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Ere How d'ye do has tun'd each tongue,
To "hope's delighted measure;
Good Bye in friendship's ear has rung,
The knell of parting pleasure.

From sorrows past my chemick skill,
Draws smiles of consolation;
While you from present joys distil
The tear of separation."

Good Bye replied "your statement's true,
And well your cause y've pleaded;
But pray who'd think of How d'ye do,
Unless Good Bye preceded.

Without my prior influence,

Could you have ever flourish'd;
And can your hand one flower dispense,
But what my tears have nourish'd.

How oft, if at the court of love,
Concealment be the fashion;
When How d'ye do has failed to move,
Good Bye reveals the passion.

How oft when Cupid's fires decline,
As every heart remembers—
One sigh of mine and only mine,
Revives the dying embers!

Go, bid the timid lover choose,
And I'll resign my charter;
If he for ten kind How d'ye does,

One kind Good Bye would barter.

From love and friendship's kindred source, We both derive existence;

And they would both loose half their force, Without our joint assistance.

'Tis well the world our merit knows, Since time (there's no denying)

One half in How d'ye doing goes,

And t'other in Good Bying."

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DUET,

From Moore's Comick Opera, entitled, M. P. or the Blue Stoding.

'Tis sweet to behold, when the billows are sleeping,
Some gay
colour'd bark moving gracefully by:
No damps on her deck, but the even tide creeping,
No breath in her sails, but the summer wind's sigh

Yet who would not turn with fonder emotion,

To gaze on the life boat, though rugged and worn,
Which often hath wafted o'er bills of the ocean,
The lost sight of hope to the sailor forlorn.

Oh! grant that of those who in life's sunny

slumber,

Around us, like summer barks idly have play'd;
When storms are abroad we may find in the number,
One friend, like the life boat, to fly to our aid.

METEOROLOGICAL JOURNAL, ending 6th April, 1814. Thermometer | Barometer.

| Winds.

| Weather.

Observations

P

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29 90 30 00 30.05 S.
30.05 30 05 30.05 S.
30 00 29 80 29.751 S.E.

S.

Fair. Fair

affections.

S

Fair.

Fair.

Rheuma

SE Fair.

Fair.

tisms,

30 36 60 56 3156 56 52 14648 46 2 44 56 52 3 40 58 52 4 46 50 50

5 44 51 44 6 44 56 46

29.65 29.30 29.30 S. E.
29.30 29.35 29.35 N. W. N.W Cloudy Cloudy Hooping

E. Rain. Rain. Pleurisies.

29 45 29 48 29 58 N.W N.W Fair. Fair. cough,
29.80 29.83 29.83 N W.

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Page 318, line 10 from top for "This" read "His"-line 15, for "Where" read" When."

Printed for JOHN COOK, by E. & E. HOSFORD, Albany.

No. 23.

THE STRANGER.

"Therefore as a STRANGER, bid it welcome."

HAMLET.

SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1814.

VOL. I.

REVIEW.

ART. VI. "An Apology for the life of JAMES FENNELL, written by himself," &c. &c. Philadelphia, MOSES THOMAS-8 VO. pp. 510. 1814.

THIS is an eccentrick production. Considered in a literary view, it has no claims to the character of biographical excellence. But it is a "book," and though of exotic origin in the principal portion of its materials, has here acquired its "form and pressure," and is ushered into the world as an American work. It adds little to the scanty stock of our own literature, and is not likely, we are afraid, to excite any very vivid emotions either of admiration or of envy towards us, in our elder brethren across the Atlantic. The style and the taste in which it is written are highly censurable. Its everlasting Latin quotations, and its continual affectation of learning, are among its most unpleasant characteristicks. It commences, queerly enough, with a pair of quotations from Horace, and when we might reasonably expect to hear something about Mr. James Fennell, we are told of the Roman Poet, and of Demosthenes and Mecenas. We wonder he had not added notices of Tom Thumb, and Jack the Giant-killer, which would have been full as much to the purpose. We do not hear of Mr. F. until we arrive at the 23d page. The work is, throughout, crowded with similar impertinences, and commits, moreover, many violences upon the English language, in the frequent introduction of uncommon and uncouth, not to say ungrammatical words.

By the way, this affectation of using strange and hard words, is a fault too common among the public speakers and writers of the

VOL. I.

day, in our country. It is intended to shew off marvellous erudition, whereas, in reality, it only exhibits pedantry. As imitators are not unfrequently more prone to adopt the defects of those whom they regard as models, than to attain their excellencies, we have been led to aspect that some of our modern orators and pamphleteers,have been seduced into this errour from the splendid example of those eyes of British Literature, the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews. But it should be recollected that in these celebrated publications, this peculiarity of manner is a natural overflowing from those vast reservoirs of science, the minds of the writers; whereas, in the cases to which we allude, it may be attributed to motives similar to those which induced the unfortunate jack-daw to array himself in the plumage which his more brilliant neighbour naturally wore.

As a record of facts, however, as the biography of a man corsiderably endowed by nature, and polished by education, whose errours and imprudencies have, throughout a checquered life, constantly led him into misfortune, the life of Fennell is highly interesting. To schemers, and projectors, whose heads are continually among the stars, while their bodies are confined to "this dull spot which men call earth," it may afford some useful les

sons.

Fennell's parentage was respectable, and his opportunities of education, were, even in his own favoured country, of a superiour order. He drank at the classick fountains of Eton and of Cambridge, and his earlier acquirements seem to have been uncommonly promising. But the meteor beam of fancy, which has more than once led astray much brighter men than Fennell, and which the incomparable Burns describes to be "a light from Heaven," captivated his young mind, and lured him at first into scenes of elegant refinement too lofty for his situation,-next into vicious dissipation, subsequently to the stage, and finally, to poverty and ruin. What a melancholy gradation! How instructive the lesson it inculcates.

The closing part of his narrative, written in great and real distress, when protracted injuries and calamities had evidently impaired his faculties, is pathetically touching. From extensive, unfortunate, and perhaps imprudent speculations in undertakings,

far beyond his means, he became involved in his circumstances. Overwhelmed with debts, entering the downward progression of life, destitute of every resource except the exercise of his pro fessional talents, he was arrested by an unfeeling creditor, and imprisoned sixteen months in Baltimore, at a great distance from a numerous and helpless family. This heavy blow seems to have crushed the fortitude of Fennell. The sensibility which accompanies genius, is not often allied to the cool and steady strength of mind, which, by bearing, conquers calamity. The effect which this misfortune had upon Fennell is thus described by himself Speaking of an unsuccessful attempt in his profession, when he had been restored to partial liberty, he says, "But I was no long❝er what I had been, the want of regular diet had enfeebled me, " and my distresses had introduced irregularities. My left foot "which had been sprained four times was incapable of support❝ing me; my constitution was racked by the cruelties inflicted on "me by Mr. Edwards, of Boston, and my engagement was con"sequently soon ended."

His ruin was now complete. His worldly circumstances, his mental endowments, and, what is more afflictive, his correct and sober habitudes, all fell at once together, and beneath the demon of useless and vindictive persecution. It is due to him to say that from what appears in this narrative, his honesty was unimpeachable, and that though often visionary, he was never intentionally deceptious. On the whole, his work is worth perusal for instruction to the young and the aspiring, whose anticipations, like the shades of departed Heroes in the Scandinavian mythology, continually gallop on rainbows-and to others more advanced, who like FENNELL might aptly quote from his favourite poet

-Video meliora, proboque,

Deteriora sequor

In his own opinion, expressed in the following extract from the account of his infantile years, his future destiny was early fixed by a trifling incident.

"The following apparently trifling circumstance, fixed the bias of my temper; and the perfect recollection of an occurrence which took place when I was only three years of age, sanctions the efficacy of the fact.

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