for approved and practiced writers, but also to incite and call forth the slumbering and undeveloped talents of the Southern people. At the same time, Mr. Heath was a man of taste, judgment and pure ethical principles. Despite some flattering notices, to which he refers, he pounces upon "Vathek, an Oriental Tale," by Mr. Beckford, and pronounces it to be "the production of a sensualist and an infidel—one who could riot in the most abhorred and depraved conceptions and whose prolific fancy preferred as its repast all that was diabolical and monstrous, rather than what was beautiful and good." Some of his correspondents did not concur in this severe condemnation, but he adhered to it and adduced some high authorities to sustain him.
The publisher offers to patrons and the public the compliments of the season.
With its fifth number, the Messenger glides into the year 1835. Greenhow and Minor continue. Wilde contributes and claims the authorship of his disputed poem. There is again a variety of prose and poetry, original and selected. One article, interesting from its history, is "The Manuscript Poems of Mrs. Jean Wood," then deceased. She was the wife of Gen. James Wood, a distinguished officer of the Revolution, who became Governor of Virginia. "She wrote neither for fame, nor the public eye, and this circum-
