The New York Journal, And Weekly Register

For the New-York Journal:

INSPECTOR NO. II.

(Omitted last week for want of room.)

"Ay, what makes you laugh so immoderately," said I to my eldest daughter, Lavinia, who sat at the further end of the room giggling over a scrap of paper, which she held in her hand.

"I cannot help it, papa," says she, "whenever I read this pedantic letter, sent to me this morning, by my coxcomical sweetheart, Oliver Switcher, the schoolmaster. Please to listen to a part of it, and then forbear if you can, with all your gravity."

"Celestial and most archangelic Fair One,

"If it were possible, that in benign consideration of the extreme favour, the preternatural ebullition of the sublimest passion that ever invaded mortal heart with its energetic force--were it possible I say, from this or other condescending motives, actuating and influencing the breast of the most resplendent emblem of the spherical luminaries, and that she would graciously vouchsafe to admit a comparative nonentity amongst her multiplied vassals--how readily would I encounter the most lethiferous tornadoes, and undergo a quintilian of labours, exceeding, and infinitely surpassing those performed by the justly celebrated, but comparatively languid and inanimate Hercules, for your amiable sake."

Did you ever in your life, papa, meet with nonsense to be compared with this?

Yes, my dear, replied I, showing her a letter I had just received from Don Lingo Sporus Trumpeter; here is a moral of obumbratory stuff as laughable as yours.

You know Tom S**t, I suppose?

Very well, papa, he and Oliver belong to the Tame club.

And so does Lingo, I suppose, my dear, said I, for his style and manner of composition are so nearly similar to Tom S**t's that to prevent mistakes he wisely tells me Tom is out of town.

Don Trumpeter has pitted himself as Tom's champion, and has availed himself of Tom's usual method of clothing ignorance in pomp, and obscuring a plain subject with unintelligible jargon. Thus it is that Tom passes amongst the undisceming for a man of mysterious knowledge and profound research.

"To this invulnerable character (says our bombastic hero) the state and the union at large owe some weighty obligations."

That is very true, cries Lavinia, the state owes him many obligations for discovering that horrid plot of George Steward, which but for Tom S**t would have remained a profound secret to this day; nay, perhaps it would never have been found out at all, had not Tom's patriotic desire of "advancing the national interest, and throwing light on political controversy," led him to unfold the whole conspiracy to the public eye.

Don't interrupt me, child, said I, for you make me skip; thus he goes on.

"Is it honest to torture his able, well-intended, and patriotic exertions to subserve the common interest of this young Empire into a disposition hostile to liberty, and promotive of his own personal aggrandizement.--Has any act of his military profession or political career been substantiated by credible or avowed testimony as a deviation from the nicest rectitude."

Papa, says Lavinia, shall I fetch the dictionary?

No, my dear, it is not worth while, for you would be no gainer were you mistress of all these hard words, which our artist has selected to make his flimsy materials hang together; but to proceed,

"What avail the late Synonymous, and miserable Expedients to violate his fame? what triumph have the libels so plenteously disgorged obtained in the eyes of the generous and independent part of the community whose object was not less weak than flagitious.-What has it profited those traders in scandal, and retailers of unrighteousness, whether the poison was prepared by Sporus at court or Jephet from a jail, while our arch empiric, Tom S**t, can send an antidote along with it. I am but the echo of the general approbation of his professional and political conduct; had he been present, I should have been silent."

What a crack-brained performance this is! exclaimed Lavinia in a burst of laughter, what a pity it is that Tom S**t is out of the way, I really think he would have managed the subject better; but good soul, he is out of town acquiring honourable popularity by his important discoveries! mayhap he is gone to Baltimore, endeavouring to find out those jail Jephets, who wrote the incendiary letters which so terrified all the old women!

My dear, said I, whenever Tom makes a meritorious discovery, I shall be one of the first to applaud him for it.