MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER: AN AGRICULTU RAL AND FAMILY JOURNAL. 
MUTABILITY. 
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY. 
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; 
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, 
Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon 
Night closes round, and they arc lost for ever: 
Or, like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings 
Give various response to each varying blast, 
To whose frail frame no second motion brings 
One mood or modulation like the last. 
We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep-, 
We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day; 
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep, 
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: 
It is the same'.—For, be it joy or sorrow, 
The path of its departure still is free: 
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; 
Nought may endure but Mutability. 
VISIT TO THE UTICA INSANE ASYLUM. 
From a moderate elevation at the West¬ 
ern limit of the city of Utica, is seen stretch¬ 
ing along from West to East the beautiful 
valley of the Mohawk. Across this valley 
one hill after another lifts itself upward, un¬ 
til the eye of the beholder, as it ascends 
step by step, or rather hill by hill, is lost in 
the commingling blues of sky and moun¬ 
tain. At the right and below, rests the 
quiet city of Utica. Upon this favored 
eminence the people of the State of New 
York, with a wise benevolence, have erect¬ 
ed an Asylum for that most unfortunate 
class of our fellow men—the insane. The 
building is a noble one, with a front of 550 
feet, and wings extending back, proportion¬ 
ate to the main body. 
There are two departments—male and 
female—and the inmates of one have no 
intercourse, except by permission, with those 
of the other. Each department is classi¬ 
fied into “families,” according to the form 
of insanity with which the patients may be 
afflicted. Those having unlike varieties are 
associated in the same family, so that the 
influence of one may benefit another, —for 
instance, the melancholy and cheerful are 
together. 
As you pass along the extended halls, 
you see on either side rows of clean, airy 
and well furnished apartments, looking more 
like private parlors than anything else.— 
Each patient has one of these to himself, 
except in a few cases where there is a ten¬ 
dency to suicide, requiring the presence of 
an attendant. The attention of the pa¬ 
tients is kept occupied in various ways, to 
prevent them from falling into those trains 
of thought that are associated with the 
cause or commencement of their derange¬ 
ment. You will see neighbor calling upon 
neighbor, groups engaged in chess, nine¬ 
pins, Ac. Among the ladies there are 
sewing circles, music, and at evening aspe- 
cies of stage representation, in no wise ob¬ 
jectionable, but very interesting and bene¬ 
ficial. 
There is one. thing strikes every visitor 
—the spirit of kindness that seems to per¬ 
vade all. The deportment of the officers 
is a pattern of politeness and kindness, and 
each patient seems to catch and convey to 
the other this heavenly spirit How beau¬ 
tiful to behold, amid the wanderings of a 
disordered intellect, this benign principle of 
the heart preserved in its purity. If there 
is one thing that links man to his fellow 
man under all circumstances—in health and 
sickness, at home and abroad—it is the 
heart-originated, heart-reaching principle 
of kindness. Yet how often, in this money- 
loving world of ours, is this principle ob¬ 
scured, counterfeited and perverted by 
over-ruling selfishness. 
During my visit I learned one or two cu¬ 
rious things. At the celebration on the 
4th, by the patients, this toast, among oth¬ 
ers, was given: “The sane world; let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
fall.” Now can it be that the insane are 
conscious of their insanity ? Can it be that 
when reason is dethroned and anarchy 
reigns supreme among the hitherto obedi¬ 
ent powers, some sentinel of safety awakens 
a glimmering consciousness that all is not 
right in this mighty machine of instinct 
and thought. At all events, I am satisfied 
that a large portion know the character and 
object of the institution where they are, 
and believe that it will benefit them. 
There was an insane intemperate man 
here, whose history is interesting. He has 
often been here—is cured, dismissed, min¬ 
gles again in society as he was accustomed 
—gradually loses his self-control, becomes 
inebriate and insane—is then returned by 
4m, 
■ 
Sill 
PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES OF THE PRESIDENTS.— NTO. 10. 
JOHN TYLER. 
Among the early English settlers of Vir¬ 
ginia were the ancestors of John Tyler, the 
tenth president of the United States. His 
father was a lineal descendant of Wat Tyler, ■ 
who in the fourteenth century headed an 
insurrection in England, and who lost his 
life while insolently demanding from Rich¬ 
ard the Second certain rights which were 
claimed for the people. 
The subject of this notice was born in 
Charles co, Virginia, on the 29th of March, 
1790. At the age of twelve he entered 
William and Mary College, and in his seven¬ 
teenth year he graduated with high honor. 
Applying himself to the study of the law, 
at the age of nineteen he was admitted to 
the bar, where he soon secured an exten¬ 
sive practice. 
In 1811 he was unanimously elected a 
member of the Virginia legislature. In 
1816 he was elected to Congress. Towards 
the close of his second term of service in 
that body, his impaired health compelled 
him to resign. In 1823 he was again elect¬ 
ed to the Virginia legislature. In 1825, 
by a very large majority, he was elected 
governor of Virginia. On the following 
year he was re-elected, but resigned in or¬ 
der to take his place in the United States 
Senate. In 1833 he was re-elected to the 
senate for the term of six years. 
“In 1836, the legislature of Virginia in¬ 
structed the senators from that State to vote 
for expunging from the journals of the sen¬ 
ate the resolution of Mr. Clay, censuring 
the president. As Mr. Tyler approved of 
the resolution, he could not obey instruc¬ 
tions, and, true to his avowed principles, he 
his friends to the asylum, where intoxica- ' 
ting liquors, or the cause of his insanity, 
are withheld, and his physical system re¬ 
covers its healthy tone and his mind mani¬ 
fests itself in its usual way. Intemperance 
does produce such a derangement of the 
brain and physical system as to change the 
natural manifestations of the mind. This 
is seen from the exhileration of a single 
glass to the fury of delirium tremens— 
from the diminished refinement and delica¬ 
cy of feeling of the tipler, to the fully 
blunted and perverted moral and social 
spirit of the confirmed sot 
In looking at the insane in their great 
affliction, there is one view to cheer us, i. e., 
that insanity is probably not a disease of the 
mind itself, but a derangement of the usu¬ 
al modes of communication between it and 
the brain, its agent through which it holds 
intercourse with the external world. Hence 
we may hope that when the mind is di¬ 
vested of matter—when we have put off 
mortality and put on immortality—there 
will then be no insanity. alpha. 
Every man ought to aim at eminence, 
not by pulling others down, but by raising 
himself; and enjoy the pleasure of his own 
superiority, whether imaginary or real, with¬ 
out interrupting others in the same felicity. 
Every man’s actions form a centre of in¬ 
fluence upon others; and every deed, how¬ 
ever trivial, has some weight in determin¬ 
ing the future destiny of the world. 
resigned his seat, and was succeeded by 
Mr. Rives. 
In the spring of 1838, the whigs of 
James City county elected Mr. Tyler a 
member of the Virginia legislature. In 
1839 he was elected a member of the whig 
convention that met at Harrisburgh to nom¬ 
inate a candidate for president of the Uni¬ 
ted States. He was chosen vice-president 
of the convention, and warmly supported 
Mr Clay for the nomination. General Har¬ 
rison was nominated for president, and Mr. 
Tyler for vice-president, and in 1840 they 
were both eolcted.” 
On the sudden death of President Har¬ 
rison, on the 4t'n of April, 1841, Mr. Tyler, 
in accordance with the provisions of the 
constitution, became president of the United 
States. Of the character of his adminis¬ 
tration and his personal relations thereto, it 
is not our province to speak. In declining 
a nomination for a second term he said, “ I 
appeal from the vituperation of the present 
day to the pen of impartial history, in the 
full confidence that neither my motives nor 
my acts will bear the interpretation which 
has, for sinister purposes, been placed upon 
them.” On the 4th of March, 1845, he 
returned to his estate near Williamsburg, 
Virginia, where he still resides. 
The first wife of President Tyler was Miss 
Lucretia Christian, whom he married in 
1813. She died September 10th, 1842. 
On the 26th of June, 1844, he married 
Miss Julia Gardiner, daughter of the late 
David Gardiner, who was killed by the ex¬ 
plosion on board the Princeton— Biograph¬ 
ical Panorama. 
A HEROIC WORKER. 
The other day a hardy, tough looking 
Yankee boy came into the city with a quan¬ 
tity of berries for sale, and while one of 
our merchants was paying him for a few 
quarts of berries, he learned from him sev¬ 
eral interesting facts in his history, which 
we think worthy of being recorded to the 
honor of the boy’s perseverance and for 
the encouragement of others, both men 
and boys, in the battle of life. 
The boy is now only a little over twelve 
years of age. His father died when he 
was young, leaving a poor widow with 
three children, this boy and two little girls. 
When the boy was less than ten years of 
age, he conceived the idea, a true Ameri¬ 
can idea, and one which we wish every 
American fully entertained and apprecia¬ 
ted, of owning a piece of land, and he set 
himself about a calculation how he could 
manage to pay for it. Having satisfied 
himself of the result, he found a piece of 
land which would suit him, about three 
miles from the city, and his application was 
received and he entered upon the land and 
set himself to work to pay for it. During 
the berry season he and his sisters picked 
berries and brought them in and sold them, 
paying over little sums as he could part 
with them, towards the land. This season 
he had sold forty dollars worth of berries, 
and on Tuesday he owed but nineteen dol¬ 
lars for his land. His mother in the mean¬ 
time married, but her husband is in feeble 
health and unable to do much for the sup¬ 
port of the family, and the little fellow, aid¬ 
ed by loving and industrious sisters, has 
struggled manfully for a place to live in, or 
a spot he may call his own, and will doubt¬ 
less by and by make that spot beautiful in 
its luxuriance and hallowed in its influence. 
This little fellow is not only a heroic 
worker, but an efficient teacher by exam¬ 
ple. How many men with greater ability 
to accumulate, have lived through the three 
past years without accomplishing as much 
as this boy. How many young men waste 
in useless indulgences and extravagances 
enough in three years to pay for a lot of 
land for a homestead, in which they could 
plant trees and flowers, and make attract¬ 
ive with its varied beauty, and on which, 
after a few years of prudent saving, they 
could erect a neat dwelling for a home?— 
We like the teachings of this boy’s exam¬ 
ple, and if there is one thought or worldly 
wisdom above others, which we would plant 
in the mind of every American, it is this— 
secure the title in a piece of land and make 
it a home, and make that home beautiful 
and attractive in all its externals, and in its 
internals make it the nearest possible rep¬ 
resentative of heaven. — Bangor Whig. 
THE PRACTICAL MAN. 
THE ELOPEMENT. 
Yodnb Jessica sat all the day, 
With heart o’er idle love-thoughts pining; 
Her needle bright beside her lay. 
So active once!—now idly shining. 
Ah, Jessy, ’tis in idle hearts 
That love and mischief are most nimble; 
The safest shield against the darts 
Of Cupid, is Minerva’s thimble. 
The child who with a magnet plays, 
Well knowing all its arts so wily, 
The tempter near a needle lays, 
And, laughing, says—“ We’ll steal it slily.” 
The needle, having nought to do. 
Is pleased to let the magnet wheedle; 
Till closer, closer come the two, 
And—off, at length, elopes the r.c-edle. 
Now, had this needle turned it? eye 
To some gay reticule’s construction, 
It ne’er had stray’d from duty’s tie. 
Nor felt the magnet's sly seduction. 
Thus, girls, would you keep quiet hearts. 
Your snowy fingers must be nimble; 
The safest shield against the darts 
Of Cupid, is Minerva’s thimble. 
I SEE A LIGHT—I’M ALMOST HOME. 
A pleasant summer evening, with its 
refreshing air and calm repose, was closing 
in upon the city of Providence. The hur¬ 
ried step of the laboring mass, homeward 
bound, became less frequent and distinct, 
as’the veil of night was more closely drawn 
around the earth. Many an expectant fam¬ 
ily were looking for returning inmates, who 
had been absent for long weary hours, with 
kind smiles of welcome. And many a wea¬ 
ry man passed on, with eager looks direct¬ 
ed at the homestead, where was centered 
all the treasures of his heart. A few more 
steps were taken, and he now breathes freer, 
saying with delight, “ I see the light, I’m 
almost home.” 
To one young traveler to the world’s 
highway, life’s evening at that hour was 
closing in. Of few years’ experience, she 
had yet learned the lesson, difficult to many, 
that earth was not her home. Each day of 
her existence was recognised a short but 
rapid stage leading onward to that more 
abiding country where she hoped to live 
forever. Feeble health for many months 
hurried that journey to a close. The in¬ 
firm traveled faster toward the grave than 
those of stronger limb and firmer health. 
About her chamber glided gently the 
loved forms of her parents, and an only sis¬ 
ter. She silently noted their movements 
with a mild expression of her dying eye, 
turning it from side to side. Arrested by 
her peculiar looks, so expressive of affliction 
and patient suffering, they paused to look 
upon her, whom they only saw now but 
dimly through their tears, and so soon should 
see no more. 
ADVICE TO WRITERS FOR THE PRESS. 
In the first place, all names—of county, 
town, place, or thing, and especially of indi¬ 
viduals—should be written distinctly, with 
dots over the i’s, crosses only across the t’s, 
and a plain distinction between the u’s and 
n’s, as a compositor has no connecting sense 
of grammar to guide him in deciphering a 
name when it is obscurely written. 
Secondly—when the capital letter I or J 
occurs in a name, (as Henry I. Jones,) make 
it with the pen to represent it in print, and 
then no mistake can occur: and where a 
list of names or more than one is written, a 
comma should be written after each —as 
Thomas Smith Walker Johnson might be 
made to signify one, two or four names.— 
Any one who writes names may easily 
know how to punctuate them; and if he 
does not understand the punctuation of any 
other part of his manuscript he need not 
fear that the printer will neglect it. 
Writers for the Press should understand 
that as a general thing, compositors are paid 
by the piece for their work, and that, if 
their manuscript is badly written, it is a 
downright robbery of their labor, as they 
are compelled to waste hour upon hour to 
put it in an intelligible shape what the au¬ 
thor has hurriedly or carelessly neglected to 
do. Bad grammar is little or no bother to 
a compositor, if the manuscript is plain;— 
but bad grammar and bad writing com 
bined is intolerable. 
Writers who have any regard for that 
class of men who toil at all hours of the 
night to accommodate the public and earn 
a meagre competence, should remember the 
above facts, and by following the instruct¬ 
ions given, lessen the draught of bitterness 
consequent upon the life of a Typo. — Trib. 
The first element of the practical char- . ^ ^ble effoit to speak, a quivering, 
acter is simplicity. This is far from being ' 01ce Ci:S °. ‘ ! P ? ’ drew close- 
common, or easy of attainment To be ^ aroundher the loving hearts of thatsor- 
practical requires energy to do something r0wln o circ e * ot ler, father, sister, all 
— wisdom to do the thing that is next to us ?. ame ° oser 0 er SI e - ^ P^yful smile 
—and courage to do poorly, rather than 1 , U R ier C0l,n enanye. £>ne lay her little, 
not to do at all—courage to forego the eclat f/ 1 e , SS AVI la ber , m 'f r ®P a 
of having done a great thing. Many a good C °^ t , er e ^ e "' s 1,0 , ie *t °f eart h 
I thing fails to be done because it cannot be Y* ., S , an a ^ a D ie C0J d> damp °f 
done splendidly. Some men will not plant death , 8 ™ . e 7 femed circling 
their little acorn, because it springs not up ° vei l er ', ? w ^ Sln ln S down, she glided 
at once before their eves the live oak.- toward that river shore, which, like a nar- 
They feel they have the grown oak with 10W su p ai f’ ^ es t \ e spirit land from 
them, and they have not the courage to 0UrS \ „vr S fif ' ( l ulv ’ erm g bps essay to 
accept the tender sprout for the magnificent !P e ?' 0 er ' * \ e dying girl breathes 
trunk they promised themselves. The i>> See a ^ am a ^ mos t 
thinking, visionary man has wings; the 
working, practical man has only feet and . £jl esse d thought ! Light is sown for the 
hands. Imagination can expatiate over the righteous, even amid the gloom and dark- 
universe at a bound, and rear castles of ness °^die grave. 
splendid structure, in a moment. But ' -- - 
practical work is to toil slowly, course by WORKS OF FICTION. 
course, and finally lay on its capstone with „ ' 
weariness and pain. Thought and hope, Man\ works 01 fiction may be read with 
WUIOO, UtlXKJ. JUi.ICAJ.iJ ICIJ IX A LO WlblJ 
weariness and pain. Thought and hope, Man\ works of fiction may be read with 
like the eye, pierce into infinite space; but sa lcty, some even with profit; but the con- 
the hand by which all the work must be s ^ an ^ familiarity, even with such as are not 
done, extends only a yard. All this differ- exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind 
ence between what seems desirable to be which needs hardening; dissolves the heart, 
done, and what can be done, confounds the which wants fortifying; stirs the imagina- 
mind, and destroys the courage. tion, which wants quieting; irritates the 
To be practical, useful—to bring about passions, which w-ant calming; and above all, 
results in any sphere of life, a man must disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues 
. . J _ r . _a r_• _l _ •_ m» 1 n 
not be afraid of bungling and inadequacy. 
Success is ever a step-by-step, tentative, ap- 
and for spiritual exercises. Though all these 
books may not be wicked-, yet the habitual 
proximative process. It is rarely obtained at indulgence in such reading, is a silent min- 
a bound—and if it were, it would be but * n § mischief. I hough there is no act, and 
half secured; for the best part of any achiev- no moment, in whieh any open assault on 
men t lies in the conscious strength acquired the mind is made, yet the constant habit 
in the struggle. Pride frustrates its own performs the work of a mental atrophy —it 
desires. It will not climb up the steps of produces all the symptoms of decay; and 
the throne, because it has not yet got the die danger is not less for being more grad- 
crown on; forgetting that it is necessary to ua L a °d therefore less suspected .—Hannah 
be throned in order to be crowned. Pride More. 
must be acknowledged the victor before it 
will begin the fight at all; it must be sure The Precious Pearl. —Religion in a 
of success before it can act; it will do noth- female secures all her interests. It graces 
ing that it cannot do brilliantly. And so h er character, promotes her peace, endears 
waiting for the assurance that Providence h er friendship, secures esteem, and adds a 
will never give, the opportunity passes by dignity and worth indescribable to all her 
and is lost. deeds. How pleasant, when the absent 
__ husband can think of home, and reflect that 
How often, in the busy haunts of men, an gcls watch the place! When about to 
are all our noblest and gentlest virtues called l eave her a widow, how consoling, if her 
forth! And how, in the bosom of the re- character is such that she can lean on the 
cluse, do all the soft emotions languish and widow’s God, and put her children under 
grow faint! the guardianship of Him, who is the father 
—------ of the fatherless! Then he quits the world 
Every deceased friend is a magnet that calm and happy, supported by the hope that 
draws us into another world. he shall meet them all in heaven. 
