraseology, they don't display and turn their enemy's flanks. They break down the walls of your ears, and enter conquerors, but don't cut you up and smash you. They achieve a solemn victory, and stop. Then again, Bishop, and all that class of Missnancyists are whining babies. They are competent to set Barbauld's poems, or Tom Moore Little's Hymns, down into some select public-garden minstrelsy, but they will never grow up into the maturity of musicians. Other people I have heard, and whose music I know, and upon whom I set a proper value; but of all the quadrupedal, feathery, or two-footed creation, man or inhuman, woman or fallen next after paying a proper reverence to the living action of Von Weber's engravings, stamped by the moonlight from the reflection of the trees and rough ravines of the Hartz mountains, by his own Daguerreotype, I go for the MEW-SIC of

Music is a running thrill that rushes over you with a sensation of almost choaking deliciousness; like a sudden oceanwave on a smooth gravelly beach; isn't it? Its changes are like the smiles and frowns of a good girl-twenty-five years old;—or the quick alternations of the politics of the spirits of the air, who, one moment, vote for Cloud, and next, Lightning, and next, Rain, and then, Blue Sky; ar'n't they? Music is change, race, flight, fight, mixed love and anger, the tear of sentiment, the gush of passionate outbreak, and several other things; is'nt it? Is there any music in " dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum?" Apollo forbid! Such a performance would be worse than a silent Quaker meeting, or a Scotch bagpipe. But put "d" on the top of the house, where he can have the air, and “u”—not you, my dear—in the front bed-chamber in the second story, and "m" in the cellar, and then let the representatives of sound run up and down. "M" will bring with him "blasts from Hell," and "D" drop into the composition, "airs from Heaven," while "U" will do the earthly part of the business, and the appoggiature ladder will multiply its rungs, and be peopled with strange but sweet voices borne to you upon the velocipede above referred to, aud so you'll go to glory. Now what musical instrument made of tongue, teeth, thorax, or wire and ivory, can boast a scale of notes, from the profound of mad rage to the exhausted argute of pathos equal to the shrill delight of the feline gamut? I drink as a garden drinks dew, the native melodies of a cat. A well-voiced Tom-cat is your true musician of nature. He is Diana's commissioned serenader. History books say that "the wild or mountain-cat is borne in coats-of-arms as the emblem of liberty, vigilence, and forecast." Our city cat has all these honors with the additon of a classical education, cultivated taste, and knowledge of the world. Your peasantry