Judge Noah has written several plays which took very well in their time, and also several essays and other works, giving evidence of no ordinary learning and penetration on certain topics—chiefly connected with Israelitish history. He is better known, however, from the wit and universal _bonhommie_ of his editorial paragraphs. His peculiar traits of character may be traced in his writing, which has about it a free, rolling, and open air. His lines are never straight, and the letters taper too much to please the eye of an artist, and have now and then a twirl, like the tail of a pig, which gives to the whole MS. an indescribably quizzical appearance, and one altogether in consonance with the general notion respecting the quondam Major, and present Judge, than whom no man has more friends or fewer enemies.
[Illustration: signature of J. G. Palfrey]
Professor Palfrey is known to the public principally through his editorship of the “North American Review.” He has a reputation for scholarship; and many of the articles which are attributed to his pen evince that this reputation is well based, so far as the common notion of scholarship extends. For the rest, he seems to dwell altogether within the narrow world of his _own_ conceptions; imprisoning them by the very barrier which he has erected against the conceptions of others.
His MS. shows a total deficiency in the sense of the beautiful. It has great pretension—great straining after effect; but is altogether one of the most miserable MSS. in the world—forceless, graceless, tawdry, vacillating and unpicturesque. The signature conveys but a faint idea of its extravagance. However much we may admire the mere _knowledge_ of the man who writes thus, it will not do to place any dependence upon his wisdom or upon his taste.
This article will be concluded in our next number, and will embrace the autograph of every writer of note in America.
There is no scenery in England more beautiful than that to be found in portions of the New Forest. Huge gray old oaks, gnarled, and twisted, and aspiring to heaven; deep glens, overshadowed by canopies of leaves, through which the light but faintly struggles; vast arcades, stretching far away in the distance, and buried in religious gloom; wild wood roads, that wind hither and thither among the giant trees in fanciful contortions; and open, sunny glades, intersected by sparkling streamlets, waving with verdant grass, and now and then disclosing a fairy cottage nestled in the edge of the forest, are to this day, the characteristics of this favorite hunting ground of the conqueror and his immediate successors. There is a solitude about this old labyrinthine chace, which is perfectly bewitching. You may travel for miles, in the more secluded parts of the forest, without meeting a human being, or seeing the smoke of a single cottage curling among the foliage; but on every hand you will behold trees growing in the wildest luxuriance, and tread on a sward as soft and thick as the richest velvet. You will, for a space, hear nothing but the sound of a nut rattling to the ground, or the song of some wood bird down in a brake; and then you will rouse the deer from their retreat, a rustle will be heard down in the under-growth, and you will catch a sight of the noble herd, perchance, as they go trotting away into the darker recesses of the forest.