The whole book is a jeu-d'esprit, and, perhaps, its only fault is, that no jeu-d'esprit ought to be quite so long as to fill two closely printed volumes. Under the mask of an historian of his native city, he has embodied, very successfully, the results of his own early observation in regard to the formation and constitution of several regular divisions of American society; and in this point of view his work will preserve its character of value, long after the lapse of time shall have blunted the edge of those personal allusions which, no doubt,contributed most powerfully to its popularity over the water. New York, our readers know, or ought to know, was originally a Dutch new settlement, by the style and title of New Amsterdam, and it was not till after it had witnessed the successive reigns of seven generations of brigbreeched deputies of their high mightinesses that the infant city was transferred to the dominion of England, in consequence of a pretty liberal grant by Charles II. to his brother the Duke of York, and the visit of a few English vessels sent to give some efficacy to this grant, in partibus infidelium. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the imaginary Dutch Herodotus of this city, of course, considers its occupation by the English forces as the termination of its political existence, and disdains to employ the same pen that had celebrated the achievements of Peter the Headstrong, William the Testy, and the other governors of the legitimate Batavian breed, in recording any of the acts of their usurping successors, holding au The great superiority, over too many of his countrymen, evinced by Mr. Ir ving, on every occasion, when he speaks of the manners, the spirit, the faith of England, has, without doubt, done much to gain for him our affection. But had he never expressed one sentiment favourable to us or to our country, we should still have been compelled to confess that we regard him as by far the greatest genius that has arisen on the literary horizon of the new world. The Sketch Book has already proved, to our readers, that he possesses exquisite pow-thority under the sign manual of Great ers of pathos and description; but we recur, with pleasure, to this much earl er publication, of which, we suspect, but a few copies have ever crossed the Atlantic, to shew that we did right when we ascribed to him, in a former paper, the possession of a true old English vein of humour and satire of keen and lively wit-and of great knowledge and discrimination of human nature. These fine verses were not written by Mr. Coleridge, but by an American gentleman, whose name is concealed, though he calls him "a dear and valued friend." His name should not have been concealed, Britain. To atone, however, for the hasty conclusion of his history, he makes its commencement as long and minute as could be desired-not beginning as might be expected with the first landing of a burgo-master on the shores of the Hudson, but plunging back into the utmost night of ages, and favouring us with a regular deducement of the Batayian line through all the varieties of place and fortune that are recorded between the creation of Adam, and the sailing of the good ship Goode Vrouw for the shore of Communipaw. The description of the imaginary historian himself has always appeared to us to be one of the best things in the whole book, so we shall begin with quoting it. We are not sure that it yields to the farfamed introduction to Chrysal. Our readers are to know that Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker composed his immortal work in the Independent Columbian Hotel, New York-and that having mysteriously disappeared from his lodgings without saying any thing to the landlord, Mr.Seth Handaside, the publican thought of publishing his MSS. by way of having his score cleared. The programe of Mr. Handaside contains such a fine sketch of a veritable Dutch portrait, that we cannot help wishing it bad been twice as full as it is. 'It was sometime, if I recollect right, in the early part of the fall of 1808, that a stranger applied for lodgings at the Independent Columbian Hotel, in Mulberry-Street, of which I am landlord. He was a small, brisk looking old gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few grey hairs plaited and clubbed behind, and his beard seemed to be of some eight and forty hours growth. The only piece of finery which he bore about him, was a bright pair of square silver shoe buckles; and all his baggage was contained in a pair of saddle bags which he carried under his arm. His whole appearance was something out of the common run; and my wife, who is a very shrewd body, at once set him down for some eminent country schoolmaster. 'As the Independent Columbian Hotel is a very small house, I was a little puzzled at first where to put him; but my wife, who seemed taken with bis looks, would needs put him in ber best chamber, which is genteely set off with the profiles of the whole family, done in black, by those two great painters, Jarvis and Wood; and commands a a very pleasant view of the new grounds on the Collect, together with the rear of the Poor-House and Bridewell, and the full front of the Hospital; so that it is the cheerfullest room in the whole house. During the whole time that he stayed with us, we found him a very worthy good sort of an old gentleman, though a little queer in his ways. He would keep in his room for days together, and if any of the children cried, or made a noise about his door, be would bounce out in a great passion, with his hands full of papers, and say something about "deranging his ide as;" which made my wife believe sometimes that he was not altogether compos. Indeed there was more than one reason to make her think so, for his room was always covered with scraps of paper and old mouldy books, laying about at sixes and sevens, which he would never let any body touch; for he said he had laid them all away in their proper places, so that he might know where to find them; though for that matter, he was half his time worrying about the house in search of some book or writing which he had carefully put out of the way. I shall never forget what a pother he once made, because my wife cleaned out his room when his back was turned, and put every thing to rights; for he swore he would never be able to get his papers in order again in a twelvemonth. Upon this my wife ventured to ask him, what he did with so many books and papers? and he told her, that he was "seeking for immortality;" which made her think more than ever, that the poor old gentleman's head was a little cracked. He was a very inquisitive body, and when not in his room was continually poking about town, hearing all the news, and prying into every thing that was going on: this was particularly the case about election time, when he did nothing but bustle about from poll to poll, attending all ward meetings and committee rooms; though I could never find that he took part with either side of the question. On the contrary he would come home and rail at both parties with great wrath-and plainly proved one day, to the satisfaction of my wife and three old ladies who were drinking tea with her, that the two parties were like two rogues, each tugging at the skirt of the nation; and that in the end they would tear the very coat off its back, and expose its naked ness. Indeed he was an oracle among the neighbours, who would collect around him to hear him talk of an afternoon, as he smoaked his pipe on the bench before the door; and I really believe he would have brought over the whole neighbourhood to his own side of the question, if they could ever have found out what it was. He was very much given to argue, or, as he called it, philosophize, about the most trifling matter, and to do him justice I never knew any body that was a match for him, except it was a grave looking gentleman who called now and then to see him, and often posed him in an argument. But this is nothing surprising, as I have since found out this stranger is the city librarian; and, of course must be a man of great learning: and I have my doubts, if he had not some band in the following history. As our lodger had been a long time with us, and we had never received any pay, my wife began to be somewhat uneasy, and curious to find out who and what he was. She accordingly made bold to put the question to his friend the librarian, who replied in his dry way, that he was one of the Literati; which she supposed to mean some new party in politics. I scorn to push a lodger for his pay, so I let day after day pass on without dunning the old gentleman for a farthing: but my wife, who always takes these matters on herself, and is, as I said, a shrewd kind of a woman, at last got out of patience, and hinted, that she thought it high time "some people should have a sight of some people's money." To which the old gentleman replied, in a mighty touchy manner, that she need not make hersen uneasy, for that he had a treasure there, (pointing to his saddle-bags,) worth her whole house put together. This was the only answer we could ever get from him; and as my wife, by some of those odd ways in which women find out every thing, learnt that he was of very great connexions, being related to the Knickerbockers of Seaghtikoke, and cousin-german to the Con gress-man of that name, she did not like to treat him uncivilly. What is more, she even offered, merely by way of making things easy, to let him live scot-free if he would teach the children their letters; and to try her best and get the neighbours to send their children also: but the old gentleman took it in such dudgeon, and seemed so affronted at being taken for a school-master, that she never dared speak on the subject again. About two months ago, he went out of a morning, with a bundle in his hand-and has never been heard of since. All kinds of inquiries were made after him, but in vain. I wrote to his relations at Seaghtikoke, but they sent for answer, that he had not been there since the year before last, when he had a great dispute with the Congress-man about politics, and left the place in a huff, and they had neither heard nor seen any thing of him from that time to this. I must own I felt very much worried about the poor old gentleman, for I thought something bad must have have happened to him, that he should be missing so long, and never return to pay his bill. I therefore advertised him in the newspapers, and though my melancholy advertisement was published by several humane printers, yet I have never been able to learn any thing satisfactory about him My wife now said it was high time to take care of ourselves, and see if he had left any thing behind in his room, that would pay us for his board and lodging. We found nothing,however, but some old books and musty writings, and his pair of saddle-bags; which, being opened in the presence of the librarian, contained only a few articles of wornout clothes, and a large bundle of blotted paper. On looking over this, the librarian told us, he had no doubt it was the treasure which the old gentleman had spoke about; as it proved to be a most excellent and faithful HISTORY OF NEW-YORK, which he advised us by all means to publish assuring us that it would be so eagerly bought up by a Jiscerning public, that he had no doubt it would be enough to pay our arrears ten times over. Upon this we got a very learned school-master, who teaches our children, to prepare it for the press, which he accordingly has done; and bas, moreover, added to it a number of notes of his own; and an engraving of the city, as it was at the time Mr. Kuickerbocker writes about. This, therefore, is a true statement of my reasons for having this work printed, without waiting for the consent of the author: and I here declare, that if he ever returns, (though I much fear some unhappy accident has befallen him,) I stand ready to account with him like a true and honest man. Which is all at present From the public's humble servant, Passing over all the details of the first settlement, on the site of the beautiful city of New Amsterdam, we shall make bold to introduce our readers at ouce into the following graphic and, we doubt not, correct account of the mode of living practised among the inhabitants of this yet unsophisticated colony. Any body that looks upon a Dutchman on his own paternal shore, with his ten pairs of breeches, his big, wig, his pipe, and his solid mass of cheek and chin, might prima facie conclude, that of all human beings he must be the least liable to sudden changes of habit, costume, or customs. Under the burning sun of Java, the enormous Exotic swelters in the same old mass of flannel that had wrapped his infant limbs from the damp breezes of his native Zuyderzee. Beneath the roman. tic moonlight of The Cape, he sits unmoved with the same charcoal pot smoaking between his legs, and the same true stalk of Gouda between his lips. Let us see how completely he transplanted the observances of Old Amsterdam to the sedgy swamps on which (in the midst of innumerable noble, dry, and airy, and unoccupied situations,) it was Mynheer's good will and pleasure to found the New. Of course, the whole picture is meant to be a severe satire on the more fashionable manners of the present possessors of the city of New York. In those good days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able house wife-a character which formed the utmost ambition of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on marriages, funerals, new year's days, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion-It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes into the device of a dog, and sometimes of a lion's head, and was daily burnished with such religious zeal, that it was oft times worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, unand scrubbing brushes; and the good der the discipline of mops and brooms housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in somuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us, that many of his townslike unto a duck; and some of them, women grew to have webbed fingers he had little doubt, could the matter be the tails of mermaids-but this I look examined into, would be found to have upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or what is worse, a wilful misrepresenta tion. water—io The grand parlour was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleanIn this sacred apartment no one was ing was indulged without controul. permitted to enter, excepting the mistress and her confidential maid, who of giving it a thorough cleaning, and visited it once a week, for the purpose putting things to rights-always taking the door, and entering devoutly, on the precaution of leaving their shoes at their stocking feet. After scrubbing the which was curiously stroked into anfloor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, gles and curves, and rhomboids, with a broom-after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fire-place-the window shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day. As to the family,they always entered in at the gate, and most generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous household assembled around the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported back to those happy days of primeval simplicity, which float before our imaginations like golden visions. The fire-places were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white, nay, even the very cat and dog enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a prescriptive right to a corner, Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half shut eyes, and thinking of nothing for hours together; the goode vrouw on the opposite side would employ her self diligently in spinning her yarn, or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in the corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New-England witchesgrisly ghosts-horses without heads and hairbreadth escapes and bloody encounters among the Indians. In those happy days a well regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sun down. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers shewed incontestible symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness, at being sur prised by a visit from a neighbour on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bands of intimacy by occasional banquettings, called tea parties. 'As this is the first introduction of those delectable orgies, which have since become so fashionable in this city, I am conscious my fair readers will be very curious to receive information on the subject. Sorry am I, that there will be but little in my description cal culated to excite their admiration. I can neither delight them with accounts of suffocating crowds, nor brilhant drawing rooms, nor towering feathers, nor sparkling diamonds, nor immeasurable trains. I can detail no choice anecdotes of scandal, for in those primitive times the simplest folk were either too stupid, or too good natured to pull each others characters to pieces--nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag-how one lady cheated, or another bounced into a passion; for as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers, who met to win each other's money, and lose their own tempers at a card table. These fashionable parties were generally consigned to the higher classes, or noblesse, that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own waggons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company to iced creams, jellies, or syllabubs; or regaled them with musty almonds, mouldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement.--Our ancestors were fond of more sturdy, substantial fare. The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company being seated around the genial board, and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish-in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks-a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutcla families. |