Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/52

 40 ; Bulwer's "Rienzi;" Dr. Peter Mark Roget's "Animal and Vegetable Physiology, considered with reference to Natural Theology," in noticing which some strong objections are presented to the plan which was adopted for the Bridgewater Treatises; and "Mathew Cary's Autobiography."

Besides some very good prose in this number are a poem, "A Lay of Ruin," by Miss Draper; one, "Living Alone," by T. Flint; and one, on Greece, by Eliza, of Maine.

One of the prose articles is a biographical sketch of Jonathan P. Cushing, born March 12, 1793, at Rochester, New Hampshire. With a collegiate education, a love of study and a laudable ambition, he settled in the South, for the sake of his health, and though an Episcopalian, was made president of Hampden-Sidney College, and though a Northern man, led Virginians to the formation of their first State Historical Society, of which they elected him the first president

This number closes with a unique paper entitled "Autography," which consists of 24 short letters, from distinguished persons, with a facsimile of the signature of each. This ingenious matter attracted so much comment that it was extended in August up to 38 letters, the last of which is from Theodore S. Fay, at whom some