Editor's Table [pp. 306-314]

Editor's lable.
Love took up that book of music, -where iank-notes alone are pennedl,
And crescendo marks each movement, till a crash winds up the end.
' Speculation' it was lettered, but the careless world don't see,
How the'S' has been so blotted, that the word begins with'P.'
Every morning at the alley, where the ten-pins rattle down,
Did I meet her all that fortnight in an omelette-colored gown,
Every noon upon the beaches led her in a tunic red,
'Neath the heads of hackmen's horses, dripping from a'watery lIed;'
Exvery afternoon I met her, round by Bateman's dusty reach,
Or in Pennifeather's coaches, creeping o'er the Second Beach;
Exvery evening in the h)all-room whirled we spinning through the thr-Jg.
Till the New York steamer's whistle ended off the cotilloi.
O! thou heartless Ann Eliza! Ann Eliza dear no more!
O! you dreary, dreary beaches!-O! you cold deserted shore!
Blacker than my pen can etch thee-falser than the notes you sunlg,
Wherefore cut me dead last Monday, smiling as you passed along?
Was it right of you to cut me! Hating known me-wtas it fair
Thus to pass your old acquaintance with that curs'd conceited air?
Weakness to be wroth with weakness! Womian's pleasure is man's pain.
Nature cut them out for cutting-wherefore should a fool complain?
Belle! A ball-room flirt is justly named a bell with empty head,
And a tongue that jangles duly when folks marry or are dead.
O! to burst from belles and flirting! Will she mind it should she find
I am married to another? Will she wish she'd changed her mind?
I will seek some girl more handsome: there are plenty about town.
I will take some poorer woman, with a hundred thousand down.
I will take her out to Paris, give her gowns and jewels rare,
Till the envious Ann Eliza tears her bandeaux in despair.
Shall I seek Professor Lawton? Shall he teach me'hearts to win.'
Through the columns of the Herald putting advertisements in?
What rash thing I'll do I know not, but farewell, thou Ocean Hall!
Not for me your band may jingle-not for me your fancy ball.
There's another fog that's creeping from the marsh behind the bay,
And the fog-bell in the harbor warns the steamer on her way.
Let it fall on Ocean Hall-on Ocean fIall or fast or slowHark! I hear the steamboat's whistle-loud they call me, and I go.
Though opinions may differ widely as
to the value of John Ruskin's criticisms
on Art, there cannot he a doubt that he is
one of the greatest of "modern painters"
in words. Hlie has recently written
another eloquent and elaborate eulogy of
his friend, the late J. M. W. Turner, in
the form of an Essay, accompanying a
volume of plates illustrating the "Harbours of England" from the pen of that
eminent artist. The subject is Sea Scenery and Sea Effects and the following picture of a coast line with fishing boats at
anchor is as perfect and distinct as it
could possibly be done in oils
"Yet among them (ships) the fisherboat, corresponding to the cottage on the
land (only far more sublime than a cottage ever can be,) is on the whole the
thing most venerable. I doubt if ever
academic grove were half so fit for
profitable meditation as the little strip of
shingle between two black, steep, oxverhanging sides of stranded fishing-boats.
The clear, heavy water-edge of ocean rising andl falling close to their bows, in
that unaccountable way which the sea has
always in caln weather, turning the pebbles over and over as if with a rake, to
look for something, and then stopping a
moment down at the bottom of the bank,
and coming up again with a little run
and clash, throwing a foot's depth of salt
crystal in an instant between you and the
round stone you were going to take in
your hand; sighing, all the while, as if
it would infinitely rather be doing something else. And the dark flanks of the
fishing-boats all aslope above, in their shining quietness, hot in the morning sun,
rusty and seamed with square patches of
plank nailed over their rents; just rough
enough to let the little flat-footed fisherchildren haul or twist themselves up to
the gunwales, and drop back again along
some stray rope; just round enough to remind us, in their broad and gradual
curves, of the sweep of the green surges
1556.]
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