made hy a highly distinguished manufacturing house in the county of Connaught, and that he has no corns. At the time we left the solemn process of annexation, it was confidently believed that the happy parties would actually go to bed together at night. The wedding cake was a monster of beauty, being made by that distinguished cuisinier Thomas Downing, Esq., of Broad Street. It was manufactured out of three hundred of the best salted codfish, compounded with five hundred bushels of potatoes from the farm of Sir Skin Kidney, and fifteen kegs of Goshen butter. Further particulars in our

next.

P. S. We omitted to mention that on the next morning the republican Queen Molusca and the happy Albertross were observed sitting upon the dock below the berth occupied by the Providence steamboats, looking cool, fresh, and vigorous, and reading the last number of the " Spirit of the Times."

VIEW OF NEW YORK FROM BEDLOW'S ISLAND.

If any man would be melancholy and patriotic, let him take a seat, of a sunny afternoon, upon the old ramparts of Bedlow's Island, and gaze and meditate. Not that melancholy and amorpatriæ are natural associates, visiting people with their spirit, in company; may we never laugh again on the fourth of July if we intended to say such a thing. But we are bold to declare, that no gentleman of reasonable taste and tenderness of heart, can lean against that solitary fort,

and drink in the ocean air playing around it, and lose his eyes in the blue sky above it, without being lulled into unquestionable pensiveness. We are further confident to assert that no scene-hunting American can look upon the panorama that encircles him, when he stops the sweep of his oar and backs water ten yards off from that island, and not swell with pride that this is his bay, and that is his city, and that his country is the most beautiful, and the freest, and the happiest in the world. Try it. Ye, whose dyspeptic grief paints everything in mournful colors, take an oar in your hand on the first April day when the sweet south-west shall gently blow in the face of Sol. Try it.

That the artist who 'painted the picture which draws out this commentary, felt the power of the scene when he sketched it, his success well warrants us to believe. One might get the bay, and harbor, and suburbs of New York by heart, by studying this engraving. First, on your north lies Gibbet Island-barren rock-sacred to the rope of the hangman. The smoke of a steamboat-pipe, to the west, indicates the watery turnpike which Duch frows of English Neighborhood travel over, bringing grateful offerings in spring time, fresh eggs and horse-radish, to Washington-market. Next Paulus Hook stands revealed, of which nothing better can be said than that it was whilom the country-seat of "the honorable, wise and prudent William Kieft, director-general of New Netherland," and that he sold it in May, 1638, to Abraham Planck, for four hundred and fifty guilders. Abraham leased it to Gerrit Derkson for a tobacco plantation. But the estate is now out of the family. The glory of the Dutch is departed! -Further on, we catch a glimpse of the tall cliffs of Weehawken; Weehawken, glorious in the sublime gloom of mountain crags and solemn trees-wet with the blood of

Hamilton-honored in the verse of Halleck. The Palisades next faintly show their ragged precipices, and by their side runs the river of rivers, bearing to his far source the luxuries and comforts of foreign commerce. How beautifully distinct is that scarcely visible fleet of sloops, fading, as it were, gradually away, until they seem to be only the white wings of floating sea-fowl, hovering over schools of mummy-chubs, and dipping up the scholars for their dinners. Turn, now, northeast. There is your American London. of five-hundred oyster-shops. This is the emporium of steamboats and liberty poles. There is the heart of politics, commerce, piety, and all manner of iniquity. But who is not proud of this city? Who can look upon its lofty spires, its forests of masts piercing the sky, its tribute-bearing sea-servants crossing its bay and traversing the world, to add to its wealth and honor,

There is your city

"Nor feel the prouder of his native land?"

What is more beautiful than the sunny waters of the East River, as they run by the frowning castle on Governor's Island-castle more terrible upon paper than in its crumbling, rotten stone! Follow it up toward the Sound. Can you believe that such a pleasant stream is the road to Hell-gate? Here sentimental gentlemen may moralize a little. Cross to Brooklyn, and your eye rests upon a young queen, beginning to be a sister city. With our little sister we will shut our eyes. We will contemplate the picture no more. We have seen glory enough.

There is only one other of the several cities that gem our bay, which we miss from the delineation before us. Does not the reader's spirit sigh with ours, when we tearfully whisper, Communipaw! But that city is behind us, reader, and shares the sublimity of invisibility with the Narrows and

the ocean. But there, industriously toiling in that boat, are the representatives of the ancient Dutch fish emporium. Yes, doubtless, those gentleman are the members from Communipaw. You might know it from the characteristic grasp of the oyster-tongs in the hands of the one, and from the sable complexion of the other; only there is a cast of mournful thought upon the brow of the last, and he does not grin and show his teeth, as hath been the fashion of Communipaw negroes from the time whereof the memory of man knoweth not, etc. Perhaps he hath had bad luck. "Delightful task!" as the poet says, to scrape and poke all day, that Downing's reputation as an oyster-caterer may be honored, and the rakers and scrapers in adjoining Wall-street be made fat! We pause

for the sake of admiration.

Two hundred years ago! That was not much in the times of the patriarchs. It is nothing absolutely wonderful nowonly the length of life of two old people. And yet in those two hundred years what changes have taken place! The wilderness has become a city! Nations have been extirpated! Nothing has remained but the sea, and the everlasting air. The sea still laves the shore, but it is a shore peopled with dock-rats, instead of being overhung with foliage and flowers. The air still plays upon the island of Manhattan; but, instead of the perfume of roses and sweet fruits, caught up in green lanes and pleasant groves, it is pregnant with pepper and snuff in South-street, and driving limestone dust in Broadway. All, all is changed. It is worse than was to Rip Van Winkle the transformation of jolly King George's rubicund face into the buff and blue of General Washington. Only one resemblance in the physico-moral world remains. Two hundred years ago the "savages" would

have scalped you; the modern savages of Gotham only

shave you.

Two hundred years hence! O prophecy! we cannot bear to listen to thee. We will only dare to hope that we may live to see the year 2000, and that our lots on One hundredthstreet may then be worth principal and interest.

THE RIGHT USE OF SILVER.

[From the New York Commercial Advertiser, April 1, 1837.]

OUR sheet is not half large enough to contain all that we should like to put in it every day, and were it twice as large as it is, still we should have to struggle daily with the inconveniences of too narrow limits-desires expanding, as in most other matters, with the means of giving them indulgence. Therefore the appropriation of a column to any one subject, is at all times a trial of our virtue. But we would rather exclude a column of our own choicest handiwork, than omit the subjoined report of certain doings at Hempstead, on Saturday the 25th ultimo; and the rather for it has not been forced upon us by a request for publication, but fallen accidentally into our hands, without even a hint of its existence, or of the proceedings which it describes. it from the Long Island Star, in which we discovered it yesterday by the merest chance, while looking over the outside columns. The presentation address is one of the happiest we have ever read, and the

We copy