The New-York Mirror: a Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts

THE NEW-YORK MIRROR: A WEEKLY JOURNAL, DEVOTED TO LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS. 1S'ntbel!fsbeb lllftb .f)'fne E·nni:abfnns, anb ~usic ai:i:an.11eb lll!tl) accompaniments foi: tj)e l9Ianofotte. FOUR DOLLARS PER ANN,) SUBSCRIPTIONS RECEIVED AT THE OFFICE OF PUBLICATION, THE NEW FRANKLIN nmLDINGS, CORNER OF NASSAU AND ANN STREETS [PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. ---=-============================================================================================= VoL. X. NEW-YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 1833. No. 37. ORIGINAL POETRY. But now his fiery course was done, moment rather in want of a subject, cut it carefully off, and took it And his long and trackless race was run, away with him in his carriage to lecture upon it to his pupils. So For unto the sun he came. Mynheer W odenblock, considering that he had been hitherto ac THE COMET. But, should I tell you the conference dire, customed to walk and not to hop, and being, perhaps, somewhat h happened once that a straggling ray That was held between those orbs of fire, prejudiced in favor of the former mode of locomotion, sent for our From the solar system lost its way, Your every hair would rise ; friend at the canal basin, in order that he might give him directions And came to a comet's den ; So now I descend to earth again, Ere the height has turned my giddy brain, about the representative with which he wished to be supplied for And it roused him up from his long, long sleep, his lost member. And he sprung from his cavern, in chaos deep, Or the glory dimmed my eyes. To visit tho sun ngain, The artificer enter d tho wealthy burgher's apartment. He was CANZONET. reclining on a couch with his left leg looking as respectable as civer, So long had he lain in his dungeon cold, but with his unhappy right stump wrapped up in bandages, ls if His joints f It exceedingly stiff and old, BY JOHN llOWAllD PAYNE. Ancl h scnrco could move a limb ; conscious and ashamed of its own littleness. Thou ! oh thou, hast loved mc,-dcarest ! " Turningvort, you have h 11rd of my misfortune ; it has thrown But in spite of his sharp rheumatic pain, When none other cared for mo ; Ho shook his limbs, and combed his mane, When my fortune seem'd severest, me into a fever, and all Rott rdnm into confusion; but let that And soon put himself in trim. Kindest was the smile from thee ! pass. You must make me a leg; and it must ho the best leg, sir, And forth he sprung, through the realm of night, you ever made in your life.'' Turningvort bowed. "I do not care Yes ! ah, yes ! the lorn and lonely, what it costs ; " Turningvort bowed yet lower; " provided it' out And chaos stared at his crazy flight, Hollow hearts of worldlings shun ; - And a terrible tumult made ; Theirs are flow'rs·of day, which only does every thing you have yet made of a similar sort. I am for While torrents of cloud and flood and flame Open when they see the sun : none of your wooden spindleshanks. Make it of cork; let it be Up from her dark abysses came- light and elastic ; and cram it as full of springs as a watch. I know But nothing the monster stayed. But, while theirs were all reposing In the absence of the light, nothing of the business, and cannot be more specific in my direc On, on he went, as the lightning fast, Like the cereus, thine unclosing tions; but this I am determined upon, that I shall have a leg as Till the realm of destruction and darkness past, Gave its sweetness to the night ! good as the one I have lost. I know such a thing is to be had, and Glad was the comet then ! if I get it from you, your reward is a thousand guineas." For behind lay the kingdom of night and death, While he saw the light, and inhaled the breath, SELECT TALES. The Dutch Prometheus declared, that to please Mynheer Von Of the starry world again, W odenblock, he would do more than human ingenuity had ever do~e before, and undertook to bring him, within six days, a leg That lovely world, with its bounds of bluo, CRUELTY TO POOR RELATIONS; Sproad far and wide in the comet's view, OR THE CRIPPLED MERCHANT OF ROTTERDAM. which would laugh to scorn the mere common legs possessed by common men, While he stayed his course to gaze ; 0 BY HEN!\Y G. BELL. And he hung as one in a joyful trance, This assurance was not meant as an idle boast. Turningvort Watching the stars in then mystic dance, "And every Dutchman trembled at the sight." was a man of speculative as well as practical science, and there Through many a glittering maze. HE who has been at Rotterdam will remember a house of two was a favorite discovery which he had long been endeavoring to By millions and millions the orbs of light stories which stands in the suburbs just adjoining the basin of the make, and in accomplishing which, he imagined he had at last suc Solemnly moved in th ir courses bright, canal that runs between that city and the Hague, Leyden, and other ceeded that very morning. Like all other manufacturers of ter While from afar to his ravished ears places. I say he will remember it, for it must have been pointed restrial legs, he had ever found the chief difficulty in his progress Seemed, like the breeze, to swell and die, out to him as having been once inhabited by the most ingenious towards perfection, to consist in its being apparently impossible to A clear and awful harmony- introduce into them any thing in. the shape of joints, capable of be 'Twas the music of the spheres ! artist that Holland ever produced, to say nothing of his daughter, the prettiest maiden ever born within hearing of the croaking of a ing regulated by the will, and of performing those important func But the gales of heaven came floating there, frog. It is not with the fair Blanche, unfortunately, that we have tions achieved under the present system, by means of the admira· Gales of the soft ethereal air ; And at their reviving breath, at present any thing to do ; it is with the old gentleman her father. ble mechanism of the knee and ankle, Our philosopher had spent Down, down he plunged, on his heedless way, His profession was that of a surgical-instrument maker, but his fame years in endeavoring to obviate this grand inconvenience, and though And woe to all in his path that lay, principally rested on the admirable skill with which he constructed he had undoubtedly made greater progress than any body else, it In his fiery path of death 1 wooden and cork legs. So great was his reputation in th.is depart was not till now that he believed himself completely master of the By many a rolling star he flew, ment of human science, that they whom nature or accident hacl grQat secret, His first attempt to carry it into execution was to be With her glittering seas, and her hills of blue, curtailed, caricatured, and disappointed in so very necessary an ap in the leg he was about to make for Mynheer Von Wodenblock. But in loneliness he fared ; pendage to the body, came limping to him in crowds, and, however It was on the evening of the sixth day from that to which I have For with pallid beams they shrunk away, desperate their case might be, were very soon (as the saying is) set already alluded, that with this magic· leg, carefully packed up, the And hid thrmselves from his deadly ray, upon their legs again. Many a cripple, who had looked upon his acute artisan again made his appearance before the expecting and As he wildly on them glared. deformity as incurable, and whose only consolation consisted in an impatient W1Jdenblock. There was a proud twinkle in Turning But, alas ! too near his fatal blaze occasional sly hit at Providence, for having intrusted his making to vort>s gray eye, which seemed to indicate that he '<alued even the One tiny planet came out to gaze, a journeyman, found himself so admirably fitted-so elegantly thousand guineas which he intended for Blanche's marriage portion, From her path of light afar ; propped up by Mynheer Turningvort-that he almost began to less than the celebrity, the glory, the immortality, of which he was And the comet withered her waving trees, And blighted the lands, and dried the seas, doubt whether a timber or cork supporter was not, on the whole, at length so sure. He untied his precious bundle, and spent some Of the venturous little star. superior to a more common-place and troublesome one of flesh and hc;iurs in displaying and explaining to the delighted burgher the num Swifter and swifter the comet Bew, blood. And, in good truth, if you had seen how very handsome ber of additions he had made to the internal machinery, and the Brighter and brighter his radiance grew, and delicate were the understandings fashioned by the skilful artifi purpose which each was intended to serve. The evening wore When the glorious sun was near ; cer, you would have been puzzled to settle the question yourself. away in these discussions concerning wheels within wheels, and But the planets wished him back again, One morning, just as Master Turningvort was giving its final springs acting upon springs.

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