twelve o'clock, M. with a meagre and beggarly account of moneys collected, - a profusion of excuses from our best subscribers, whose bills we thought would be paid at sight, and a handful of bills, good for nothing but to be laid up as memorials of the scrupulousness with which some people observe the maxim, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." If it should happen that we have not a note to pay for rent, ink, types, or paper, before the banks close, we lose, for that day, the rare comfort of running, under a scorching sun, to all our friends, to borrow the wherewithall to pay said note, and the still rarer satisfaction of finding that most of our friends are in the same predicament. Such, gentle reader, are some of the editorial comforts of the season. The colors are faint and the sketch imperfect; and if you would know the whole, you must become an editor yourself. If you are an advocate for the American System, you will "speak comfort to our weary hearts" by subscribing for the Courier and persuading your neighbor to go and do likewise; and by believing that when we give you a paper not quite so interesting as you expect, the fault is not in our intention, but in circumstances beyond our control. If you are an Anti-American-System-man, you will, of course, place our list of comforts to the credit of the "accursed tariff," and bid us "" go to the," where we are sure that, but for that, both you and ourselves would have gone by this time. September 5, 1828. MARCH OF MIND. As every man is well satisfied with himself, his own age, -era we mean, may seem also the best; for it has the necessary connection with that respectable being, himself. The circles of selfishness are concentric, but they are less distinct as they are more distant from the great centre. If you cast a stone into the placid waters, you may see the figure illustrated. The circles nearest the stone will be high and swelling, while their force and fury will decrease as they recede. So it is with the great principle that attaches a man so strongly to every thing that appertains to himself. His own dog, though but a poor one, is, in the proprietor's estimation, a more respectable brute than the greyhound of his neighbor. His geese are more beautiful than another's swans; and as to his children, there can be no comparison between them and the offspring of less favored parents. Even thus may it be with his own era. He lives in an age when old prejudices are forgotten, and all things have become new and good. We look back on the dark ages with horror, for there were then few newspapers or novels, and no blue-stockings at all. Women were then the themes and not the minstrels We reprobate the times when each man took the administration of justice into his own hand, and cared little for jury or judge. We think, perhaps, that these were but dull times, when there were no political parties in a state to hold the balance of power, and to abuse each other, as became true patriots. There were no banks then, and, of course, no pleasant notes became due at frequent intervals to give an impulse to stagnant life, and to accelerate the tardy flight of time between the making thereof and the maturity. There were in those days, heroes, and the name has descended to us, though the race is as much extinct as that of the mammoth. We have, however, one, whom his worshipers call hero, as the worshipers in some Hindoo temples call their hideous long-eared idol a god. Finally, we live in an age in which it is very pleasant and profitable to live, — great discoveries are making in the physical and moral world; · of course, we are growing wiser and better, and all of us are disposed to commend the present above the past, to follow joyfully in the March of Mind. THE SEASON. The worst description of weather is your muggy. It is not pleasant, in such times as the present, to be, like Hamlet, "too much i' the sun," when the blood, under the coolest circumstances, is like liquid fire, and the face like a burning coal. If such are the heats of the temperate zone, how can men live between the tropics? Were this weather to last, how temperate we should become! for the fire of the atmosphere would be enough for a toper without the burning of alcohol. A day of such weather is a homily twentyfour hours long in favor of temperance, and it preaches effectually. The principle, however, that falls like a paralysis on the human body, and disposes the mind to somnolent images and the eyes to a siesta, gives greater activity to all the agents of annoyance. The serpent is more swift and venomous, the dog more rabid and poisonous, and the insects have more sting and buzz. We are not only roasted, but we are devoured before we are well done. A mosquito is a small insect, but a great evil, — and a bed-bug is a little thing, but a giant in mischief. The insect is beyond the reach of process, unless you catch him in the act; but the bug may be always taken and dealt with according to equity and law, or rather according to justice, for equity is slow and law uncertain. Who can follow a train of thought while his mind is oozing out from every pore in his body? It is a time when any man may see what fat he's got," to borrow a phrase from the ballad of Bill Jones, and, to take another form of speech from the kitchen, he will find but little scraps left. The very extremity of misery has put us in a merry mood; but it is barbarous to make honest men laugh in such weather. REMEDY FOR BAD RULERS. John Randolph predicted that the presidential purple would not fall again upon the shoulders of a gentleman. Perhaps it will not, if the last precedent is to establish the principle. Yet the people generally act right, where they act at all. The mischief is, that when much is at stake, in the way of principle, they stay at home and mind what they call their own business, without reflecting that the public interest is not only their own business but their private interest. It is every man's duty to have an opinion, to express it and to act after it. We should have better public officers, were there a fine as heavy as that for military delinquencies upon all absentees from the polls. In a district of five thousand voters, one thousand stay at home, and each individual says, What can I do at the election? it is but one vote, and that will not change the result. Now these very patriots, that love their own barns better than their neighbors' houses, (as Hotspur says,) hold in their hands the balance of power, (that mysterious agency,) and can put good men into office, unless they prefer the bad. Yet they leave a franchise, that they would bleed for were it invaded, to be exercised by violent partizans, and restless, dissatisfied spirits, who have every thing to gain from confusion and nothing from quiet. It is doubtful, if they manage these things better in France," but we ought to transact them better here. - To conclude, and with a truism, there is little hope of our being well governed till we depute better men to do us that service. 1831. SIGNS AND WONDERS. Almost the only subject of conversation, and the most common one for paragraphs, for the last two days, has been the wonderful appearances in the heavens. Those who claim the right to pester society with their garrulous nothings, have been Prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confused events, and many others who have suffered their fears to sway their reason, begin to look pale at the novel movements of the celestial machinery. One editor tells us, that the sun in Virginia has been of a silver whiteness, shorn of his rays of dazzling brightness, so that the eye could bear to gaze upon his glory; that spots were upon his side; and that anon the light became of a greenish hue, until obscured by clouds. Another paper in the same state says, the sun has become of a pale blue, and that he looks more like our satellite, the moon, than like his own supernal glory. Another editor observed the change, and adds that, on the previous night, "The falls of the river roared more loudly than usual, and had a sound as if the banks of the basin had broken down, and the waters were rushing through in a thundering cataract." A New-York as it is editor compares the color to that of a Brazilian emerald, and says, the great orb "seemed to have left the skies, and to hang in our own atmosphere, suspended like a balloon at no very great distance from the earth." Others have observed that the moon partakes of these lack-lustre colors, but fair that she should, as she borrows her light. Others have seen the planet Venus, hung on the horns of the moon like a silver tassel, while the moon herself, through a telescope, "exhibited all the asperities of mountains of ice." Upon these marvelous appearances one editor remarks, that "It was a spectacle, such as we have never seen before; " another thinks it "a novelty of rare occurrence; " and a third is curious to know the "cause of this unusual departure from the ordinary course of nature." We might add to the above some account of the singular appearance, on Sunday evening, of a waving dark line upon the clear sky, running from the zenith towards the south-west. And yet it was not like the mark of a pencil on the heavens, but more resembled a fissure in the magnificent ceiling, requiring little fancy to enlarge it, and expose the myriads of cherubim filling the heavens with the melody of their instruments. One cannot but smile at the superstitious folly of the day, as he hears the unprofitable gossiping of the wonderers at these celestial phenomena. Although, perhaps, no man may know the hour of the final visitation, yet there is no particular reason for supposing that we, of this generation, shall see the opening of the seventh seal, and hear the sound of the seventh trumpet. We are not worthy of these things. Man is yet too far from the perfection to which reason and philosophy assure us he may attain, to hope for the millennial blessings. On the other hand, little as science has taught us, (and but the door of her temple is opened,) we believe she has given man a key to greater mysteries than these atmospheric wonders. She has taught us that they are a part of the thousand phenomena of the natural world, which in ancient times excited the apprehension of the ignorant; and it is time we had learned from her instructions how presumptuous it is |