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JACOB HAYS.

He is a man, take him for all in all,

We shall not look upon his like again.-Shaks.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to your acquaintance, Baron Nabem, a person who has a very taking way with him.-Tom and Jerry.

PERHAPS there is no species of composition so generally interesting and truly delightful as minute and indiscriminate biography; and it is pleasant to perceive how this taste is gradually increasing. The time is apparently not far distant when every man will be found busy writing the life of his neighbour, and expect to have his own written in return, interspersed with original anecdotes, extracts from epistolary correspondence, the exact hours at which he was in the habit of going to bed at night and getting up in the morning, and other miscellaneous and useful information carefully selected and judiciously arranged. In Europe there exists an absolute biographical mania, and they are manufacturing

lives of poets, painters, play-acters, peers, pugilists, pick-pockets, horse jockeys and their horses, together with a great many people that are scarcely known to have existed at all. And the fashion now is not only to shadow forth the grand and striking outlines of a great man's character, and hold to view those qualities which elevated him above his species, but to go into the minutiae of his private life, and note down all the trivial expressions and every-day occurrences in which, of course, he mercly spoke and acted like any ordinary man. This not only affords employment for the exercise of the small curiosity and meddling propensities of his officious biographer, but is also highly gratifying to the general reader, inasmuch as it elevates him mightily in his own opinion to see it put on record that great men eat, drank, slept, walked, and sometimes talked just as he does. In giving the biography of the high constable of New York city, I shall by all means avoid descending to undignified particulars; though I deem it important to state, before proceeding farther, that there is not the slightest foundation for the report afloat that Mr Hays has left off eating buckwheat cakes in a morning, in consequence of their lying too heavy on his stomach.

Where the subject of the present memoir was born, can be but of little consequence; who were his father and mother, of still less, and how he was bred and educated, of none at all. I shall therefore pass over this division of his existence in eloquent silence, and come at once to the period when he attained the acme of constabulatory power and dignity by being created high constable of New York and its suburbs; and it may be remarked, in passing, that the honourable the corporation, during their long and unsatisfactory career, never made an appointment more creditable to themselves, more beneficial to the city, more honourable to the country at large, more imposing in the eye of foreign nations, more disagreeable to all rogues, nor more gratifying to honest men, than that of the gentleman whom we are biographizing, to the high of fice he now holds. His acuteness and vigilance have become proverbial, and there is not a misdeed committed by any member of this community, but he is speedily admonished from all sides that he will have old Hays [as he is affectionately and familiarly termed] after him.' Indeed, it is supposed by many that he is gifted with supernatural attributes,

and can see things that are hid from mortal ken; or how, it is contended, is it possible that he should, as he does,

'Bring forth the secret'st man of blood?'

That he can discover 'undivulged crime'—that when a store has been robbed, he, without stop or hesitation, can march directly to the house where the goods are concealed, and say, 'these are they'—or, when a gentleman's pocket has been picked, that, from a crowd of unsavoury miscreants he can, with unerring judgment, lay his hand upon one and exclaim 'you 're wanted!'-or how is it that he is gifted with that strange principle of ubiquity that makes him 'here, and there, and everywhere' at the same moment? No matter how, so long as the public reap the benefit; and well may that public apostrophize him in the words of the poet:

'Long may he live! our city's pride!

Where lives the rogue, but flies before him!

With trusty crabstick by his side,

And staff of office waving o'er him.'

But it is principally as a literary man that

we would speak of Mr Hays.

True, his poe

try is 'unwritten,' as is also his prose; and he has invariably expressed a decided contempt for philosophy, music, rhetoric, the belles lettres, the fine arts, and in fact all species of composition excepting bailiff's warrants and bills of indictment-but what of that? The constitu

tion of his mind is, even unknown to himself, decidedly poetical. And here I may be allowed to avail myself of another peculiarity of modern biography, namely, that of describing a man by what he is not. Mr Hays has not the graphic power or antiquarian lore of Sir Walter Scott-nor the glittering imagery or voluptuous tenderness of Moore-nor the delicacy and polish of Rogers-nor the spirit of Campbell-nor the sentimentalism of Miss Landon-nor the depth and purity of thought and intimate acquaintance with nature of Bryant-nor the brilliant style and playful humor of Halleck-no, he is more in the petit larceny manner of Crabbe, with a slight touch of Byronic power and gloom. He is familiarly acquainted with all those interesting scenes of vice and poverty so fondly dwelt upon by that reverend chronicler of little villany; and if ever he can be prevailed upon to publish, there will doubtless be found a remarkable