'PERISCOPICS: BY DR. ELDER. Our friend and correspondent, 'RALPH ROANOKE,' who is not only a reliable judge of good writing, but a most acceptable writer himself, sends us the following desultory epistle touching a volume which we have not as yet encountered. If we have occasion again to advert to the neglect of the publishers, we shall be convinced that the demand for the book exceeds their ability to supply it :

'MY DEAR KNICK: If I could persuade you to ignore the harness for a day with 'Periscopics,' by a kindred spirit, I feel assured you would acknowledge an oäsis in the wearing turmoil of managing 'Old KNICK' in the dog-days.

'When I was a little boy out in the far West, I often tore my 'unmentionables' in scrambling up the sides of the court-house to secure a 'squatter location' on a window-sill to see a fight between two great lawyers who were loudly abusing each other. But I was always disappointed. They did n't fight. They only walked arm-in-arm away, after the case was given to the jury, like a couple of pick-pockets who were going to divide their spoil, leaving each anxious client looking as wolfish as if he had been 'sold,' and the unsophisticated, honest boys bewildered and indignant at the brace of cowardly shams.

'When I grew older and began to travel about, I never boarded a steam-boat without the anxious desire of finding some of our 'big folks' on their way to Congress, that I might sit down quietly and drink in the words of wisdom as they fell from their inspired lips. But here again another disappointment awaited me. They were only fluent in stale jokes and tobacco-juice.

'Still later in life, when kind friends and good fortune threw me into the company of some of the literary lions of the hour, hope sprung up afresh at the prospect of enjoying in propria persona one of those delightfully abandon sociables we read of in the lives of such men as GOLDSMITH, BURKE, Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, GARRICK, and JOHNSON, (with a 'chiel behind him takin' notes; ') or at a later period, in our own good city of brotherly-love, when old Doctor WISTAR was wont to collect about him those genial spirits of the last century. But it was all a mistake. The lions would n't roar. They were only good at eating and drinking. The fountains from which their great thoughts emanated were too shallow to undergo the wear and tear of the social board. Their stock in trade consisted of the mea

gre extracts which could be pumped up under a heavy pressure, and these were wanted for publication.

'Perhaps you will ask, What has all this to do with 'Periscopics?' I will answer your question Yankee-fashion, by asking another. Have you read the preface? If you have not you will find the author tells you that 'WEBSTER defines the word Periscopic, 'A viewing on all sides, etc.' However, do n't be impatient; for I am now about to tell you what it has to do with it. I have been a frequenter of public demonstrations, political, literary, and religious, and Doctor ELDER is one of the few roaring lions who have never disappointed me. For originality and freshness, for wit and sentiment, for length, breadth, depth, and height of reach, if he has any superiors among us they are holding back for future demonstration.

''Periscopics' was lying on my table, when a country friend came in and picked it up, saying, "Periscopics,' by ELDER! what ELDER? I wonder if it can be the ELDER I once heard make a speech in his shirt-sleeves out in Western Pennsylvania?'

''I would n't be surprised if it was, my friend,' I replied; 'he is a real democrat, and would never swelter in his coat if it was too hot to wear it. Beside, jump him up when you will, and you'll find him a 'full team' at any thing. But just open the book any where, and if it is him it will stick out in the first sentence.'

'My friend's eye fell upon the following passage from 'A Character:'

"GENERAL OGLE was not one of a litter. He was made on purpose, and his kind was complete in him. He was of that breed which leaves no heirs and needs no successors. Out of time and place he would himself have been only an oddity, or perhaps a monster; but in his actual surroundings of men and things there was the happiest possible fitness of relations, and every thing in him, accordingly, had its full force and virtue.'

'This was quite enough, and tossing back his head a shade beyond the perpendicular, he said:

''Percisely; where can I find the book?'

'Being a man of a quick perception of what is original, and a fine appreciation of what is good, I'll venture he 'll not be at home to any loafer, or 'douse the glim' at night, until he has made a string of the pearls which are strewn with such a lavish hand throughout the book.

'The departure of my friend threw me into a reverie running somewhat after this fashion:

"Every man should be practical in his friendships. Whoever brings people together who are in search of each other to do each other good, is a benefactor. It won't be a bad idea to leave 'Periscopies' on my table. Every fellow who comes in will pick it up, and if he has a vital spark in him it will ignite as soon as he opens it. If he reads a chapter he will buy the book, and thus both parties will be benefitted. One volume has sold already. Suppose I try what a day may bring forth.'

'Here my reverie was broken by the entrance of a valued friend, whose rueful countenance proclaimed him a victim to that dreadful epidemic which is daily attacking the commercial community between the hours of nine A.M. and three P.M., with a violence unknown to the oldest inhabitant.' As he walks back to my desk, care is riding him with whip and spur, and visions of bankruptcy and ruin

are looming up before him at every step. As the winds of heaven eddy around his care-worn brow, they carry away upon his faint breath that honest wish of his heart so touchingly expressed by COWPER:

เ

"OH! for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of depression and delay,
Of unsuccessful and successful trade

Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report

Of stops and protests with which earth is filled.'

'But let him speak for himself:

'RALPH, my dear boy, I'm in great distress. I'm one thousand short, and it's now two o'clock. I'm ruined if you don't help me out of this scrape. I offered for discount in two banks and got kicked out at both. Have you any thing

over?'

'It is astonishing how cool and tantalizing one feels on odd days, when there are no notes to pay, and 'till to-morrow' is a little eternity. Under this delightful sensation, which should be indulged for the sake of recuperation, especially if one has the means to grant the favor asked, it was just the most natural thing in life for me to answer: 'Sit down, GEORGE, and take it easy. It is n't healthy to become excited. The weather is entirely too hot for violent exertion. By the way, here is a most delightful and instructive book I want you to read. It will scatter the horrors to the four winds of heaven.'

''Do'nt talk to me about reading when my mind is so harassed I can hardly say my prayers.'

Yes, but just read this exquisite picture of the heroine in that wonderful story of 'ELIZABETH BARTON,' while I see how much I can loan you.'

'The habit of employing every moment induced him to comply: "THE controlling quality of ELIZABETH's mind was very plainly in its intense religious devotedness, which in her not only sublimed, but strengthened her natural affections, held them well and wisely to their office, and gave to the simplest duty which had any thing of sacrifice in it, the tone and determination of a sacred obligation.

"Her ideal of a religious life is called, in the phrase of her church creed, sanctification, perfect love, or Christian perfection. This conception was her standard. The instant aspirations of her heart were for angel purity and excellence. Her understanding, in its enthusiasm, rejected the logical manoeuvring by which the requirements of the highest law are reconciled to habitual delinquencies of life; nay, she felt weakness itself like a crime. Her meekness bore without apology the burden of her offences; and self-justification, on the ground of natural infirmity of nature, would have felt to her the very boldness of an appeal from the law of conduct prescribed for her by her Divine Father. The soul, held in such a frame, grew and gushed like the flowers and fountains, under the kindliest influences of heaven. In the calm of her holy reveries, blessing lay like dew upon her affections, and in its exultant movement, the divine presence flooded her whole being with its light and life, like a sun-burst on a mountain top. It needed only a clear insight to perceive that her essential life was 'hid with CHRIST in GOD'; that there was a constant rapture in the soul under that tranquillity of the senses a fullness of the diviner life sustaining a level of perpetual calmness on the surface, which the forces of the outward and accidental had no power to disturb. This supremacy of the central took nothing from the wonted energy of the loves she owed to the world without; it rather adjusted, steadied, and supplied them with a recreating strength, a constant freshness, and untiring patience. If her faith and fervor bordered on fanaticism in sentiment, they nevertheless, in all the verities of use, flowed like life-blood through her moral system, feeding with vital force all the faculties which perform the benign offices of love and duty. A deep peace ruled her spirit, and wove

its quiet into all the solicitudes which she sustained for others, and holy rest within compensated and repaired the waste of toil without.'

'After reading this, he turned over the leaves and examined the title-page. The workings of his mind were quite perceptible. He had already determined to buy the book, and although deeply interested, still remembered he was pressed for time. With the feeling that he would just finish that paragraph, he went a little farther, until the waters of Lethe closed cautiously and silently over the affairs of the day, and banks and bills payable were to him, for the time being, ogres of the night, vanishing before the bright god of day. If the author could have witnessed how the interest of this fresh and truthful picture of life had power to awaken an all-absorbing sympathy in this houest brother's heart, he would have felt abundantly repaid for the writing. He read on to the close, and drawing a long-sustained breath, looked up at the clock.

"Gracious heavens!' he exclaimed, 'it wants but twenty minutes to three o'clock !'

'A moment's delay or a word of badinage at this climax, would have been an insupportable agony, and I quietly placed a check for the required amount in his hand, and hurried him off to take up his note.

'The next visitor was a Western physician. I called upon him to sit down and read' Calomel,' an article from which I have only room for an extract:

"QUACKERY! If a fellow's head is a fog-bank, it is 'nt in a diploma to make a physician of him. The man that can't tell the time of day by a clock till he hears it strike, has no use for a watch; and the physician that does not know whether calomel is producing its effect until his patient is salivated, should never touch the drug; he is not fit to use it.'

'He complied, and the reading gave him 'fits.' (By the way, a newly-discovered symptom of calomel.) But notwithstanding, he saw fit to purchase the book.

'Here space admonishes me that I am trespassing; but I must not omit the most amusing act of the drama. I have the good or ill fortune to number among my list of bores, of which every man has a goodly number, a consequential and crusty old bachelor, on the shady side of fifty, who considers no man's opinion or judgment entitled to any weight in the community who was not a looker-on at the birth of the present century; who imagines the wisdom of the world garnered up in his wonderful cranium, to be cautiously administered in broken doses during his morning perambulations; who is too conservative to accept any new isms, and who is annoyed beyond measure by the propensity of the present generation to coin words, the meaning of which he can have no clue to; who delivers himself in that slow and oracular manner which, while it admits of no argument, makes mountains out of mole-hills.

'Happening to walk in during my experiment with 'Periscopics,' I accosted him in the following off-hand manner:

"Good morning, Mr. WARWICK.

well this fine morning?'

hope I have the honor of seeing you very

'The familiarity of my manner would have been sufficient to wound his dignity without the presence of company, before whom such a liberty must be rebuked. He, therefore, straightened himself up to his full height, and replied:

"By what train of reasoning, Sir, or by what rule of logic, do you call this a fine morning, when the thermometer stands at ninety, Sir, at eight o'clock in the forenoon, Sir? When I was a young man, Sir, we had no such weather as this;

neither had we boys—yes, boys, Sir-who would have hazarded such a remark in the presence of their seniors, Sir. But, Sir, I presume the rationale of the affair is, that men having changed, the weather had to change also.'

'Having delivered himself after this wise, and waited a few moments to enjoy its astounding effects, he continued, 'I have the honor, Sir, to take my leave.'

'Now, such a display of galvanized dignity and pomposity had been submitted to good-naturedly so often, that I felt like taking him down a peg, and I was sure that the book before me with its modern name would furnish a fine opportunity. I therefore remarked:

Mr. WARWICK, allow me to ask you one question before you go. Have you seen 'Periscopics?'

'The question confounded him. I presumed it would. I repeated again: "Have you seen 'Periscopics,' by ELDER?'

'By this time he had got the handle of the question, and tried to extricate himself after this fashion:

"No, Sir, I have neither seen nor heard of the book, or the author, Sir; if a man who can take such liberties with the English language can be called an author, Sir.'

́ ́But, my dear Sir, you will find the word 'Periscopic' in WEBSTER.'

"Well, Sir, suppose the use of it to be technically right, Sir, do you not see it is a modern innovation, Sir?'

'At this point I 'squared myself' to confound him with the force of my arguments and the fluency of my language; and seizing my opportunity while he was taking breath, I began:

"You, Sir, who perambulate the city as a walking encyclopedia of knowledge as the connecting link which dovetails all that is worth knowing of the present century with the past-haven't read 'Periscopics,' and don't know Doctor ELDER!'

"Don't know the man who was born on the top of the Alleghany Mountains, at his own particular request!

Don't know the man who made the KOSSUTH speech!

''Don't know the man who edited 'the Republic!'

"Don't know the man who 'threw physic to the dogs,' and went to law for an honest living!

"Don't know the man whose heart is so kind he wo'nt take a prosecuting

fee!

"Don't know the man whose wife never allows him to go to market, for fear he may meet a beggar on the way, and give him all his money; or failing to meet him while his basket is empty, gives him its contents on his return!'

"Well, upon my word, Mr. WARWICK, you come a little the nearest to being a 'Know-Nothing' of any man I ever saw in all my life.'

'This rollicking speech confounded the old gentleman, and caused a silent and speechless retreat on his part, and roars of laughter from the company.

'Such a book as 'Periscopics,' abounding as it does in characters and tales, things slashy and things fanciful, things politico-economical and things religious, is a public benefaction, and, judiciously used, might furnish young editors, aye, and old ones, too, with original material for a year's work. It will serve as a sort of intellectual grindstone, upon which young aspiring authors may try their metal; and if they will only profit by the test, the public will be saved many dull inflictions.-Yours RALPH ROANOKE.

ever,