'MY thoughts are with the dead; with them I live in long past years. Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears; And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with a humble mind. 'My hopes are with the dead; anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on, Through all futurity; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust.' * * * * * WE have already solved several weighty mathematical problems in this department of the KNICKERBOCKER; and are glad of an opportunity farther to enlighten our readers with a passage from a '_Lecture on Mechanics_' in a late number of the 'London Charivari:' 'If certain weighty things are put upon a body, they will turn the scale, and elevate another body. Thus, if several thousand pounds be added to the weight of an electioneering agent, it will elevate the candidate; though this experiment sometimes fails; which shows us that these grand results are not brought about by any fixed principles!' Under the head of 'Forces applied to a Point,' we have this luminous illustration: 'It sometimes happens that force is applied to produce a point; but all the straining in the world will not obtain the point that is desired. Thus, if you take an ordinary hammer and hammer away at a joke, the result of the experiment will illustrate the position!' * * * WHEW! ninety-eight mortal pages, received in the dog-days, containing a '_nouvelette_' for the KNICKERBOCKER! 'Somebody take this man away!' The story is in very fine hand-writing, too! 'All things must have an end; even so contemptible a thing as a sausage has two,' says '_The Bedlamite_;' yet we have been unable to find but _one_ end to this tale, and that was not the last one. 'Print it?' Couldn't, really! 'C.' holds it for the author, and says he shall charge storage. _Apropos_: it should be observed, that '_nouvelettes_' are generally boreish in their character. Long-winded pen-and-ink writers inflict them upon the public usually, we have remarked. They are a cross between the novel proper and a newspaper tale, requiring little invention, and no talent, to speak of; and are the result of the decadence into which two-volumed romances have fallen. Avoid a '_nouvelette_!' * * * WE cannot better reply to 'G.,' who complains of '_an excuse_' for rejecting a communication of his, than by quoting the words of a time-honored novelist and rare critic: 'There is one best and clearest way of stating a proposition, and that alone ought to be chosen; yet how often do we find the same argument repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variety except in the phraseology? In developing any thought, we ought not to encumber it by trivial circumstances; we ought to say all that is necessary, and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and that concluded, to begin another. We certainly write to be understood,