POETICAL Duectimeet.—A poetical Dutchman will seem to many a sort
of monstrous anomaly ; so strong is the prejudice, which, were it tracked to its
source, might be found to originate in the wide trowsers of some Flemish fishermen who now and then visit our coasts. Their grotesque apparel.has caused them n to be transferred to the toys or the picture-bookg of children ; and so front our youth up, an absurd and ludicrous associetiou blends with
the name of a Netherlander. We forget vhere Grotius • and Erasmus, Scaliger and Boerhave, Rubens and Rembrandt, .V.atidyk and DOM, were born, and linger upimm an old and vulgar prejudice, without the shadow of a . meaning. If any one will take the trouble of estimating the number of great men which Holland has produced in proportion to her population, he will be not a' little surprised at the gross injustice which is done her by the general opinion. Poetry has been assiduously cultivated in the Netherlands, front the remotest epoch of their written history ; in truth, all their earliest specimens of language are verse. At the beginning of the thirteenth century we find rhymed chronicles : then follow the sprekers, or minstrels, who attended the courts of the great : in the fifteenth and sieteenth centuries the whole country swanned Mi111 poetical rhetoricians, who deluged the land with their cuphisms ; till with the seventeenth, a class of poets, really entitled to the name, began a series, which has continued almost unbroken to the present hour.— Ifietminster 1?eeitno.
T ursr IN THE FINE Aters.—A recent occurrence in Paris has caused great interest among artists, and created consternation at the Louvre. It is ascertained beyond a doubt that the original picture painted by Raphael, of Christ and the Disciple, or, as others say, Raphael and Poutalmo, his fencingmaster, a picture rained at 20,000/., actually has been cut out of the frame, and a inhere picture substituted for it. How long it has been so removed is not known, but it is generally believed in Paris that the original picture has fimnd its way to England.—Paris Letter.
" 41 Hume."—Crowded evening parties are the rage in Paris ; and the host not 'Infrequently issues his cards without any regard to his means of accommodation. A foreigner lately assembled one of these mob meetings: having dined abroad, he forgot the hour at which he should have been at home to receive his guests, and when he reached his hotel, he found it impossible to pass the long tile of carriages which were occupied by shivering ladies who waited telmittance. hevain the donor of the fete assured the gendarmes that he was M. le Comte D--. He was obliged to take his rank according to the law," first come first served," and only reached his inhospitable door at three o'clock in the morning. There were twelve couvertestolen at this same entertainment, fifteen shawls, tea hats, five mantles, anti several ladies test their bracelets, owing to the squeezing, pressing and confusion.
Loeesxtrv.—The French papers mention the death of a woman at Lausanne, aged one hundred and fifteen. She was married in 1814, and outlived tier husband.
Col.n.—In Rome, on the 14th ult., the thermometer fell to eight degrees below freezing.
New 'MIRACLE IN FneNCE.—While the Pope hesitated about recognizing the miracle of Migue, an enormous stone cross was lately planted with great ceremony a few leagues from Aleneon, in the Commune of Livage, to hallow the memory of the apparition of a luminous cross, which a person pretends to have seen. The origin of it is, that an old woman had frequently before her death recommended her children to raise a stone cross for the benefit of her soul. This was not done ; and shortly after she had died her son-in-law passing on horseback a place called " Quatre Chemins," he felt something 'which he could not see jump up behind him, and a voice say, "to-morrow nightitt the same place " The next night, on passing the spot, the same occurrence took place ; and the night following he heard the same voice, and saw a shining cross with two tapers. On this he was determined to plant the cross above-mentioned. Accordingly, having obtained a licence from the Bishop, the ceremony took place in due form. C EROKEE CIVIL' zaTI on.—The Cherokee Indians have now a newspaper, call the Cherohee Phamix, published at New Echota, partly in English and partly in the language of the tribe. It is proposed to erect a national academy at this place, and to lease out fifteen square miles of land to create a revenue for its support. NIAGARA Fam.s.—On Sunday evening, a surface of the rock, supposed to be the size of half an acre, forming the bed of the river, broke loose, and was precipitated into the immense chasm below. The informant describes the part fallen as having been within the Horse Shoe, at that point resem'Whig the Toe Rock. The crash was heard for several miles around, and the effects in the immediate vicinity resembled the shock of an earthquake.— Lincoln Aarnal. Jan. 1.
CONVERTED RI/15,—A very good plan has been adopted in America to proaide employment and subsistence for those Jews whose conversion to Christianity would cause them to be deserted by their brethren, and left destitute. A portion of land has been bought for this purpose in the United States, and the means of carrying on agricultural operations and some of the mechanical arts have been provided.
A YANKEE VETERAN—The scale of heroism, like every thing else in America, is grand. In the New ]'irk Advertiser, of the 8th of last month, we observe the following petition to the House of Representatives and Senate, from Peter Francisco, an old soldier, stating his title to a pension. " He entered the military service of the United States in the year 1777 ; was in the battle of Brandywine and Germantown, and belonged to Gen. Wayne's command when the British post at Stony Point was carried by assault. On that occasion he was the second man who mounted the parapet of the enemy, killed the soldier at the flag staff, and received a dangerous wound from a bayonet. He aided, to the best of his powers, in the gallant defence of Mud Island Fort, conducted by General Smith, now a member of the Senate ; and was wounded severely in the thigh, by a musket ball, at the battle at Montnouth, the painful effect of which he often suffers, in his present advanced age. He was present in various skirmishes in the vicinity of New York and Philadelphia, while under the command of that excellent rile officer Colonel Daniel Morgan ; afterwards travelled to the State of Virginia, where he became a volunteer in a corps commanded by Col. Wm. Mays, deceased; and had a share in the first battle of Camden, fought on the 16th of August 1780. In that action, he rescued Cu!. Mays from death, by killing the British officer who was about to take his life, and protected himself from the attack of a dragoon soldier, by transfixing him with a bayonet and killing him on the spot ; he then mounted the horse of his adversary, escaped through the ranks by personatiay a Tory. fell in with his commanding officer, who was exhausted by fatigue, and mounted him on the captured horse, whereby he made good his retreat to a place of safety. Your petitioner again returned to Virginia, and early in the year 1781, he entered the cavalry service as a volunteer, in a troop commanded by Captain Thomas Watkins. This troop was attached, by order of General Greene, to Col. Washington's regiment, and fought under the command of that intrepid officer, at the battle of Guilford, on the 15th March, in the year last mentioned. Your petitioner received a severe wound from a bayonet in this action, but avenged himself by killing four of the enemy with his sabre, in the presence of Col. Washington and of the officers belonging to Captain Watkins' troop, the Lieutenant of which was Philemon Holcombe, who has since held the rank of Colonel in the Militia cavalry of Virginia. His certificate of the fact last stated is herewith exhibited. In the succeeding summer, accident threw your petitionen into the way of a straggling party belonging to Colonel Tarlton's corps, then or their march through the county of Amelia. to Prince Edward Court House,where they expected to destroy a large deposit of public stores. The party had left Tarlton's line of march for the purpose of plunder, when they arrived at the house Ma Mr. Ward, where they found your petitioner, and one of them demanded his watch and shoe-buckles, which were of silver. He refused to deliver (hens, and, while the British soldier stooped to take them from his shoes, your petitioner, who was destitute of arms, seized the hilt of his sword, drew it from the scabbard, and despatched him by a blow. lie killed two others, and frightened qfir the rest of thc party, amounting in number to six, by inducing OR them a belief that some American troops were approaching to his assistance. Your petitioner has specifically enumerated his personal services rendered to the United States in the war of independence, by no means with a -view to their ostentatious display, but at the instance and by the advice of many respectable and intelligent characters, whose opinion it is that he has a just claim on the gratitude, and even on the bounty of his country. He submits his case to the National Legislature, and solicits some provision against poverty and want, while his declining years and strength render hint incapable of struggling against adverse fortune."
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