the deaf seize their trumpets, the eyes of the young bucks flashed with pleasure, those of the spinsters looked “unutterable things.” The choir arise, and while they stand like impatient coursers, with parted lips, awaiting the signal from Mr. Long Metre, let me attempt to describe the vision of paradise which burst upon my enraptured sight. It was a scene worthy the graphic pencil of Hogarth. There stood the assembled beauty of Droneville, with cheeks and noses kindled into a glow by the fresh air of a January morning. The gallery rose, seat over seat, presenting to the beholder an inclined plane of all that is beautiful in a red and blue phiz, studded with love-darting eyes, and party-colored heads, which might rival the coat of the patriarch. There they stand--long hinnies and short hinnies, sylph-like hinnies and porpoise-like hinnies, in regular confusion, with pates arrayed in every variety of fantastical gear ever invented by womankind. Some were adorned with flowers, others with feathers; some, having strained their hair so tight from their foreheads that they could not wink, had twisted it into a pig’s-tail upon the top of their craniums; a few, of more classic taste, had parted their locks from their brows, a la Madonna; others suffered them to float in unbraided beauty, a la witch of Endor; and one roguish little urchin was evidently arrayed in her grandmother’s cap. Thus they stand--the “pitch” is given, and away burst Droneville choir with impetuous fury--the power of every voice and every instrument is strained to its utmost capacity--Mr. Long Metre managed to scream the loudest--Mr. Soporific Heth blew his clarionet into several pieces--Mr. Gruff sawed his base viol ‘in two.’ Such was the performance of Droneville choir.--The combined power of all that is thrilling in beauty and melody, inflicted a wound upon my sentimental heart from which it has not yet recovered. EVERY ONE HIS OWN CRITIC. “A spirit and judgment equal or superior.”--_Milton._ A distinctly formed power of judging of literary productions, and of rightly and fully estimating their intrinsic and their comparative merits, is a thing of rare occurrence. Even educated men, whose opinions with respect to other things are of high value, seem not generally to have carried their systematic habits of thought into this province, deferring it almost wholly to professed critics. On the other hand, there is a crowd of slender judges, of some qualities of books, who are yet utterly incapable of appreciating others which are more vital.