Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/204

 180 any notice through, his magazine. The Editor's Table was suspended, but notices of new books pretty well kept up during his absence.

That long voyage to China having ended, another traveller makes a shorter overland journey to the East and finally reaches China. In those days, the Messenger was nearly as full of China as are the magazines of the present stirring era.

There is a long and learned discussion of "Why do Mills Run Faster by Night Than by Day?" The debate got so heated that one of the arguers said his opponent, L., had come at him, "bulging ad hominem cum pitchforko;"—like Senator T. of South Carolina. A typographical error as to mills started another question, equally scientific, "Why do mules run faster by night than by day?" There are long articles on "Free Schools and the University of Virginia," and on "Universities and Colleges." The eloquent and gifted B. Johnson Barbour delivers an address before the Literary Societies of Virginia Military Institute. Hugh Blair Grigsby describes, by request, the library of Randolph, of Roanoke. There are translations from French and German, some tales and reviews of Thackeray, Milliard and Bulwer; and the latter' s oration, in defence of Classical Literature, before the University of Edinburgh. But this defence has been as well