THE LITERARY GAZETTE' created a great sensation. Frank was congratulated by his friends on the excellence of his hebdomadal. His editorial brethren bestowed liberal commendation; and he was bespattered with praise, where he expected to be flattered by criticism. To be sure, there were some croakers, who thought it a little too light, and some blithe hearts thought it a little too heavy; but generally, great satisfaction was expressed with its contents. scribers flocked in, and every thing went on swimmingly.

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But however lightly Frank's bark danced at first, he soon found that there were clouds, storms, and rough waters, to be encountered, as well as sunshine and soft winds. An author whom he reviewed with deserved severity, was sure to regard what was said as an emanation of jealousy. Rejected fi'penny rhymists reported him unfriendly to the 'infantile efforts of genius.' Bilious moralists condemned him for what their evil-seeking imaginations tortured into profligacy. In this way, his judgment and goodness of heart were underrated; and although he won more smiles than frowns, yet he sighed when he thought of the goodness of his motives, and the abominable constructions which were frequently put upon them.

In addition to these grievances, the drudgery of preparing matter for his paper soon became sickening. At times, heavy demands were made on his exhausted brain; and then the ungentle efforts to lash his mind into a fury; to spread the wings of an imagination borne down by lassitude; to wake up reluctant thought; were most unpleasant. And yet he knew it must be done, and that his readers would judge him by his weakness rather than his strength. This knowledge, with his desire to please, placed him often in a dilemma which nothing but kindred experience can appreciate. When he

was in the mood, composition was an agreeable occupation; but when draft after draft had been made upon his labors, a sense of fatigue would come over him, and he knew that the stream of thought yet in motion under such cloudy auspices, would reflect but little brilliancy on the vision of his readers. The misery of editorship is, that one dull article will receive more reprobation than a score of successful ones can remove. Men are prone to judge of things by the worst lights. The virtue which one practices, will seldom be considered expiatory of his vices; the day is judged of by the minute of cloud, rather than the hour of sunshine; and a line of dulness will condemn a page of vivacity. We look at the specks on the sun, the mole on the cheek of beauty, and the blemish on the statue otherwise perfect in its symmetry.

Often, while revelling in visions of happiness, Frank would be recalled to his earthly duties, by the entrance of the boy from the printing-office, y'clept, par excellence, the devil. Every editor is aware of the felicity which these intrusions into his sanctum afford. Fixed in his arm-chair, with a horizontal line of leg before him, while his fancy is with his sweet-heart, or his wife and little ones, as the case may be, he feels quite comfortable. At the next instant, all his glistening thoughts and fairy fancies are 'knocked into pi,' by the entrance of the imp of the printing-office, with a face streaked with ink, roundaboutless and vestless, and having on a pair of inexpressibles hitched up on one side by a twine string, who shrieks out, in a merciless tone, 'I'm come for copy, Sir!' Cowper said that the bray of an ass was the only unmusical sound in nature; but the poet had never experienced the discord occasioned to an editor's mind, by an inop. portune demand for 'copy,' or he would have make one more exception.

Often did Frank hold with the dirty-faced urchin such a dialogue as the following:

Devil. They want more copy, Sir.'

Frank. What's become of that I sent before?'

Devil. It's used up, Sir.'

Frank. Is n't it enough?'

Devil. Why, I've been here twice before this morning, and I could n't get in. The foreman 's mad as h―ll, and says how as that the paper can't be got out in time.'

Frank. Well, be off. I'll have some copy ready in an hour.'

Devil goes off, with a sunken aspect, muttering, as he goes, 'I gets more kicks than coppers. The foreman kicks me for not getting copy, and the editor kicks me for coming for it. Deuce take 'em both! As to the paper, she may be late, for me; and as to the press, I wish she was blow'd to the mischief!'

The 'devil' talks upon the common principle, when he speaks of the paper and the printing-press as belonging to the feminine gender. Your statesman, speaking of the country's prosperity, says, Her commerce, her manufactures, and her arts, are flourishing, and

will soon advance her high in the respect of nations.' The backwoodsmen say of Cincinnati, She is the western queen.' A Kentuckian will pet his rifle, and say, 'She's leetle the slickest bore in these parts, and her voice is sweet as Nannie's, and that's saying a heap for her.' Some go so far as to sex learned bodies, and to say of congress, 'The constitution does not confer such powers on her, and beyond those delegated she cannot rightfully act; thus flinging a petticoat over this venerable body of gray-haired bachelors, husbands, and orators. The fact is, it is quite difficult to understand the reason why the neuter gender is not applied to all things neither male nor female, Every vessel that skims the billow, in common nomenclature, belongs to the feminine gender. There is not a steam-boat that ploughs the river, however hoarsely it may bark, or however it may fling volumes of smoke above, like streamers, that belongs to the masculine gender. Every ricketty yawl or skiff that is battered to pieces by the tides, belongs to the lovely and ever-to-be-beloved sex. If a pleasure-boat, with its white sail kissing the wave which its prow proudly spurns, wins a compliment, it is sure to be uttered after this wise: 'See how finely she sails!-and

'She walks the water like a thing of life.'

Is not the male sex somewhat scandalously neglected in this matter? Why should not a noble ship, daring and adventurous -a merchant-man, perhaps an India-man-belong to the masculine gender? If it be female, why not be grammatically consistent, and talk of merchant-woman, and India-woman? If it be necessary that inanimate structures be sexed, why not do it with some reference to their qualities? Let a ship be called she, by all means; for a lady is beautiful, and a ship bearing steadily away over the waters, is beautiful to look upon, too; and a lady, though not freighted down with bales and packages by the ton, yet is she burthened with those articles in the dry-goods line which are worn by the ton. Streamers wave from the flag-staff of the ore, and ribbons flutter gaily from the main-top of the other. Therefore, let a ship and a woman be of the same sex. But let there be some limits to the license. We take it, there is nothing that floats, which looks less like our own dear sweet-heart, than an old worm-eaten canoe, scooped out of a dead trunk; and yet, when a paddle is applied to the ugly thing, you look at it and say, 'She moves!'

We admit and feel the romance and propriety of sexing the poetry of heaven.' Blessings be yet again on benighted Egypt, for she taught us to speak of Osiris and Isis, instead of the sun and moon! Blessed for ever be the spirit of him who first conceived the idea of sexing the starry hosts, from the Cynosure to Sirius! How much more poetical is night in consequence-especially such as Moore speaks of in the Epicurean :

All who have been in love, feel that the soft influence which comes down from the face of Isis is feminine in its witchery. She is

friendly to love affairs, although Miss Diana, when in Greece, would have nothing to do with the masculine deities; and although she banished Calisto, and transformed Acteon, yet did these same Greeks scandalize the virgin, by reporting that she forgot her fastidiousness when she was smitten by the charms of an Endymion on the Carian Mount. To return. We are glad that the poets of the olden time sexed the stars pretty much as their fancies thought proper, and that we Christians still perpetuate these beautiful fictions of their mythologies for there is a charm in the classical association which now comes upon the mind, when viewing the heavens, that we should regret to part with, however heathenish and anti-utilitarian it may be.. The owners of bright eyes have astronomy enough to recognise Venus, the beautiful star of evening; and yet they perversely and anti-mythologically call her it, when they should know that she is all that is now left of that beautiful being of the cestus, who, like a wreath of foam, was born of a billow near Cythera. Let us be consistent, and call Venus she, even as we call the moon she, and her lord and master, 'the eye of the universe,' he. It is proper to speak of Saturn, and his rings, of Mars, and his belligerent front; and we should, to be consistent, she Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, every one of them. Let us also call this great heap of dirt and water which we tread on, and sail over, and speak of, as our mother earth, feminine. Our wretchedly-abused planet is spoken of as belonging to no sex in particular, now-a-days, although she was once called Terra and Titaa; and then she was a beauty, and a charming one, too, as we should judge from some of her heart-stealing, bright-eyed daughters. Poetry demands that we still continue to sex the stars. Let us regard Jupiter as a great big lubberly fellow, making love to the shy and bashful Vesta, and waking up jealousy in the bosom of his elder sweet-heart, Juno. Let us have Mars getting up assignations with the all-loving Venus, as of old; and Saturn and Pallas felicitating each other in the manner becoming two heads, the one so full of justice, and the other of wisdom, as are theirs. How delectable it would be, to fancy Madame Earth flirting with the long-yeared Herschel, to the utter astonishment of her neighbor Mercury, who would either have to live an old bachelor, or look up a mistress in some of the systems which revolve in the far-off regions of space!

Our imagination has run riot long enough through the heavens ; and we therefore return back to our starting-place, the earth. We were speaking of the incongruity of the sexual designations now in vogue. Why is it, that once introduced, the system of sexing things was not carried out farther? Why not give sex to a tree, a carriage, a wind-mill, and our pantaloons, as well as to a yacht, a watch, and every scrabbling village in the land? We love to think upon the Mississippi as the Father of Waters,' and the Ohio as La belle Riviere; for to the masculine strength and stature of the one, we offer our admiration, and to the feminine beauty and grace of the other, we have yielded up our heart.

We were speaking, before we got on this mad-cap digression, of the miseries in which the editorial fraternity in general, and Frank Thornton in particular, were sometimes plunged, by ill-timed demands for that bane of the craft called 'copy.' At such times, Frank would

disenchant himself of his fond visions, pick up his pen, arrange his paper, and think, or try to think, of a subject. He would look over the newspapers for topics; whip up his brain for a suggestion, or look out at the window, and seeing his friend James Summers, who prided himself on being a man of the world, he would conclude to write an article on men of the world in general, much after the manner of the fragment below.

'FIELDING says, that in order to understand men, it is necessary that one should be born with a genius for that purpose.' Your men of the world think so too; hence, they are the favorites of nature, and as such, are superior to ordinary mortals, and have a right, in consequence, to look down on inferiority. We are not going to upset Fielding, Bulwer, et id omne genus; we only say, that we detest the boast and swagger which your men of the world take upon themselves as a natural right, peculiar to those who come into the world with an extra eye to read that volume of mysteries, the human heart, locked up, like the ark of old, from the vision of the vulgar.

Your man of the world is the most bustling of bodies, and looks like Atlas with the globe incumbent on his shoulders. His lips form an oracle of human wisdom, and it is rank profanity to question aught that emanates from so holy a source. His contempt for inferior understandings is most supreme; and his humor, like a foaming cataract, flows and boils with sublime rage, if impertinence dare question his profundity, or contest his right to monopolize the gleams of knowledge which light up the human mind. He is the greatest and most orthodox of bigots, and takes good care that the stultified head of heresy be scathed by the lightnings of his indignation. He uses old saws with a wink; and if he chooses to bless you with a squint, you are unpardonable, if you do not cheer him with a smile. He is a stickler for antiquity, and hates smooth chins and black heads, for their greenness and folly. He is the repository of all the fragments of wisdom that are left of shipwrecked ages, which have floated down on the stream of time. He gathers together the bits and ends of sayings which go to make up the traditionary lore of a country; and this unbooked knowledge renders him sager than a man of much reading. In fine, your man of the world is a very great man, and is to be respected, whether he discourses of the evangelists at a horse-race, or flourishes political eloquence, and that Helicon which inspires it, a beer-mug, in the unquiet recesses of some venerable ale-house.

This may be called an 'outline in pencil' of a man of the world, when the shadows of fifty years or so are upon him; when he has exhausted the fountains of his wild blood, and turned out sage and philosopher. A man must run a long and labyrinthine gauntlet, under the scourge of the vices, before he can aspire to the character. Of course, it is right that such an one should usurp the throne of wisdom, as his shoulders have been legitimately invested with the purple of sin. The right to rule can only be predicated on a youth of prostitution, a manhood of degradation, and an old age of impeni

tence.