& prescriptive right to excel in that prevailing hospitality. Perhaps what most pleased us in St. Louis, and most naturally, was the absence of all obtrusive signs of what we consider the only misfortune of Missouri-the only obstacle to its future pre-eminence--slavery. But this disease has made so little progress there, that there is much reason to expect the heathful young state will throw it off. Some of its best citizens are opposed to it, and we met and heard one, a "young man eloquent," who is just entering, with sure promise, political life, and who has the generous boldness to throw himself in the scale against it—God speed him!

St. Louis was, to my own party, a marked place in our great route. We experienced there what has made happy epochs ever since the day that Joseph's brethren fell upon his neck and weptthe most cordial reception from old friends, besides seeing new ones who had almost the flavor of old ones! And finally, each day adding some varying circumstance, some new pleasure, we pas-ed our last Sunday at Niagara, and came out by those glorious and shining gates by which we had entered the West.

Do you ask me if I would live in the West? I answer without hesitation, no!

I saw nothing there so lovely to my eye as the hillsides, the deep, narrow valleys, the poor little lakes, and the very small river of our own Berkshire. But at these hearth-stones our affections were nurtured, and here in our cemeteries rest and are recorded our holiest treasures. Besides, the old tree uprooted from a sterile hill will not thrive in level ground-be it ever so rich. No. Let the young go. They should. They do go in troops and caravans, and in the vast prairies of the valley of the Mississippi may they perfect an empire of which their Puritan Fathers sowed the seeds on the cold coast of the Atlantic. But let them remember their fathers were proof against poverty. May they be against riches!

In conclusion, permit me to wish long life and happiness to Messrs. Furnum and Sheffield, and their coadjutors in this unprecedented hospitality. If it be more blessed to give than to receive, what must be the amount of their satisfaction? Was ever a company so assembled and so blessed by heavenly and earthly Providence! Day unto day, and night, proclaimed their enjoyment from beginning to end, and no death-no illness no disaster.

Lenox, 1854.

C. M. S.

Fifty Years in both Hemispheres, or Reminiscomes of the life of a former Merchant. By VINEXT NOLTE, late of New Orleans. (Redfield.)

ACOSMOPOLITE, ma'am, is a gentle

man whose title is Greek, without that fact, however, making hin a Greek nobleman. Κοσμου means "of the world" Touravos "a citizen;" consequently kosmopolitanos means "citizen of the world," an idea which is supposed to be clearly expressed to the Anglo-Saxon mind by the modified word which immediately follows the article a in the title of this excellent contribution.

I grant you, my dear madam, the name is a paradox: for the world, not being a city, it is morally impossible for a man to be a citizen of it. All that, however, will be arranged to suit you so soon as we get the Universal Republic.

At present we Americans have a little stretched the Greek in saying citizen of the United States: "citizen of the world" is but a step farther.

You would prefer me to define more briefly well then. A Cosmopolite has no country in particular, but makes himself at home in all. As he easily unlearns prejudices, he as easily adapts himself to the most varied practices. While he would possibly prefer a cent franc par téte dinner at Vevour's yet he could, on a pinch, reconcile himself to raw beefsteaks in Abyssinia. He is never astonished at anything, for he has paid periodical visits to France since 1793. He is easy in his manners, for he has conversed with potentates and great men from the bestarred European, to the simply but improperly costumed native of the Fee

jee Islands. He is accomplished-a bit of an artist in music, painting and literature-knows many languages pretty well-is full of quaint fresh anecdote, and odd atoms of fact overlooked by the class of romance writers fondly called historians.

But, in forgetting his prejudices, he is apt to forget his principles: in becoming cosmopolitan, he generally loses love of country. He is passionately addicted to scandal; and serves you up a character with sauce of a pleasant tartness. He is disposed to caricature-he has an eye considerably keener for faults than for virtues: he is not troubled by modesty: and his infacility of being humbugged has begotten in him a too general irreverence, incredulousness and distrust. He reverses our common law maxim, and supposes every man to be guilty until he has proved him to be innocent. If you will allow me, I will illustrate my remarks by some passages in the life of Mr. Vincent Nolte.

This excellent American was a German, born in Italy, on the 21st of November, 1779. On the first page of his autobiography, he compliments his mother on her punctuality-she having been married on the 22d of February. He then mentions that virtue as being characteristic of his family. He is convinced that the family is of Italian origin, a creed which he predicates upon the fact that his remotest genealogical researches have traced them distinctly to Sweden. He, of course, found no support for his conviction until he reached his seventieth year, when a Hungarian informed him that, in the days of Gustavus Adolphus, an Italian officer in the Austrian service, bearing the name of Nolte, had deserted to the camp of the Lion of the North.

Leghorn is the city which claims the glory of his birth, where his father, a Hamburgher, was partner in the house of his uncle, Otto Franck. But when Vincent had attained the age of nine years, the family went home to Hamburgh, where he lived for a while with a senatorial grandfather." Our philosopher never neglects any dignity which sheds, however subdued, a lustre upon himself. At Hamburgh, Vincent was sent to school to a Jerseyman called Geris, who was a drunken old pedagogue, improperly fond of his housekeeper; an indolent, ignorant man, under whom the boy acquired nothing save a high proficiency in the science of robbing orchards

and vineyards. It only took eighteen months, however, to render him an adept in this predatory life; so of course his time was not lost. Papa Nolte, a calm, unimaginative man, endowed with an obese correctness of deportment, and the slow German capacity of being tickled by a joke, soon took Master Vincent to the uncle at Leghorn. Vincent, on leaving home, had a Sunday coat of crimson and gold; and as this happened to be the Hamburgh consular uniform-Uncle Otto being consul-the boy availed himself of carnival to go to the theatre in a travestied consular uniform, wherein he caricatured Uncle Otto to the delight of the author of his being and the unpardoning disgust of his aunt.

Then Vincent went back to Hamburgh, was intrusted to the pedagogical care of Gymnasiums-Professor Karl F. Hipand astonished that excellent man by learning all he could teach in a preposterously short time. But soon he was sent back to Italy to Uncle Otto, to exchange Schiller for liquorice, soap, oil, brimstone and account-books. It was a very hard case, but he worried through it by the help of making fun of Uncle Otto, and love to the two ballet girls who lived opposite the livery stables. A slight tailor's bill for one year, containing the items of twelve coats of all colors, and twenty-two pairs of small clothes, suggests the possibility of his being addicted to dress. Here he saw Bonaparte for the first time-"a diminutive, youthful-looking man, of pallid and almost yellow hue, whose sleek, yet black hair, like that of the Tallapoochee Indians, hung down over both ears; with a perpetual smile upon the lips, and cold, unsympathising eyes." Murat was with him in his gorgeous uniform, and Hullin, executioner of d'Enghien. Business was at a stand-still: in every piazza altars were erected, topped with a statue of Liberty, and at every daily parade the representatives, Garat and Salicetti, made speeches to the soldiery. Uncle Otto's cashier gave Vincent what money he demanded, which was readily expended at a time when his most serious occupation was sketching the French soldiers in the street. I do not esteem it wonderful that when the books were made up, four years afterwards, a deficit of sixty thousand pezza was discovered.

At the age of eighteen, Uncle Otto sent his family to a country seat, near Florence, next door to Villa Pandolfieri. Now, in this villa lived a banker and his

lovely daughter, to whom Vincent at once made violent love; meaning it, he says, "mere pastime; but the young lady took it seriously to heart;" so that at last the aunt had to write to his parents, and Vincent, who had learned nothing of his profession at Leghorn, was torn away from his pastime and sent off to Hamburgh. This was the residence of many of the French émigrés, Talleyrand and Madame de Genlis, Dumouriez and Louis Philippe were there, and the young man's time glided on for a year or two, divided between society, invoices, newspapers squib-writing, caricaturing his friends, and playing in private theatricals. Old Nolte failed, and got up again and scolded his son for a presumptuous and unfixed fellow. This set Vincent to work at his mercantile books, which he studied for a while and then started for Nantes, to begin the practice of their precepts.

On his way he stops at Paris to have a look at the Emperor, just then proclaimed at Moreau, Georges Cadoudal, &c. Some statements of Nolte's are not to be found in standard histories; as, that on his first imperial review, Napoleon's horse fell down and rolled with his rider, ominously in the dust; or, that he was brusque, brutal, insolent, above all to men of literature and science, and to merchants; that his genius was equalled by the commercial genius of Ouvrard; that Moreau was the idol of the people and the middle class, and guiltless of the charges brought against him; and many other such matters. And then he goes on his way to Nantes, and copies circulars of the prices of land and molasses in the counting-room of M. Labouchère. He has mighty commercial friends, this Vincent Nolte: the Barings, the Hopes and the Parishes, who believe in his genius and believe well. For he draws up such far-seeing, well-combined plans for vast mercantile operations in America, that he is chosen to put them into execution and sent to New Orleans with powers of attorney, as secret agent for those great merchants and for Ouvrard himself.

Napoleon had oppressed and maltreated Ouvrard, and Napoleon had conquered Spain-but Spain in a treaty with France, had made herself liable to pay an annual subsidy of seventy-two millions of francs, which was now (1804) partly due, and required negotiation. Napoleon had need of Ouvrard, for there was war between France and Great Britain; sil

ver was absolutely necessary: there was no silver but in Mexico; the British cruisers were all over the sea, and Napoleon ordered Ouvrard to find a means of getting those dear dollars safe into France. There they could come only as private property under a neutral flagsay the American flag. So Vincent Nolte was sent over to become an American citizen-to receive the dollars, and to ship them as his own to France. Little thought New Orleans of its new citizen, for the city was a "nest of pirates." Beluche, Lafitte, Dominique and others walked boldly through the streets, and the whole population was but 16,000 (now about 150,000). One day, however, they learned that a ship had arrived from Vera Cruz, freighted with $200,000, and then another with $150,000, and then another with $150,000—and all for the new citizen. Vincent Nolte was instantly asked to dinner by the most respectable people. He went, saw, and caricatured. Then he got the yellowfever, and a kind friend, one Zacharias, told him he had better make his will and die. Nolte obstinately refused to do either, and stuck to his purpose. Indeed, he had not time to die, for Spain had given an order upon Cuba for $700,000, which he must live to collect. The fever left him; he went to Cuba-talked to the Governor-General, who said he did not understand money matters, and declined to take a bribe; but the cashier-general, the minister of finances, understood the former, and was particularly inclined to the latter. Nolte displayed sciencedealt about a few thousand dollars, and received a check upon the viceroy of Mexico for $945,000, which included interest. The check was paid; the amount sent to France, and our cosmopolite started for New Orleans, where he would infallibly have arrived but for a little accident, which will be found recorded in the next paragraph.

He was wrecked on the Florida reefs. It appears, so far as I can gather, that the captain had a social custom of getting excessively drunk in company with the mate; the consequence of which was that a storm threw the ship into a nautical position, of which your narrator does not know the name, but which appears to have been exceedingly uncomfortable. Let us say on her beam-ends, with the fore-top-gallant clewlines dismasted, and her weather-vang unshipped. The result was, that she went to the bottom, while Nolte went to shore on a raft.

It took several days to get to shore, and there were vessels in the distance which did not relieve them, and cloud banks taken for lee-shores and all the regular thing, you know, and then they arrived. Then there was the desolate sand-beach, and that sort of arrangement, and finally he shipped with some wreckers; caught turtle for three weeks in the neighborhood of Nassau, and so got to New Orleans, where he stayed for a few months, and then took a flying leap to Holland.

During this period he had time to draw cleverly, but with more or less caricature, portraits of Ouvrard, the Barings, the Hopes, Labouchère, Isonard the musician, the Parishes, Moreau, Governor Claiborne, Edward Livingston, Fulton, General Wilkinson, Gouverneur Morris, John Jacob Astor, Stephen Girard, and several eminent Spaniards, whose fame has not in other ways reached my ears, nor probably yours.

After a slight run over creation in general, Mr. Nolte went back to New Orleans. Let us say here that he lent his father in Hamburgh some 30,000 marks, and had a catarrhal fever; and finally agreed to pay, and did pay, 6,000 annual marks to the venerable authors of his being. Backed by the Barings and the Hopes, and accompanied by a partner called Edward Hollander, who came from Livonia, wherever that may be, our friend reached New Orleans. He had sailed in the "good ship Flora from Amsterdam," and made a fortunate passage of forty-eight days, and "only lost two mnasts;" and then without stopping at New York, went on to Pittsburgh, where he met and caricatured Audubon, and freighted two flat-boats with flour enough to pay for his expenses to the city of beautiful creoles. I might mention that at Louisville, as he was sitting sketching a caricature of President Madison, with Mrs. Madison arrayed in the red breeches which her predecessor Jefferson had brought from Paris," he felt a great disturbance, and was told on inquiring into the cause thereof, that "it was the earthquake by jingo!"

It was exceedingly improper on the part of Congress to declare war with Great Britain, just as Nolte had taken and furnished his house; but Lord bless you, Congress is always doing something. The fact is, that the war was declared, and our friend had only time to make a hundred thousand dollars or so, break a leg, arrange the affairs of the

bank of New Orleans, fight a duel with paymaster Allen, and arrange preliminaries for a second with Mr. Shields, when General Jackson came furiously down upon Louisiana and put a stop to all amusements. One reason for the General's action was the arrival of the British fleet off the mouth of the Mississippi.

In point of fact," the battle of New Orleans was about to take place. Nolte had a nice little vessel loaded with cotton, A. No. 1, which Old Hickory took to build his breastworks. Nolte had a broken arm and a broken leg, but, as he was suspected of being a British partisan, he joined the carabineers and fought like a trump. He got a certificate of bravery from the General, and twelve cents a pound for his cotton. He saw two civil adjutants lying behind a garden wall to keep out of the way of the British cannon-shot, and an Irish regiment on the B. side run away, gallantly headed by its colonel. He beard Jackson make the following remark to Gov. Claiborne, whose duty it was to furnish powder and ball, which duty, it appears, he neglected" By the almighty God, sir, if you don't send me powder and ball immediately, I'll chop your head off and have it rammed into one of these fieldpieces;" whereupon the Governor did send in the munitions immediately.

He remained in New Orleans until 1826, when, in consequence of a commercial crisis, in an attempt to understand which I got a headache, he concluded to go away. He had amassed millions; had caricatured and ridiculed man, woman and child, notably Jackson and Edward Livingston; had spent his money like a king; had had his face slapped, his shoulders caned, his back spit upon; had worked six months to get a shot at one individual, and succeeded in getting shot by another; and had finally failed and disappeared from the American continent, only to reappear under unfavorable circumstances for a few weeks, and so to relapse back into Europe for ever. He had, however, visited that province, with the neighboring states of Asia and Africa, during this period. For instance, he was in Paris when the Allies arrived, and during the Hundred Days (1815); he took "a trip to Europe" in 1818, to overlook the congress of Aix; and another trip in 1822, and another in 1824; and accumulated in that time biographical sketches of General Jackson, Major Keller, Winfield Scott, Mr. Francis Bar

ing, Lafitte the great banker, Chateaubriand, Lafayette, and John Quincy Adams, all vivid, dissective portraits, not one fault of the original, however small, going unmentioned. Besides all this business, he settled the mercantile affairs of Europe and—but pardon me, I am not to write the whole magazine this month.

Last paragraph, Mr. Vincent Nolte culminated. One word about his wane. His ruin was a total one; scarce anything was saved, and when he returned to New Orleans, although it was as the friend and companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, he was very coldly received. And when a final attempt to assault Lim was made, he shook the dust from off his feet and departed for Havre to seek for employment there. But the merchants thought him far too speculative, and refused to trust him; and alth gh the Parisian banker Daly promised him capital for a new concern in Mar-ciles, yet when the stores were bired and the clerks engaged, Daly disappeared, leaving an empty cash-box, and Nolte went back to Paris to assist at the July revolution. Next he became purveyor of muskets and sabres for Marshal Soult, Louis Philippe's minister of war; discovered and defeated a letimist plot, and was sued for a debt of the house in Marseilles. Now, by law, he who is sued can hold no government contractorship, and so the purveying of arms was taken from Noite, and Le made another stride down hill. No marter, was not the Pope left still? The Holy Father wished to enlarge his insome, and Vincent was sent to Rome to Cardinal Tosti. His plan for the conversion of State stocks from five to ...ree per cent., was soon approved of, and once more the temple of fortune stood open to him, when mighty Rothsc.id camne, took Nolte's plan, and closed on hin the golden gates.

St 11, during all this time, he had passed many pleasant months in the society he loved best, the world of artists; and Le has given us delightful sketches of Delaroche and Delacroix, Charlet and Horace Vernet, Ingres and Ary Scheffer; with sketches of Soult, Carlet, the Préfet of Police, and the old duchess Torlonia. Besides which, he enjoyed the rapture of pitching violently into Thiers, and of meeting his ancient flame of the villa Pandolfini. She was fat and forty-five, and di-posed to be sentimental, and told Mr. Nolte that she had twice marriedVOL. IV.-22

once for wealth, and secondly for love. And she produced her love, a tall, stronglegged young Irishman. Then Vincent, finding nothing else to do, became the agent for a new machine for engraving medals, and went to England to get a patent for it there. He saw the Queen, and caricatured her, for "she was flatfooted, and waddled like a duck." He lived most intimately with Sir Francis Chantrey, and other men of genius. He did not get his patent, but he did get arrested, and was kept in the Queen's Bench for three months and a half, at the suit of Duke Charles of Brunswick.

Then the Great Western was to cross the Atlantic, and the new enterprise tempted our adventurer once more to the United States. A tremendous speculation in cotton failed, and lodged him in prison at New Orleans. Then he went to New York, and formed the acquaintance of James Gordon Bennett, and became an agent for Nicholas Biddle; and when the United States Bank went to ruin, Mr. Vincent Nolte went to Venice. In that City of the Sea was nought for him to do, so for a year he suffered utmost poverty, living on bread and cheese and some small acid wine, which he procured by translating English law papers into Italian for the monks of Sau Lorenzo. Poor food, said Vincent, poorer occupation; let us cross the Adriatic, and seek fortune in Trieste. Affairs looked happier there, and he obtained a clerkship, but could not bear much authority, and so left that. Then he was sent down the Danube, to the Black Sea and Odessa, to collect a debt from a Greek firm settled there. He travelled with Prince Galitzin, and was stripped stark naked by the frontier police, and by the same authorities kept in a flannel nightgown for two days, and then allowed to clothe himself and go in peace. How he did by impudence and perseverance collect the debt; how he met with a comical Yankee from Marblehead; and with the blind traveller, Captain Williams; how he went to Constantinople, and Malta, and Sicily, and Naples, and Leghorn, and Genoa, and back to Trieste; how he became the counsellor of imperial prime ministers, and lampooned dignitaries in the German journals; and wrote a great work on Trieste as a free port; how he sketched characters, and drew caricatures, and wrote verses of the profoundest mediocrity, and was sent to Vienna, and from Vienna to Paris; it is all written in the chronicles that he has left.