GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. The pen alone of the illustrious editor of the 'Bunkum Flag-Staff' could do justice to an incident which has just been related to us. Sitting at the sanctum-table, silent and alone, we heard him 'rap,' although he was far away at the moment; and this is his 'spiritual knocking:' 'We dono when our feelinks was so hurt. Yet it was 1 of those things in which no body was to be blamed like steam-boat accidents. It could n't be helped. It took place at the wrong time it did, and we was sorry for it. We would ha' rather it should n't have occurred, although at any other time it might have been very pleasant; but just then out of place, we was so solemn, If any one was to blame it was a blame Yankee; yet he warn't present; he was dead himself, and into his grave twenty years. How then could he be guilty of disturbin' the funeral? Ef the dead won't have sympathy for the dead, who will? Howsever, he did it. He sot all the peopel a-laughin' at a funeral twenty years arter his own funeral; arter his tomb-stone had been carved and his epi taph wrote. Ef he could have seen it, he would have snickered in the sleeves of his shroud. He could n't really have helped it. The minister of the parish was cut short, lost all dignity, all solemnity, all propriety. He got the folks up to the cryin' p'int, and then he laughed right out. All the risibles in the room excited, and even the mourners looked queer. They did n't know what to do. They put the cambric hankerchiefs which they brought for their eyes up to their mouths, rammed them in till they pretty nigh choked. This was all owing to the confounded Yankee, of whom nothink on earth but his skeleton remained. He was a manoofacturer, but the kind of fabric which he made usually makes a man feel solemn, brings up religious thoughts, and, least of all, would make one laugh at a funeral. He was a clock-maker, and a very good one. His clocks kep excellent time. Set 'em by the sun, and they'd go by the sun, only when the sun run down they kep on ticking and striking; and this clock was wound up once-t a-week. But this was a more ingenious Yankee than most Yankees, and if he had only been content with making that clock go, and making it go right, no mischief done. It was at Mrs. TOWNSEND's funeral, who died of the epoplectic, and the company was all present, and the minister was in the middle of his discourse, a most s'archin' one, remindin' his hearers that in time they were to prepare for eternity, and to take warning by the example of humanity now 'before' them. She was gone from our midst, it was true, like a shock of wheat fully ripe. Just then, as if to add solemnity to the sentiment, the clock struck, and he told them by the very striking of that clock to take warning of the flight of time. Every time that the clock struck it told of another hour glided from time into the ocean of eternity. Every time it ticked, another second of our life was gone. The clock struck twelve, and if that was all, no harm done; but immediately a hizzing sound ensued, and by the ingenuity of that dead Yankee, it immediately played, with all the glibness of a hand-organ, or a musical snuffbox

-YANKEE DOODLE, WITH VARIATIONS! It was most surprisin'!' - - - WE see going the rounds of the country newspaper-press the story, written several years ago for this department of the KNICKвOCKER, by its EDITOR, touching the serenade of a young Quaker-lady with 'Home, sweet Home,' and the inquiry of the father, at the door, 'Why doesn't thee go to thy home?' etc. Some 'editor of an exchange paper' (for such is now the vague credit) has stolen the story bodily, made it personal to himself, and published it as original! He must feel

'high-priced' about this time! The anecdote was told to us by a friend, long since deceased, and had never before been published. THERE is a vast deal of true 'Tom-and-Jerry'-ism in this picture of a maudlin London cockney, who has climbed up a lamp-post, being 'on a lark,' seated himself on the projecting ladder-rest, opened the door of the lamp, and commenced the popular air of

"WE won't go home till morning,

Till day-light doth appear:'

and his two companions, seeing a policeman coming, slink away into an alley, and close the door after them, leaving their friend alone on his 'bad eminence:'

"Now just come down from that!' exclaimed the policeman from below. The nocturnal vocalist stopped as if he had been shot. Mr. RAPP looked from his post and saw the policeman. He hesitated for a moment, and then boldly exclaimed:

"I shan't! Come up and take me down yourself, and when I'm down you can take me up!'' 'This speech evidently puzzled the policeman, who for the space of half a minute was perfectly silent, ruminating how he should proceed. At length, assuming an air of double importance, he cried out:

"I order you in the QUEEN's name to come down!'

"Oh nonsense, man!' returned Mr. RAPP, chidingly: 'you must n't take the QUEEN's name in that way you shouldn't, really. I'm sure ALBERT wouldn't like it, if he heard you. He's remarkably particular upon those points.'

"Come down, Sir!' roared the policeman, getting very angry.

"Hush!- now don't you!' replied Mr. RAPP. 'We can't have the harmony of the street disturbed in this way. I'm certain your inspector would not approve of your kicking up a row like this in the middle of the night.'

"Wait a minute!' said the policeman, moving off in extremest wrath toward the centre of the street.

"I should think so, ra-à-ther,' said Mr. RAPP, taking an observation of his retreating form: 'of course, I shall stay till you return! Oh, certainly!'

"Turning off the gas from the jet of the lamp, which threw the dimly-lighted locality into complete darkness, Mr. RAPP twisted himself off from his perch and slid down the post. His friends, who had been on the watch the whole time, slipped from their covert, drew him in, and closed the door.'

The reader can easily fancy theire of the policemen when they returned and found the bird had flown. Their mutterings and grumblings were not loud, but are said to have been very deep, and to have been heard growing fainter and fainter as they retraced their steps along the silent street. . 'YOUR admirable correspondent, Judge CHARLTON'S, sketch of the poetical clergyman, 'Reverend LANCElot Langley LinG,' writes a friend, 'reminds me of the pseudosentimental London cockney, whose address to a benevolent listener was in much the same vein:

'THEIR brilliant hue, alas! has faded,

For envious time has o'er them thrown
The gloom by which they now are shaded,
A gloom that was not once their own.
That I should gaze on them delighted,
As once I did, their state forbids;
Their day is past their beauty blighted;
(I'm speaking of my faded kids.)

'Alas! how lapse of years can sever

Things that were firmly, closely knit;
And unions that would last forever,
Are in one fatal moment split:
But how does man, himself deluding,
Indulge in wild and happy dreams?
All things must part: (I'm now alluding
To my old coat, that's burst its seams!")

A REPRESENTATIVE in Congress from the interior of this State, meeting a brother member from Virginia, immediately after his arrival in the Federal city, a day or two before the meeting of the present Congress, in answer to an inquiry from the gentleman from the 'Old Dominion,' the former remarked that he had celebrated Thanksgiving-Day with some friends in this metropolis. We have no Thanksgiving in our State!' responded the Virginian, with something of a chuckle. 'I suppose,' retorted the New-Yorker, 'that that is owing to the fact

'Hurra for WE

that you have nothing to be thankful for.' 'No, Sir, you are out there,' rejoined the party of the second part, 'ardent as a Southern sun could make him;' 'The reason, Sir, that we have no Thanksgiving in Virginia is, that there is no provision made for it in the Constitution of the State, and it is no where recognized in the Resolutions of '98!" Right! That is our doctrine. the 'Principles of Ninety-Eight!'—‘and long may they wave!" beg leave to inform 'O. A. P.,' of K, that the 'Lines to an Oyster,' which he sends us as from 'an unknown contributor,' were originally written for, and published in, the KNICKERBOCKER. Such a contributor as 'O. A. P.' had better remain unknown.' THAT young and talented artist, Professor P. P. DUGGAN, of the New-York Free Academy, we are glad to learn, is now in London, with greatly improved health. He went abroad for the purpose of obtaining copies of the finest marbles of the British Museum and other European depositories of art; and he has been so far successful, that many very valuable casts, shipped on board the 'American Congress,' are daily expected to arrive at this port. While travelling in Germany, Professor DUGGAN was seized with a hæmorrhage of the lungs, which compelled him to return to London, where his health is comparatively restored. Avoiding a winter-passage across the Atlantic, he awaits, with the return of spring, his own return, and the immediate assumption of his professional duties in the Free Academy; where his class, comprising, as we are informed, several hundred students, had made remarkable progress in the arts of design under his capable supervision. 'M. R. P.'s' 'Rhap

sody over a Glass of Punch' is something too bacchanalian for these pages. Not that a glass of punch, such as the tasteful 'JOHN WATERS' once celebrated in the KNICKERBOCKER, is not a thing to be cherished; but that our correspondent seems to have written under the influence of the fluid which overcame a man in history. 'His name was written in water,' mixed with a 'thrifle of the crater.' But we'll not keep it in the dark:

out.

'His name 't is proper you should hear;

"T was TIMOTHY THADY MULLIGIN;

And wheniver he finished his tumbler of punch,

He always wanted it full again!'

'Lake Schroon,' on the forty-sixth page preceding, evinces a commendable love and appreciation of nature; but the fifth and sixth lines of the last verse embrace a grammatical error which should n't be classed among 'poetical licenses,' any more than 'cats eats mice,' or 'shads is come.' The writer will oblige us by parsing these lines, if he doesn't want to knock old PRISCIAN's brains A HALF-WITTED rustic at the West, being brought to trial for having, with malice prepense, destroyed several pigs belonging to a neighbor, offered as his defence, that they had been rooting up his garden for a week, and he had used all possible means to drive them out, but the 'blasted critters' had such big knots in their tails, they could n't get through the fence-cracks: otherwise 'every pig would have gone through the devil as if the fence was a'ter him!' - - - WE mentioned to that versatile and very clever artist, EMILLE MASSON, one evening in the sanctum, the story of one of the Gothamite 'B'hoys,' who, in reply to the inquiring remark of a gentleman, 'I wish, Sir, to go to Brooklyn,' said: 'Well, why the d-1 don't you go-o-o to Brooklyn?' The next day he sent us the subjoined sketch of the scene, which really tells the whole story' at a glance. 'Do us the favor to observe' the perfect nonchalance of the 'b'hoy,' the angles of his feet with the terminations of his pantaloons, and the inimitable indifference

expressed by his cigar-fed mouth! It strikes us that the lady's anxiety to draw her polite companion away is perfectly natural, under the circumstances:

The courteous reply of the independent 'b'hoy' on this occasion reminds us of a remark made by the elder MATTHEWS to a near neighbor, at a supper-table one evening, on board a Boston steamer: 'Will you allow me to trouble you for the salt, Sir?' he asked, pointing to the salt-cellar near him. 'There's salt by you,' gruffly responded the other. 'Oh, ay,' said MATTHEWS; 'thank you; I didn't see it.' Who said you did see it?-you see it now though, don't ye?' was the amiable rejoinder. But old MATHEWS was sometimes not a little sour himself, and when so, his manners were in a 'concatenation accordingly.' Such unusual discourtesy, we cannot avoid thinking, must have had some distinct cause; although it must be admitted that a crowded steam-boat supper-table is not ordinarily enriched with a great number of CHESTERFIELDS. OUR promi

nent metropolitan artists are very busy at their easels. LEUTZE, whose 'WASHINGTON Crossing the Delaware' has been attended by admiring crowds ever since it was opened for exhibition, is engaged upon a single figure of the PATER PATRIE, which is said to be a noble work of art. Nature-loving DURAND is elaborating some of his beautiful conceptions and summer-studies into pictures such as he only can paint; KENSETT, a keen observer and faithful limner of natural scenery, is steadily working out the honorable fame which is not only with but before him; GRAY, whose 'reputation is made,' is yet engaged in enhancing it; CHURCH'S fine picture in the Art-Union speaks his progress; HICKS, who has essayed landscape, historical composition, and portraiture with equal success, is as 'busy as

LEY,

a bee in a tar-barrel;' busy, not in a fussy but in an effectual way; and last, but far from least, ELLIOTT, who is never without orders, has lately been painting some of his most effective male and female heads. He is about sending to the British Royal Academy, for exhibition, the head of the aged Mr. HAMMERSwhich was in the National Academy last year. Time, as is the intention of Mr. ELLIOTT, in all his pictures, has softened and harmonized the tones of this portrait; until, in our judgment, it stands at this moment the best portrait ever painted in this metropolis. AN Irish girl hereabout in Gotham, who plumed herself upon being employed in a 'genteel family,' was asked a definition of the term. 'Where they have two or three kinds of wine, and the gentleman swears!' was the highly satisfactory reply. WE transfer from the 'Tribune' daily journal the following letter from Mr. WASHINGTON IRVING, in refutation of a charge to which no one who knew that gentleman would have given either credence or currency. The letter has reference to a passage from a recent work by our old friend and correspondent, Mr. HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, (to whom it is addressed,) which had been copied into the 'Literary World' weekly gazette: 'Sunnyside, November 10, 1851.

DEAR SIR: In your 'Personal Memoirs,' recently published, you give a conversation with the late ALBERT GALLATIN, Esq., in the course of which he made to you the following statement: "Several years ago JOHN JACOB ASTOR put into my hands the journal of his traders on the Columbia, desiring me to use it. I put it into the hands of MALTE BRUN, at Paris, who employed the geographical facts in his work, but paid but little respect to Mr. ASTOR, whom he regarded merely as a merchant seeking his own profit, and not a discoverer. He had not even sent a man to observe the facts in the natural history. ASTOR did not like it. He was restive several years, and then gave WASHINGTON IRVING five thousand dollars to take up the мss. This is the History of 'Astoria.'

Now, Sir, I beg leave to inform you, that this is not the History of Astoria. Mr. GALLATIN was misinformed as to the part he has assigned me in it. The work was undertaken by me through a real relish of the subject. In the course of visits in early life to Canada, I had seen much of the magnates of the North West Company, and of the hardy trappers and fur-traders in their employ, and had been excited by their stories of adventurous expeditions into the 'Indian country.' I was sure, therefore, that a narrative treating of them and their doings could not fail to be full of stirring interest, and to lay open regions and races of our country as yet but little known. I never asked nor received of Mr. ASTOR a farthing on account of the work. He paid my nephew, who was then absent practising law in Illinois, for coming on, examining and collating manuscript journals, accounts and other documents, and preparing what lawyers would call a brief, for me. Mr. FITZ GREENE HALLECK, who was with Mr. ASTOR at the time, determined what the compensation of my nephew ought to be. When the brief was finished, I paid my nephew an additional consideration, on my own account and out of my own purse. It was the compensation paid by Mr. ASTOR to my nephew which Mr. GALLATIN may have heard of, and supposed it was paid to myself; but even in that case, the amount, as reported to him, was greatly exaggerated.

'Mr. ASTOR signified a wish to have the work brought out in a superior style, supposing that it was to be done at his expense. I replied that it must be produced in the style of my other works, and at my expense and risk; and that whatever profit I was to derive from it, must be from its sale and my bargain with the publishers. This is the history of 'Astoria,' as far as I was concerned in it. 'During my long intimacy with Mr. ASTOR, commencing when I was a young man, and ending only with his death, I never came under a pecuniary obligation to him of any kind. At a time of public pressure, when, having invested a part of my very moderate means in wild lands, I was straitened and obliged to seek accommodations from moneyed institutions, he repeatedly urged me to accept loans from him, but I always declined. He was too proverbially rich a man for me to permit the shadow of a pecuniary favor to rest on our intercourse.

'The only moneyed transaction between us was my purchase of a share. a town he was founding at Green Bay; for that I paid cash, though he wished the amount to stand on mortgage. The land fell in value, and some years afterwards, when I was in Spain, Mr. ASTOR, of his own free will, took back the share from my agent, and repaid the original purchase money. This, I repeat, was the only moneyed transaction that ever took place between us; and by this I lost four or five years' interest of my investment.

My intimacy with Mr. ASTOR was perfectly independent and disinterested. It was sought originally on his part, and grew up, on mine, out of the friendship he spontaneously manifested for me, and the confidence he seemed to repose in me. It was drawn closer when, in the prosecution of my literary task, I became acquainted, from his papers and his confidential conversations, with the scope and power of his mind, and the grandeur of his enterprises. His noble project of the ASTOR LIBRARY, conceived about the same time, and which I was solicitous he should carry into execution during his life-time, was a still stronger link of intimacy between us.

"He was altogether one of the most remarkable men I have ever known: of penetrating sagacity, massive intellect, and posssesing elements of greatness of which the busy world around him was little aware: who, like MALTE BRUN, regarded him merely as a merchant seeking his own profit.' 'Very respectfully,

"Your friend and servant,

WASHINGTON IRVING."