e Dekay Bulwark_.

We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous
engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such
an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by
without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas!
too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask
of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all
the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common
humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and
senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the
respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to
the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and
infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the widespread nature of this
contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and virtue are given from
under the cloak (_credite, posteri!_) of a clergyman. It is a mournful
spectacle indeed to the patriot and Christian to see liberality and new
ideas (falsely so called,--they are as old as Eden) invading the sacred
precincts of the pulpit.... On the whole, we consider this volume as one
of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the
late French 'Revolution' (!)

* * * * *

_From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive Tocsin (a try-weakly family
journal)_.

Altogether an admirable work.... Full of humor, boisterous, but
delicate,--of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos
cool as morning dew,--of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet
keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of 'mountain-mirth,'
mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to
admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author,
or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once
both objective and subjective.... We might indulge in some criticisms,
but, were the author other than he is, he would be a different being. As
it is, he has a wonderful _pose_, which flits from flower to flower, and
bears the reader irresistibly along on its eagle pinions (like Ganymede)
to the 'highest heaven of invention.' ... We love a book so purely
objective ... Many of his pictures of natural scenery have an
extraordinary subjective clearness and fidelity.... In fine, we consider
this as one of the most extraor