Washington telegraph., 1852-08-18
New YORK, July 26, 1852.

New YORK, July 26, 1852.
Mr.. Editor: This is regular dogday; wet, sticky
and close | feel about as much like writing as
dromedary does like dancing. My blood and
brains in a very promising condition-for the
night marel and the ideas flow about as reluctant
ly as drops from wel-wrung dishcloth. This is
not elegant and WIlisian way of expressing
constipated condition of my immortal part this
morning; bat it is as true as woman Possibly you
may have had some experience of this feeling
when you have sat down and, with an imperative
call lor editorial" srlven to grind out leader
that would do. | am not as much troubled In
these days In that way as | used to be when edi-
tor of daily paper. | was expected to grind o ut
from my organ all sorts of airs
From grave to gay, from lively to severe"
without that blessed privilege freely accorded to
itinerant musicians of repeating the same old tunes
over and over again; but even my weekly letter
to you must often indicate either the vacuty
stolidity of my now aching pate. Now few
readers have any conception of the labor of editors
and authorsl If paragraph reads smoothly, they
think it must have been produced easily
shaving from fore-plane. Take Willis for in
stance: how fowingly, like a julep through straw
his cool and sparkling paragraphs glide through
the meaGowy margins of the magazines Yet no
man knows the contortions of the sibyF' more
intimately than Nathanial. And that notified
and clustering idea, shooting down that rivuet of
print, as delectably as fine trout in its native
brook, was just now Tapping hepessly on the
pebbly shore of Castaly where it was spawned.
That pun of his-like dainty ArieE' light as air,
yet perfect in all its parts-think you it sprang
lmpromptu from his prolific brain like Minerva
from the head of Jove? The chances are that it
was wrought out and almost painfully elaborated.
Willis does great many of these in cold blood,
and will have much to answer for. Why in the
world don't he write something substantial' In
his line, no living writer can approach him; but
will he forever stick to the mental confectionery
business, and not rise above the manufacture of
these whips, ice-creams, and Roman punches of
the brain! Willis is growing gray, and it is
time that instead ofdecanting his attic champagne
in the Kentucky Cave he should take the light of
religion and search through the holows of his own
heart for little gravity to cultivate and lean on
in old age. His letters from the West Indies are
capital specimens of his style, and many of the
descriptions at once graphic and racy; still it is
babbling brook which his genius floats upon, and
it can never be any thing more than tributary to
the broad, deep rivers of intellect like Shakespeare,
Bacon, Cowper, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley
and Scott
By the way in one of his recent very amusing
letters, Willis describes Martinique a side
hill at the summit of which is fountain or basin
OF water (made many years ago at large expense)
from which flow numerous streams down the de-
cGvitus streets-a rivuet down the middle gutter
of every thoroughfare. He is delighted with this
arrangement as it not only serves to carry off the
garbage and filth cast out by the residents but al
lows frstrate water-privilege to the washerwo-
men, place to bathe in, water horses, and obtain
drink 1t occurred to me while reading it, that
the atractiveness of the rivulets he so gloriousy
describes must be Ito person at all particular
the of cleaniness) all the greater the nearer
1T was to the top of the hill. At all events, am
quite as well satisfied to have our Croton convey
ed under ground.
Men, that would not go mile to save Kaine
from the gallows, make vast deal of buster
e IN regard to his extradition. At the same time
that we may be reasonably opposed to foreign in