to explain and relieve
their intolerable brilliancy by foot-notes; yet, seeing that one of
these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the
"Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the
other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is
supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help
crying out against them.

The foot-notes to Mr. White's verses _are_ comical, however, we must
acknowledge; and so are all the foot-notes in the book. If the Model of
Deportment had taken to letters with a humorous aim, we could conceive
of his writing them. "If burlesque," says Mr. White of his "Union"
verses, "were all their purpose, they would not be here preserved";
adding, with a noble tenderness for his victim, "Mr. Emerson could well
afford to forgive them, even if they did not come from one of his
warmest admirers,"--in which we agree with Mr. White, whose
consideration for the great transcendentalist is equalled only by his
consideration for the reader's ignorance in regard to most things not
connected with the poetry of the war. "Bully," he tells us, was used as
"an expression of encouragement and approval" by the Elizabethan
dramatists, as well as by our own cherished rowdies; which may be
readily proven from the plays of Shakespeare. But what the author of the
poem in which this word occurs means by "hefty" Mr. White does not know,
and frankly makes a note for the purpose of saying so. Concerning the
expression "hurried up his cakes," he is, however, perfectly _au fait_,
and surprises us with the promptness of his learning. "As long as the
importance of hurrying buckwheat pancakes from the griddle to the
table," says he, with a fine air of annotation, "is impressed upon the
American mind, this vile slang will need no explanation. But the
fame,"--mark this dry light of philosophy, and the delicacy of the humor
through which it plays,--"but the fame of the Rebel march into
Pennsylvania, and of the victory of Gettysburg, will probably outlive
even the taste for these alluring compounds." This is Mr. White's good
humor; his bad humor is displayed in his note to a poem by Fitz James
O'Brien on the "Seventh Regiment," which he says was "written by a young
Irishman, one of its members." The young Irishman's name is probably as
familiar to most readers of the magazines as Mr. White's, and we cannot
help wondering how he knew a writer of singularly brilliant