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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

BY J. F. COOPER, AUTHOR OF “THE RED ROVER,” “LE FEU-FOLLET,” ETC.

(Concluded from page 167.)

For a week nothing material transpired. All that time I lay in the drawer, gaining a knowledge of what passed, in the best manner I could. Betts Shoreham was a constant visiter at the house, and Tom Thurston made his appearance with a degree of punctuality that began to attract notice, among the inmates of the house on the opposite side of the street. All this time, however, Tom treated Julia with the greatest respect, and even distance, turning more of his attention toward Mrs. Monson. He acted in this manner, because he thought he had secured a sufficient lien on the young lady, by means of her “yes,” and knew how important it was for one who could show none of the usual inducements for consent, to the parents, to obtain the good-will of the “old lady.”

At the end of the week, Mrs. Monson opened her house to receive the world. As a matter of course, I was brought out on this occasion. Now, Betts Shoreham and Mademoiselle Hennequin had made great progress toward an understanding in the course of this week, though the lady becoming more and more conscious of the interest she had created in the heart of the gentleman, her own conduct got to be cautious and reserved. At length, Betts actually carried matters so far as to write a letter, that was as much to the point as a man could very well come. In a word, he offered his hand to the excellent young French woman, assuring her, in very passionate and suitable terms, that she had been mistress of his affections ever since the first month of their acquaintance. In this letter, he implored her not to be so cruel as to deny him an interview, and there were a few exceedingly pretty reproaches, touching her recent coy and reserved deportment.

Mademoiselle Hennequin was obliged to read this letter in Julia’s room, and she took such a position to do it, as exposed every line to my impertinent gaze, as I lay on the bed, among the other finery that was got out for the evening. Mrs. Monson was present, and she had summoned the governess, in order to consult her on the subject of some of the ornaments of the supper table. Fortunately, both Julia and her mother were too much engaged to perceive the tears that rolled down the cheeks of the poor stranger, as she read the honest declaration of a fervid and manly love, nor did either detect the manner in which the letter was pressed to Mademoiselle Hennequin’s heart, when she had done reading it the second time.

Just at this instant a servant came to announce Mr. Shoreham’s presence in the “breakfast-room.” This was a retired and little frequented part of the house at that hour, Betts having been shown into it, in consequence of the preparations that were going on in the proper reception-rooms.

“Julia, my dear, you will have to go below—although it is at a most inconvenient moment.”

“No, mother—let Mr. Belts Shoreham time his visits better—George, say that the ladies are engaged.”

“That will not do,” interrupted the mother, in some concern—“we are too intimate for such an excuse—would you, Mademoiselle Hennequin, have the goodness to see Mr. Shoreham for a few minutes—you must come into our American customs, sooner or later, and this may be a favorable moment to commence.”

Mrs. Monson laughed pleasantly as she made this request, and her kindness and delicacy to the governess were too marked and unremitted to permit the latter to think of hesitating. She had laid her own handkerchief down at my side, to read the letter, but feeling the necessity of drying her eyes, she caught me up by mistake, smiled her assent, and left the apartment.

Mademoiselle Hennequin did not venture below, until she had gone into her own room. Here she wept freely for a minute or two, and then she bathed her eyes in cold water, and used the napkin in drying them. Owing to this circumstance, I was fortunately a witness of all that passed in her interview with her lover.

The instant Betts Shoreham saw that he was to have an interview with the charming French girl, instead of with Julia Monson, his countenance brightened; and, as if supposing the circumstance proof of his success, he seized the governess’ hand, and carried it to his lips in a very carnivorous fashion. The lady, however, succeeded in retaining her hand, if she did not positively preserve it from being devoured.

“A thousand, thousand thanks, dearest Mademoiselle Hennequin,” said Betts, in an incoherent, half-sane manner; “you have read my letter, and I may interpret this interview favorably. I meant to have told all to Mrs. Monson, had she come down, and asked her kind interference—but it is much, much better as it is.”

“You will do well, monsieur, not to speak to Madame Monson on the subject at all,” answered Mademoiselle Hennequin, with an expression of countenance that I found quite inexplicable; since it was not happy, nor was it altogether the reverse. “This must be our last meeting, and it were better that no one knew any thing of its nature.”

“Then my vanity—my hopes have misled me, and I have no interest in your feelings!”

“I do not say that, monsieur; oh! non—non—I am far from saying as much as that”—poor girl, her face declared a hundred times more than her tongue, that she was sincere—“I do not—cannot say I have no interest in one, who so generously overlooks my poverty, my utter destitution of all worldly greatness, and offers to share with me his fortune and his honorable position—”

“This is not what I ask—what I had hoped to earn—gratitude is not love.”

“Gratitude easily becomes love in a woman’s heart”—answered the dear creature, with a smile and a look that Betts would have been a mere dolt not to have comprehended—“and it is my duty to take care that my gratitude does not entertain this weakness.”

“Mademoiselle Hennequin, for mercy’s sake, be as frank and simple as I know your nature prompts—do you, can you love me?”

Of course such a direct question, put in a very categorical way, caused the questioned to blush, if it did not induce her to smile. The first she did in a very pretty and engaging manner, though I thought she hesitated about indulging in the last.

“Why should I say ‘yes,’ when it can lead to no good result?”

“Then destroy all hope at once, and say no.”

“That would be to give you—to give us both unnecessary pain. Besides, it might not be strictly true—I could love—Oh! No one can tell how my heart could love where it was right and proper.”

After this, I suppose it is unnecessary for me to say, that Betts soon brought the category of possibilities into one of certainty. To own the truth, he earned every thing by his impetuosity, reducing the governess to own that what she admitted she could do so well, she had already done in a very complete and thorough manner. I enjoyed this scene excessively, nor was it over in a minute. Mademoiselle Hennequin used me several times to wipe away tears, and it is strong proof how much both parties were thinking of other matters, that neither discovered who was present at so interesting a tête-à-tête.

At length came the dénouement. After confessing how much she loved Betts, how happy she would be could she be his slave all the days of her life, how miserable she was in knowing that he had placed his affections on her, and how much more miserable she should be, had she learned he had not, Mademoiselle Hennequin almost annihilated the young man by declaring that it was utterly impossible for her to consent to become his wife. The reason was the difference in fortune, and the impossibility that she should take advantage of his passion to lead him into a connection that he might afterwards regret. Against this decision, Betts reasoned warmly, but seriously, in vain. Had Mademoiselle Hennequin been an American, instead of a French, girl, her feelings would not have been so sensitive on this point, for, in this great republic, every body but the fortune-hunters, an exceedingly contemptible class, considers a match without money, quite as much a matter of course, as a match with. But, the governess had been educated under a different system, and it struck her imagination as very proper, that she should make both herself and her lover miserable, because he had two hundred thousand dollars, and she had not as many hundreds. All this strangely conflicted with Betts’ preconceived opinion of a French woman’s selfishness, and, while he was disposed to believe his adored perfection, he almost feared it was a trick. Of such contradictory materials is the human mind composed!

At length the eyes of Betts fell on me, who was still in the hand of Mademoiselle Hennequin, and had several times been applied to her eyes unheeded. It was evident I revived unpleasant recollections, and the young man could not avoid letting an expression escape him, that sufficiently betrayed his feelings.

“This handkerchief!” exclaimed the young governess—“Ah! it is that of Mademoiselle Julie, which I must have taken by mistake. But, why should this handkerchief awaken any feeling in you, monsieur? You are not about to enact the Moor, in your days of wooing?”

This was said sweetly, and withal a little archly, for the poor girl was glad to turn the conversation from its harassing and painful points; but Betts was in no humor for pleasantry, and he spoke out in a way to give his mistress some clue to his thoughts.

“That cursed handkerchief”—it is really indecent in young men to use such improper language, but they little heed what they say when strongly excited—“that cursed handkerchief has given me as much pain, as it appears also to have given you. I wish I knew the real secret of its connection with your feelings; for I confess, like that of Desdemona’s, it has excited distrust, though for a very different cause.”

The cheeks of Mademoiselle Hennequin were pale, and her brow thoughtful. Still, she had a sweet smile for Betts; and, though ignorant of the nature of his suspicions, which she would have scarcely pardoned, it was her strongest wish to leave no darker cloud between them, than the one she felt it her duty to place there herself. She answered, therefore, frankly and simply, though not without betraying strong emotion as she proceeded.

“This handkerchief is well known to me,” answered the young French woman; “it revives the recollections of some of the most painful scenes of a life that has never seen much sunshine. You have heard me speak of a grandmother, Mr. Shoreham, who took care of my childhood, and who died in my arms. That handkerchief I worked for her support in her last illness, and this lace—yes, this beautiful lace was a part of that beloved grandmother’s bridal trousseau. I put it where you see it, to enhance the value of my labors.”

“I see it all!” exclaimed the repentant Betts—“feel it all, dearest, dearest Mademoiselle Hennequin; and I hope this exquisite work, this refined taste brought all the comfort and reward you had a right to anticipate.”

A shade of anguish crossed the face of Adrienne—for it was no other—as she gazed at me, and recalled all the scenes of her sufferings and distress. Then I knew her again, for time and a poor memory, with some development of person, had caused me to forget the appearance of the lovely creature who may be said to have made me what I am; but one glance at her, with that expression of intense suffering on her countenance, renewed all my earlier impressions.

“I received as much as I merited, perhaps,” returned the meek-minded girl—for she was proud only in insisting on what she fancied right—“and enough to give my venerated parent Christian burial. They were days of want and sorrow that succeeded, during which, Betts, I toiled for bread like an Eastern slave, the trodden-on and abused hireling of a selfish milliner. Accident at length placed me in a family as a governess. This family happened to be acquainted with Madame Monson, and an offer that was brilliant to me, in my circumstances, brought me to America. You see by all this how unfit I am to be your wife, monsieur. You would blush to have it said you had married a French milliner!”

“But you are not a milliner, in that sense, dearest Adrienne—for you must suffer me to call you by that name—you are a lady reduced by revolutions and misfortunes. The name of Hennequin I know is respectable, and what care I for money, when so much worth is to be found on your side of the scale. Money would only oppress me, under such circumstances.”

“Your generosity almost overcomes my scruples, but it may not be. The name to which I am entitled is certainly not one to be ashamed of—it is far more illustrious than that of Hennequin, respectable as is the last; but of what account is a name to one in my condition!”

“And your family name is not Hennequin?” asked the lover, anxiously.

“It is not. My poor grandmother assumed the name of Hennequin, when we went last to Paris, under an apprehension that the guillotine might follow the revolution of July, as it had followed that of ’69. This name she enjoined it on me to keep, and I have never thought it prudent to change it. I am of the family of de la Rocheaimard.”

The exclamation which burst from the lips of Betts Shoreham, betokened both surprise and delight. He made Adrienne repeat her declarations, and even desired her to explain her precise parentage. The reader will remember, that there had been an American marriage in Adrienne’s family, and that every relative the poor girl had on earth, was among these distant connections on this side of the Atlantic. One of these relatives, though it was no nearer than a third cousin, was Betts Shoreham, whose great-grandmother had been a bonâ fide de la Rocheaimard, and who was enabled, at once, to point out to the poor deserted orphan some forty or fifty persons, who stood in the same degree of affinity to her. It is needless to say that this conversation was of absorbing interest to both; so much so, indeed, that Betts momentarily forgot his love, and by the time it had ended, Adrienne was disposed to overlook most of her over scrupulous objections to rewarding that very passion. But the hour admonished them of the necessity of separating.

“And now, my beloved cousin,” said Betts Shoreham, as he rose to quit the room, seizing Adrienne’s unresisting hand—“now, my own Adrienne, you will no longer urge your sublimated notions of propriety against my suit. I am your nearest male relative, and have a right to your obedience—and I command that you be the second de la Rocheaimard who became the wife of a Shoreham.”

“Tell me, mon cher cousin,” said Adrienne, smiling through her tears—“were your grand-parents, my good uncle and aunt, were they happy? Was their union blessed?”

“They were miracles of domestic felicity, and their happiness has passed down in tradition, among all their descendants. Even religion could not furnish them with a cause for misunderstanding. That example which they set to the last century, we will endeavor to set to this.”

Adrienne smiled, kissed her hand to Betts, and ran out of the room, leaving me forgotten on the sofa. Betts Shoreham seized his hat, and left the house, a happy man; for, though he had no direct promise as yet, he felt as reasonably secure of success, as circumstances required. Five minutes later, Tom Thurston entered, and Julia Monson came down to receive him, her pique not interfering, and it being rather stylish to be disengaged on the morning of the day when the household was in all the confusion of a premeditated rout.

“This is so good of you, Miss Monson,” said Tom, as he made his bow—I heard it all; being still on the sofa—“This is so good of you, when your time must have so many demands on it.”

“Not in the least, Mr. Thurston—mamma and the housekeeper have settled every thing, and I am really pleased to see you, as you can give me the history of the new play—”

“Ah! Miss Monson, my heart—my faculties—my ideas—” Tom was getting bothered, and he made a desperate effort to extricate himself—“In short, my judgment is so confused and monopolized, that I have no powers left to think or speak of plays. In a word, I was not there.”

“That explains it, then—and what has thus confused your mind, Mr. Thurston?”

“The approach of this awful night. You will be surrounded by a host of admirers, pouring into your ears their admiration and love, and then what shall I have to support me, but that ‘yes,’ with which you once raised me from the depths of despair to an elevation of happiness that was high as the highest pinnacle of the caverns of Kentucky; raising me from the depths of Chimborazo.”

Tom meant to reverse this image, but love is proverbially desperate in its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction and poetry.

“I am not certain, Mr. Thurston, that I rightly understand you,” she said. “Chimborazo is not particularly low, nor are the caverns of Kentucky so very strikingly elevated.”

“Ascribe it all to that fatal, heart-thrilling, hope-inspiring ‘yes,’ loveliest of human females,” continued Tom, kneeling with some caution, lest the straps of his pantaloons should give way—“Impute all to your own lucid ambiguity, and to the torments of hope that I experience. Repeat that ‘yes,’ lovely, consolatory, imaginative being, and raise me from the thrill of depression, to the liveliest pulsations of all human acmes.”

“Hang it,” thought Tom, “if she stand that, I shall presently be ashore. Genius, itself, can invent nothing finer.”

But, Julia did stand it. She admired Tom for his exterior, but the admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade so exceedingly desperate. It was trespassing too boldly on the proprieties to utter such nonsense to a gentlewoman, and Tom, who had got his practice in a very low school, was doomed to discover that he had overreached himself.

“I am not certain I quite understand you, Mr. Thurston,” answered the half-irritated, half-amused young lady; “your language is so very extraordinary—your images so unusual—”

“Say, rather, that it is your own image, loveliest incorporation of perceptible incarnations,” interrupted Tom, determined to go for the whole, and recalling some rare specimens of magazine eloquence—“Talk not of images, obdurate maid, when you are nothing but an image yourself.”

“I! Mr. Thurston—and of what is it your pleasure to accuse me of being the image?”

“O! unutterable wo—yes, inexorable girl, your vacillating ‘yes’ has rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas! that bearded men,”—Tom’s face was covered with hair—“Alas, alas! that bearded men should be brought to weep over the contrarieties of womanly caprice.”

Here Tom bowed his head, and after a grunting sob or two, he raised his handkerchief in a very pathetic manner to his face, and thought to himself—“Well, if she stand that, the Lord only knows what I shall say next.”

As for Julia, she was amused, though at first she had been a little frightened. The girl had a good deal of spirit, and she had tant soit peu of mother Eve’s love of mischief in her. She determined to “make capital” out of the affair, as the Americans say, in shop-keeping slang.

“What is the ‘yes,’ of which you speak,” she inquired, “and, on which you seem to lay so much stress?”

“That ‘yes’ has been my bane and antidote,” answered Tom, rallying for a new and still more desperate charge. “When first pronounced by your rubicund lips, it thrilled on my amazed senses like a beacon of light—”

“Mr. Thurston—Mr. Thurston—what do you mean?”

“Ah, d—n it,” thought Tom, “I should have said ‘humid light’—how the deuce did I come to forget that word—it would have rounded the sentence beautifully.”

“What do I mean, angel of ‘humid light,’ ” answered Tom, aloud; “I mean all I say, and lots of feeling besides. When the heart is anguished with unutterable emotion, it speaks in accents that deaden all the nerves, and thrill the ears.” Tom was getting to be animated, and when that was the case, his ideas flowed like a torrent after a thunder-shower, or in volumes, and a little muddily. “What do I mean, indeed; I mean to have you,” he thought, “and, at least, eighty thousand dollars, or dictionaries, Webster’s inclusive, were made in vain.”

“This is very extraordinary, Mr. Thurston,” rejoined Julia, whose sense of womanly propriety began to take the alarm; “and I must insist on an explanation. Your language would seem to infer—really, I do not know, what it does not seem to infer. Will you have the goodness to explain what you mean by that ‘yes?’ ”

“Simply, loveliest and most benign of your sex, that once already, in answer to a demand of your hand, you deigned to reply with that energetic and encouraging monosyllable, yes—dear and categorical affirmative—” exclaimed Tom, going off again at half-cock, highly impressed with the notion that rhapsody, instead of music, was the food of love—“Yes, dear and categorical affirmative, with what ecstasy did not my drowsy ears drink in the melodious sounds—what extravagance of delight my throbbing heart echo its notes, on the wings of the unseen winds—in short, what considerable satisfaction your consent gave my pulsating mind!”

“Consent!—Consent is a strong word, Mr. Thurston!”

“It is, indeed, adorable Julia, and it is also a strong thing. I’ve known terrible consequences arise from the denial of a consent, not half as explicit as your own.”

“Consequences!—may I ask, sir, to what consequences you allude?”

“The consequences, Miss Monson—that is, the consequences of a violated troth, I mean—they may be divided into three parts—” here, Tom got up, brushed his knees, each in succession, with his pocket-handkerchief, and began to count on his fingers, like a lawyer who is summing up an argument—“Yes, Miss Julia, into three parts. First come the pangs of unrequited love; on these I propose to enlarge presently. Next come the legal effects, always supposing that the wronged party can summon heart enough to carry on a suit, with bruised affections—” “hang it,” thought Tom, “why did I not think of that word ‘bruised’ while on my knees; it would tell like a stiletto—” “Yes, Miss Julia, if ‘bruised affections’ would permit the soul to descend to such preliminaries. The last consequence is, the despair of hope deferred.”

“All this is so extraordinary, Mr. Thurston, that I insist on knowing why you have presumed to address such language to me—yes, sir, insist on knowing your reason.”

Tom was dumbfounded. Now, that he was up, and looking about him, he had an opportunity of perceiving that his mistress was offended, and that he had somewhat overdone the sublime, poetical and affecting. With a sudden revulsion of feeling and tactics, he determined to throw himself, at once, into the penitent and candid.

“Ah, Miss Monson,” he cried, somewhat more naturally—“I see I have offended and alarmed you. But, impute it all to love. The strength of my passion is such, that I became desperate, and was resolved to try any expedient that I thought might lead to success.”

“That might be pardoned, sir, were it not for the extraordinary character of the expedient. Surely, you have never seen in me any taste for the very extraordinary images and figures of speech you have used, on this occasion.”

“This handkerchief,”—said Tom, taking me from the sofa—“this handkerchief must bear all the blame. But for this, I should not have dreamt of running so much on the high-pressure principle; but love, you know, Miss Julia, is a calculation, like any other great event of life, and must be carried on consistently.”

“And, pray, sir, how can that handkerchief have brought about any such result?”

“Ah! Miss Monson, you ask me to use a most killing frankness! Had we not better remain under the influence of the poetical star?”

“If you wish to ensure my respect, or esteem, Mr. Thurston, it is necessary to deal with me in perfect sincerity. Nothing but truth will ever be pleasing to me.”

“Hang it,” thought Tom, again, “who knows? She is whimsical, and may really like to have the truth. It’s quite clear her heart is as insensible to eloquence and poetry, as a Potter’s Field wall, and it might answer to try her with a little truth. Your $80,000 girls get such notions in their heads, that there’s no analogy, as one might say, between them and the rest of the species. Miss Julia,” continuing aloud, “my nature is all plain-dealing, and I am delighted to find a congenial spirit. You must have observed something very peculiar in my language, at the commencement of this exceedingly interesting dialogue?”

“I will not deny it, Mr. Thurston; your language was, to say the least, very peculiar.”

“Lucid, but ambiguous; pathetic, but amusing; poetical, but comprehensive; prosaical, but full of emphasis. That’s my nature. Plain-dealing, too, is my nature, and I adore the same quality in others; most especially in those I could wish to marry.”

“Does this wish, then, extend to the plural number?” asked Julia, smiling a little maliciously.

“Certainly; when the heart is devoted to virtuous intentions, it wishes for a union with virtue, wherever it is to be found. Competence and virtue are my mottoes, Miss Julia.”

“This shows that you are, in truth, a lover of plain-dealing, Mr. Thurston—and now, as to the handkerchief?”

“Why, Miss Julia, perceiving that you are sincere, I shall be equally frank. You own this handkerchief?”

“Certainly, sir. I should hardly use an article of dress that is the property of another.”

“Independent, and the fruit of independence. Well, Miss Monson, it struck me that the mistress of such a handkerchief must like poetry—that is, flights of the imagination—that is, eloquence and pathos, as it might be engrafted on passion and sentiment.”

“I believe I understand you, sir; you wish to say that common sense seemed misapplied to the owner of such a handkerchief.”

“Far from that, adorable young lady; but, that poetry, and eloquence, and flights of imagination, seem well applied. A very simple calculation will demonstrate what I mean. But, possibly, you do not wish to hear the calculation—ladies, generally, dislike figures?”

“I am an exception, Mr. Thurston; I beg you will lay the whole matter before me, therefore, without reserve.”

“It is simply this, ma’am. This handkerchief cost every cent of $100—”

“One hundred and twenty-five,” said Julia, quickly.

“Bless me,” thought Tom, “what a rich old d—l her father must be. I will not give her up; and as poetry and sentiment do not seem to be favorites, here goes for frankness—some women are furious for plain matter-of-fact fellows, and this must be one of the number. One hundred and twenty-five dollars is a great deal of money,” he added, aloud, “and the interest, at 7 per cent, will come to $1.75. Including first cost and washing, the annual expense of this handkerchief may be set down at $2. But, the thing will not last now five years, if one includes fashion, wear and tear, &c., and this will bring the whole expense up to $27 per annum. We will suppose your fortune to be $50,000, Miss Julia—”

Here Tom paused, and cast a curious glance at the young lady, in the hope of hearing something explicit. Julia could hardly keep her countenance, but she was resolved to go to the bottom of all this plain-dealing.

“Well, sir,” she answered, “we will suppose it, as you say, $50,000.”

“The interest, then, would be $3,500. Now 27 multiplied by 130—” here Tom took out his pencil, and began to cypher—“make just 3510, or rather more than the whole amount of the interest. Well, when you come to deduct taxes, charges, losses and other things, the best invested estate of $3,500 per annum, will not yield more than $3,000, nett. Suppose a marriage, and the husband has only $1,000 for his pocket, this would bring down the ways and means to $2,000 per annum; or less than a hundredth part of the expense of keeping one pocket-handkerchief; and when you come to include rent, fuel, marketing, and other necessaries, you see, my dear Miss Monson, there is a great deal of poetry in paying so much for a pocket-handkerchief.”

“I believe I understand you, sir, and shall endeavor to profit by the lesson. As I am wanted, you will now excuse me, Mr. Thurston—my father’s step is in the hall—” so Julia, in common with all other Manhattanese, called a passage, or entry, five feet wide—“and to him I must refer you.”

This was said merely as an excuse for quitting the room. But Tom received it literally and figuratively, at the same time. Accustomed to think of marrying as his means of advancement, he somewhat reasonably supposed “refer you to my father” meant consent, so far as the young lady was concerned, and he determined to improve the precious moments. Fortunately for his ideas, Mr. Monson did not enter the room immediately, which allowed the gentleman an opportunity for a little deliberation. As usual, his thoughts took the direction of a mental soliloquy, much in the following form.

“This is getting on famously,” thought Tom. “Refer you to my father—well, that is compact and comprehensive, at the same time. I wish her dandruff had got up when I mentioned only $50,000. Seriously, that is but a small sum to make one’s way on. If I had a footing of my own, in society, $50,000 might do; but, when a fellow has to work his way by means of dinners, horses, and et ceteras, it’s a small allowance. It’s true, the Monsons will give me connections, and connections are almost—not quite—as good as money to get a chap along with—but, the d—l of the matter is, that connections eat and drink. I dare say the Monson set will cost me a good $500 a year, though they will save something in the way of the feed they must give in their turns. I wish I had tried her with a higher figure, for, after all, it may have been only modesty—some women are as modest as the d—l. But here comes old Monson, and I must strike while the iron is hot.”

“Good morning, Mr. Thurston,” said the father, looking a little surprised at seeing such a guest at three o’clock. “What, alone with my daughter’s fine pocket-handkerchief? You must find that indifferent company.”

“Not under the circumstances, sir. Every thing is agreeable to us that belongs to an object we love.”

“Love? That is a strong term, Mr. Thurston—one that I hope you have uttered in pure gallantry.”

“Not at all, sir,” cried Tom, falling on his knees, as a school boy reads the wrong paragraph in the confusion of not having studied his lesson well—“adorable and angelic—I beg your pardon, Mr. Monson,”—rising, and again brushing his knees with some care—“my mind is in such a state of confusion, that I scarcely know what I say.”

“Really, I should think so, or you could never mistake me for a young girl of twenty. Will you have the goodness to explain this matter to me?”

“Yes, sir—I’m referred.”

“Referred? Pray, what may that mean in particular?”

“Only, sir, that I’m referred—I do not ask a dollar, sir. Her lovely mind and amiable person are all I seek, and I only regret that she is so rich. I should be the happiest fellow in the world, Mr. Monson, if the angelic Julia had not a cent.”

“The angelic Julia must be infinitely indebted to you, Mr. Thurston; but let us take up this affair in order. What am I to understand, sir, by your being referred?”

“That Miss Julia, in answer to my suit, has referred me to you, sir.”

“Then, so far as she herself is concerned, you wish me to understand that she accepts you?”

“Certainly—she accepted, some time since, with as heavenly a ‘yes’ as ever came from the ruby lips of love.”

“Indeed! This is so new to me, sir, that you must permit me to see my daughter a moment, ere I give a definite answer.”

Hereupon Mr. Monson left the room, and Tom began to think again.

“Well,” he thought, “things do go on swimmingly at last. This is the first time I could ever get at a father, though I’ve offered to six-and-twenty girls. One does something like a living business with a father. I don’t know but I rather overdid it about the dollar, though it’s according to rule to seem disinterested at first, even if you quarrel like furies, afterwards, about the stuff. Let me see—had I best begin to screw him up in this interview, or wait for the next? A few hints, properly thrown out, may be useful at once. Some of these old misers hold on to every thing till they die, fancying it a mighty pleasant matter to chaps that can’t support themselves to support their daughters by industry, as they call it. I’m as industrious as a young fellow can be, and I owe six months’ board, at this very moment. No—no—I’ll walk into him at once, and give him what Napoleon used to call a demonstration.”

The door opened, and Mr. Monson entered, his face a little flushed, and his eye a little severe. Still he was calm in tone and manner. Julia had told him all in ten words.

“Now, Mr. Thurston, I believe I understand this matter,” said the father, in a very business-like manner; “you wish to marry my daughter?”

“Exactly, sir; and she wishes to marry me—that is, as far as comports with the delicacy of the female bosom.”

“A very timely reservation. And you are referred?”

“Yes, Mr. Monson, those cheering words have solaced my ears—I am referred. The old chap,” aside, “likes a little humbug, as well as a girl.”

“And you will take her without a cent, you say?”

“Did I, sir? I believe I didn’t exactly say that—Dollar was the word I mentioned. Cents could hardly be named between you and me.”

“Dollar let it be, then. Now, sir, you have my consent on a single condition.”

“Name it, sir. Name five or six, at once, my dear Mr. Monson, and you shall see how I will comply.”

“One will answer. How much fortune do you think will be necessary to make such a couple happy, at starting in the world? Name such a sum as will comport with your own ideas.”

“How much, sir? Mr. Monson, you are a model of generosity! You mean, to keep a liberal and gentlemanly establishment, as would become your son-in-law?”

“I do—such a fortune as will make you both easy and comfortable.”

“Horses and carriages, of course? Every thing on a genteel and liberal scale?”

“On such a scale as will insure the happiness of man and wife.”

“Mutual esteem—conjugal felicity—sad all that. I suppose you include dinners, sir, and a manly competition with one’s fellow citizens, in real New York form?”

“I mean all that can properly belong to the expenses of a gentleman and lady.”

“Yes, sir—exceedingly liberal—liberal as the rosy dawn. Why, sir, meeting your proposition in the spirit in which it is offered, I should say Julia and I could get along very comfortably on $100,000. Yes, we could make that do, provided the money were well invested—no fancy stocks.”

“Well, sir, I am glad we understand each other so clearly. If my daughter really wish to marry you, I will give $50,000 of this sum, as soon as you can show me that you have as much more to invest along with it.”

“Sir—Mr. Monson!”

“I mean that each party shall lay down dollar for dollar!”

“I understand what you mean, sir. Mr. Monson, that would be degrading lawful wedlock to the level of a bet—a game of cards—a mercenary, contemptible bargain. No, sir—nothing shall ever induce me to degrade this honorable estate to such pitiful conditions!”

“Dollar for dollar, Mr. Thurston!”

“Holy wedlock! It is violating the best principles of our nature.”

“Give and take!”

“Leveling the sacred condition of matrimony to that of a mere bargain for a horse or a dog!”

“Half and half!”

“My nature revolts at such profanation, sir—I will take $75,000 with Miss Julia, and say no more about it.”

“Equality is the foundation of wedded happiness, Mr. Thurston.”

“Say $50,000, Mr. Monson, and have no more words about it. Take away from the transaction the character of a bargain, and even $40,000 will do.”

“Not a cent that is not covered by a cent of your own.”

“Then, sir, I wash my hands of the whole affair. If the young lady should die, my conscience will be clear. It shall never be said Thomas Thurston was so lost to himself as to bargain for a wife.”

“We must, then, part, and the negotiation must fall through.”

Tom rose with dignity, and got as far as the door. With his hand on the latch, he added—

“Rather than blight the prospects of so pure and lovely a creature I will make every sacrifice short of honor—let it be $30,000, Mr. Monson?”

“As you please, sir—so that it be covered by $30,000 of your own.”

“My nature revolts at the proposition, and so—good morning, sir.”

Tom left the house, and Mr. Monson laughed heartily; so heartily, indeed, as to prove how much he relished the success of his scheme.

“Talk of Scylla and Charybdis!” soliloquized the discomfited Tom, as he wiped the perspiration from his face—“Where the d—l does he think I am to find the $50,000 he wants, unless he first gives them to me? I never heard of so unreasonable an old chap! Here is a young fellow that offers to marry his daughter for $30,000—half price, as one may say—and he talks about covering every cent he lays down with one of my own. I never knew what was meant by cent. per cent. before. Let me see; I’ve just thirty-two dollars and sixty-nine cents, and had we played at a game of coppers, I couldn’t have held out half an hour. But, I flatter myself, I touched the old scamp up with morals, in a way he wasn’t used to. Well, as this thing is over, I will try old Sweet, the grocer’s daughter. If the wardrobe and whiskers fail there, I must rub up the Greek and Latin, and shift the ground to Boston. They say a chap with a little of the classics can get $30 or 40,000, there, any day in the week. I wish my parents had brought me up a schoolmaster; I would be off in the first boat. Blast it!—I thought when I came down to $30,000, he would have snapped at the bait, like a pike. He’ll never have a chance to get her off so cheap, again.”

This ended the passage of flirtation between Thomas Thurston and Julia Monson. As for the latter, she took such a distaste for me, that she presented me to Mademoiselle Hennequin, at the first opportunity, under the pretence that she had discovered a strong wish in the latter to possess me.

Adrienne accepted the present with some reluctance, on account of the price that had been paid for me, and yet with strong emotion. How she wept over me, the first time we were alone together! I thought her heart would break; nor am I certain it would not, but for the timely interposition of Julia, who came and set her laughing by a humorous narrative of what had occurred between her father and her lover.

That night the rout took place. It went off with éclat, but I did not make my appearance at it, Adrienne rightly judging that I was not a proper companion for one in her situation. It is true, this is not a very American notion, every thing being suitable for every body, that get them, in this land of liberty, but Adrienne had not been educated in a land of liberty, and fancied that her dress should bear some relation to her means. Little did she know that I was a sort of patent of nobility, and that by exhibiting me, she might have excited envy, even in an alderman’s daughter. My non-appearance, however, made no difference with Betts Shoreham, whose attentions throughout the evening were so marked as to raise suspicion of the truth in the mind of even Mrs. Monson.

The next day there was an éclaircissement. Adrienne owned who she was, gave my history, acquainted Mrs. Monson with her connection with Mr. Shoreham, and confessed the nature of his suit. I was present at this interview, and it would be unjust to say that the mother was not disappointed. Still she behaved generously, and like a high principled woman. Adrienne was advised to accept Betts, and her scruples, on the score of money, were gradually removed, by Mrs. Monson’s arguments.

“What a contrast do this Mr. Thurston and Adrienne present!” observed Mrs. Monson to her husband, in a tête-à-tête, shortly after this interview. “Here is the gentleman wanting to get our child, without a shilling to bless himself with, and the poor girl refusing to marry the man of her heart, because she is penniless.”

“So much for education. We become mercenary or self-denying, very much as we are instructed. In this country, it must be confessed, fortune-hunting has made giant strides, within the last few years, and that, too, with an audacity of pretension that is unrestrained by any of the social barriers which exist elsewhere.”

“Adrienne will marry Mr. Shoreham, I think. She loves; and when a girl loves, her scruples of this nature are not invincible.”

“Ay, he can lay down dollar for dollar—I wish his fancy had run toward Julia.”

“It has not, and we can only regret it. Adrienne has half-consented, and I shall give her a handsome wedding—for, married she must be in our house.”

All came to pass as was predicted. One month from that day, Betts Shoreham and Adrienne de la Rocheaimard became man and wife. Mrs. Monson gave a handsome entertainment, and a day or two later, the bridegroom and bride took possession of their proper home. Of course I removed with the rest of the family, and, by these means, had an opportunity of becoming a near spectator of a honey-moon. I ought, however, to say, that Betts insisted on Julia’s receiving $125 for me, accepting from Julia a handsome wedding present of equal value, but in another form. This was done simply that Adrienne might say when I was exhibited, that she had worked me herself, and that the lace with which I was embellished was an heir-loom. If there are various ways of quieting one’s conscience, in the way of marriage settlements, so are there various modes of appeasing our sense of pride.

Pocket-handkerchiefs have their revolutions, as well as states. I was now under my first restoration, and perfectly happy; but, being French, I look forward to further changes, since the temperament that has twice ejected the Bourbons from their thrones will scarce leave me in quiet possession of mine forever.

Adrienne loves Betts more than any thing else. Still she loves me dearly. Scarce a week passes that I am not in her hands; and it is when her present happiness seems to be overflowing, that she is most fond of recalling the painful hours she experienced in making me what I am. Then her tears flow freely, and often I am held in her soft little hand, while she prays for the soul of her grandmother, or offers up praises for her own existing blessings. I am no longer thought of for balls and routs, but appear to be doomed to the closet, and those moments of tender confidence that so often occur between these lovers. I complain not. So far from it, never was an “article” of my character more highly favored; passing an existence, as it might be, in the very bosom of truth and innocence. Once only have I seen an old acquaintance, in the person of Clara Caverly, since my change of mistress—the idea of calling a de la Rocheaimard, a boss, or bossess, is out of the question. Clara is a distant relative of Betts, and soon became intimate with her new cousin. One day she saw me lying on a table, and, after an examination, she exclaimed—

“Two things surprise me greatly here, Mrs. Shoreham—that you should own one of these things”—I confess I did not like the word—“and that you should own this particular handkerchief.”

“Why so, chère Clara?”—how prettily my mistress pronounces that name; so different from Clarry!

“It is not like you to purchase so extravagant and useless a thing—and then this looks like a handkerchief that once belonged to another person—a poor girl who has lost her means of extravagance by the change of the times. But, of course, it is only a resemblance, as you—”

“It is more, Clara—the handkerchief is the same. But that handkerchief is not an article of dress with me; it is my friend!”

The reader may imagine how proud I felt! This was elevation for the species, and gave a dignity to my position, with which I am infinitely satisfied. Nevertheless, Miss Caverly manifested surprise.

“I will explain,” continued Mrs. Shoreham. “The handkerchief is my own work, and is very precious to me, on account des souvenirs.”

Adrienne then told the whole story, and I may say Clara Caverly became my friend also. Yes, she, who had formerly regarded me with indifference, or dislike, now kissed me, and wept over me, and in this manner have I since passed from friend to friend, among all of Adrienne’s intimates.

Not so with the world, however. My sudden disappearance from it excited quite as much sensation as my début in it. Tom Thurston’s addresses to Miss Monson had excited the envy, and, of course, the attention of all the other fortune-hunters in town, causing his sudden retreat to be noticed. Persons of this class are celebrated for covering their retreats skilfully. Tom declared that “the old chap broke down when they got as far as the fortune—that, as he liked the girl, he would have taken her with $75,000, but the highest offer he could get from him was $30,000. This, of course, no gentleman could submit to. A girl with such a pocket-handkerchief ought to bring a clear $100,000, and I was for none of your half-way doings. Old Monson is a humbug. The handkerchief has disappeared, and, now they have taken down the sign, I hope they will do business on a more reasonable scale.”

A month later, Tom got married. I heard John Monson laughing over the particulars one day in Betts Shoreham’s library, where I am usually kept, to my great delight, being exceedingly fond of books. The facts were as follows. It seems Tom had cast an eye on the daughter of a grocer of reputed wealth, who had attracted the attention of another person of his own school. To get rid of a competitor, this person pointed out to Tom a girl, whose father had been a butcher, but had just retired from business, and was building himself a fine house somewhere in Butcherland.

“That’s your girl,” said the treacherous adviser. “All butchers are rich, and they never build until their pockets are so crammed as to force them to it. They coin money, and spend nothing. Look how high beef has been of late years; and then they live on the smell of their own meats. This is your girl. Only court the old fellow, and you are sure of half a million in the long run.”

Tom was off on the instant. He did court the old fellow; got introduced to the family; was a favorite from the first; offered in a fortnight, was accepted, and got married within the month. Ten days afterward, the supplies were stopped for want of funds, and the butcher failed. It seems he, too, was only taking a hand in the great game of brag that most of the country had sat down to.

Tom was in a dilemma. He had married a butcher’s daughter. After this, every door in Broadway and Bond street was shut upon him. Instead of stepping into society on his wife’s shoulders, he was dragged out of it by the skirts, through her agency. Then there was not a dollar. His empty pockets were balanced by her empty pockets. The future offered a sad perspective. Tom consulted a lawyer about a divorce, on the ground of “false pretences.” He was even ready to make an affidavit that he had been slaughtered. But it would not do. The marriage was found to stand all the usual tests, and Tom went to Texas.

BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

BY MRS. FRANCIS B. OSGOOD.

BY JAMES K. PAULDING, AUTHOR OF “THE DUTCHMAN’S FIRE-SIDE,” “WESTWARD HO!” ETC.

“The Father of Rivers,” as it was aptly called by the Indians, whose names it must be confessed are much more expressive and harmonious than those of their more enlightened successors, is assuredly one of the wonders of nature. To the eye it presents itself as the greatest body of fresh water, collected and conveyed in one channel, to be found on the surface of the globe. Those who call to mind the number and magnitude of its tributaries; the depth and velocity of its current, forever setting in one direction, must, I think, be convinced, that none of the rivers of South America, which alone claim a comparison, can vie with it in the vast tribute it bears to the ocean. Then, as the Irishman observed, it not only “runs on a hill,” but up a hill, for it has been ascertained by scientific observation, that the land is several feet higher at its mouth than at its junction with the Missouri, a distance of some thirteen hundred miles above. To the imagination it appeals with still greater force and effect. As the receptacle of the collected waters of an almost boundless region, comprehending a circle of many thousands of miles; as the great artery through which flow all the rivers, that, like the veins of the human body, pervade that vast undefined region aptly denominated “The great West,” winding its majestic and irresistible course of three thousand miles, and forming the connecting chain between the rough wintry climate of the North, and the abode of perpetual spring and summer. Wishing to renew the impressions derived from a voyage of eight or ten days up this mighty river, and if possible convey them to the minds of others, I have endeavored to do so in the following sketch, premising that my design is limited to its general characteristics, not to minute description, and that having taken no notes I depend altogether on my recollections.

I arrived at New Orleans from the pleasant little town of Mobile, by way of Lake Pontchartrain, one morning just at daylight in the month of April, and immediately after depositing my trunk in the Hotel St. Louis, proceeded to pay my respects to Father Mississippi. The first thing that struck me, was seeing the water in the gutters running briskly from, instead of toward the river, agreeably to the invariable law of nature elsewhere; the next, was finding myself walking up hill, instead of down, in approaching its margin. As I reached the summit, however, the sudden view of the river drove all these peculiarities from my mind at once. The current was sweeping along in one vast mass of boiling eddies which seemed conflicting with each other which should go foremost, its surface almost on a level with its bank, and overlooking the streets beneath. The opposite coast was one dead level, bounded by the distant forest and the horizon beyond it, and the river reminded me of a full bumper, which a single drop would overflow. These low level banks contribute to the apparent magnitude of the stream, by offering no interruption to the eye, as it glances over the wide expanse of turbid waters, which are of an ashy hue, and so opaque that one cannot see an inch beyond their surface, thus leaving it to the imagination alone to fathom the deep obscurity. Altogether, though I had all my life been in the habit of contemplating the beautiful, majestic Hudson, which in many places is wider than the Mississippi at New Orleans, the impression made on my mind by this remarkable river was much more deep and profound. The truth is, my imagination was dwelling on its almost interminable course; its numberless tributaries; and its sublime unique characteristic of entire independence on the ocean, whose tributes it rejects, and whose inroads it laughs to scorn.

Although my object is not to describe cities, yet New Orleans well deserves a passing notice. It lies on a bend of the river, and its poetical name is “The Crescent City.” The first settlement of the French within the ancient limits of Louisiana was at Mobile, now the principal commercial city of the state of Alabama. From thence they proceeded to the mouth of the Mississippi, and began to establish themselves at Biloxi, of which they soon became aware of the disadvantages. Ascending the river, they pitched on the site of New Orleans, the plan of which was marked out by M. de Blainville, I think about the year 1718. It is thus described by Father Charleroix, who visited it in 1720.

“This city is the first which one of the greatest rivers in the world has seen raised on its banks. If the eight hundred fine houses, and the five parishes, which the newspapers gave it some time ago, are reduced at present to an hundred barracks, placed in no very great order; to a great store-house built of wood; to two or three houses which would be no ornament to a village in France; and to the half of a sorry store-house which they agreed to lend to the lord of the place, and which he had no sooner taken possession of, but they turned him out to dwell in a tent; what pleasure on the other side, to see insensibly increasing, this future capital of a fine and vast country, and to be able to say, not with a sigh, like the hero of Virgil, speaking of his dear native place, consumed by the flames, and the fields where Troy had been—Et campos ubi Troja fuit—but full of well grounded hope, this wild and desert place, which the reeds and trees do yet almost wholly cover, will one day, and perhaps that day not far off, become an opulent city, and the metropolis of a great and rich colony.”

The progress of little more than a hundred years has more than realized the anticipations of the good father. New Orleans is not only ‘an opulent city,’ but the capital of a rich and independent state, equal in population to some of the great cities of France that have existed for centuries, and if the past be any indication of the future, will in one hundred years more almost rival Paris itself in magnitude. But such things have ceased to be wonders in this country; they present themselves to the traveler at every step, and have become so common that they hardly excite surprise. There is no region on earth where men have witnessed such changes in the course of a single life. In the old world all is either stationary or decaying; in the new, the looking-glass of the world, like a magic lantern, is continually presenting what would seem the most monstrous exaggerations, were they not stamped with reality by the testimony of truth and experience. We are sometimes jeered for our sanguine anticipations; but are they not fully justified by the past? Happy is that people whose guide is the bright star of Hope; whose Heaven is in the future yet to come, not in the past which is gone forever.

Having received my impressions of New Orleans from the race of Smelfungus travelers of the John Bull school, who go about as it were like roaring lions, seeking whom they may devour, and who libel a nation for a bad road or a bad dinner, I was agreeably surprised at finding it one of the most orderly, decorous cities in the world. I was under serious apprehensions of being robbed at noonday, knocked on the head at night, or at least being obliged to fight a duel with some ferocious dandy with tremendous whiskers. But all these fears vanished in a few days, during which I neither saw a drunken man, a fight, an assassination or a mob; and I came to the conclusion at last, that an honest, well disposed, peaceable man, might stand a good chance of living there as long as anywhere else, provided he kept clear of the yellow fever, which after all does not carry off so many people as consumption in the North. Though so early in the spring it was the season of flowers and bouquets, which are made up here in a style superior to any I have ever seen, and are displayed in shops, markets, parlors, and everywhere. Flora seemed the presiding goddess, and the creole ladies are her attendant nymphs. I should be sorry if this pleasant city should ever be drowned, as does not seem altogether improbable, since it is deluged by every summer shower; menaced by the Mississippi, which peeps over its banks at it rather suspiciously; and the ground on which it is presumed to stand is more than half water. Standing one day on the levee, I perceived the water of the river slily insinuating itself through a little opening and beginning to slide down toward the city below. On pointing this out to a capital specimen of half-horse, half-alligator, who was sitting on the roof of a broadhorn, and expressing my apprehensions, he rolled his quid about the deep profundity within, and replied with a significant leer—“Don’t make yourself uneasy, stranger, folks born to be hanged, need never be afeard of drowning.”

After remaining in New Orleans about a week, I proceeded by land up the right bank of the river, a distance of some thirty or forty miles, in the course of which I visited two or three sugar plantations, where I was received with a quiet yet cordial welcome peculiarly agreeable. The ride was very pleasant, over a level road without a single stone, and generally close along the levee that bounded the river, as it swept along, above my head. This dead flat is highly cultivated with sugar and corn; has all the appearance of an old settled country, and is interspersed at short distances with picturesque houses with high roofs, piazzas, galleries, staircases, and outdoor communications from one room, and one story to another. Each of these mansions is surrounded by a number of buildings of various forms and dimensions, among which is generally seen a sugar mill with its high conical chimney, so that every establishment appears like a little village with a church and steeple. The gardens are well attended to, and abound in flowers and flowering shrubs, many of which will not stand a Northern winter. The orange tree, however, once so common here, is now seldom seen, having been destroyed by frost some years ago. Music and fragrance are here combined; scores of mock birds sing and flit about quite tame, and even the humming bird, the most skittish of all the feathered race, will bury itself in the bliss of the honeysuckle within a few feet of you without apprehension. There is something quite oriental in these gardens, and indeed the scenery and climate are so luxurious and delightful during the spring, and so mild in winter, that were it not for summer and autumn, one might be content to abide here forever. But if you cast your eye toward the interior, you see at a distance of one or two miles, those walls of dark foliage, festooned with melancholy moss, which bound those dismal swamps, that are everywhere the harbingers of disease and death. At the approach of autumn, the owners are driven like Adam and Eve from Paradise, by the flaming sword of the archangel of pestilence, and become exiles for some months of the year. This however, after all, is no great hardship to people whose means and habits of leisure enable them to leave home without inconvenience. It is a good excuse for traveling; and after rambling about during half the year, they can better estimate the happiness of home for the remainder. Upon the whole, therefore, I don’t think their case altogether so desperate as we are accustomed to consider it in the North.

After sojourning three or four days at different plantations along the “coast,” as it is called, and receiving a most favorable impression of the well-bred, refined simplicity, as well as unobtrusive hospitality of these worthy creole planters, I was taken up from the levee by a steamboat, which had arranged to stop for me, and proceeded the rest of my way by water. It was evening, and we passed up the coast by night, beyond Baton Rouge, of which name the earliest historian of Louisiana, M. Le Page du Pratz, gives the following curious etymology:

“The Baton Rouge is also on the east side of the river, and distant twenty-six leagues from New Orleans. It was formerly the grant of M. Artaguette d’Iron; and it is there that we see the famous cypress tree of which a ship carpenter offered to make two periaugers, one of sixteen, the other of fourteen tons. Some one of the first adventurers who landed in that quarter, happened to say it would make an excellent walking stick, and cypress being a red wood, it was ever afterward called Le Baton Rouge. Its height could never be measured. It rises out of sight.”

On waking in the morning and looking out, I found the shores had suddenly changed their aspect, and exhibited a vast primeval forest, interrupted only at distant intervals by a little town, a lonely habitation, or the solitary hut of a woodcutter. Everywhere the forest approaches the very verge of the stream, and presents a deep dark wall of foliage, beyond which nothing is seen but the skies. At long distances the Chickasaw bluffs occasionally approach the river, and it is here all the towns are situated with one or two exceptions, so far as I noticed. The more recent plantations are invariably indicated by masses of dead trees, presenting an abrupt and disagreeable transition from the rich verdure of the living forest, to the dreary aspect of decay and ruin. Here grow the fields of cotton and corn in all their primitive luxuriance, on a soil of unequaled fertility, unparalleled by any region of equal extent on the face of the globe. The people of the United States have been reproached with their indifference, or rather antipathy to trees. The feeling is hereditary, and arises naturally from the peculiar circumstances in which their forefathers were placed on first coming to the new world. Trees were the great obstacle to cultivation, and the first enemies to be conquered. It is the same with the pioneers of the new settlements, whose first and indispensable object is to get rid of them in some way or other. The labor of cutting them down, and removing the growth of gigantic trees, such as are only found in primeval forests, would amount to perhaps ten, or sometimes twenty times the original cost of the land itself; and if prepared for market, the distance is so great, and the quality of the timber either for fuel or mechanical purposes so inferior that it would not pay the cost of transportation. The trees are, therefore, killed by girdling and by the application of fire, and thus remain standing till time and the elements prostrate them to the earth; and nothing can be more dreary or unsightly, than a new plantation bristling all over with scraggy dead trees, like a hedgehog.

As you proceed up the river, however, the general character of the scenery, especially on the west bank, is that of a vast and magnificent forest, presenting a constant subject of admiration and wonder to the stranger. At Pointe Coupee, and some few other places, every appearance bespeaks an old settlement, and the abrupt contrast between cultivated fields, smooth as a shaven lawn, handsome old-fashioned houses, and all the corresponding appendages, with the gloomy surrounding forest, is striking and impressive. The following relation of M. Lepage du Pratz conveys an idea of the operations of this mighty river, and the never ceasing changes it produces in this region of which it is the undisputed tyrant.

“At forty leagues above New Orleans, lies Pointe Coupee, so called because the Mississippi made there an elbow or winding, and formed the figure of a circle, open only about an hundred and odd toises, through which it made itself a shorter way, and where all its water runs at present. This was not the work of nature alone. Two travelers coming down the Mississippi, were forced to stop short at this place, because they observed the surf or waves at a distance to be very high, the wind setting against the current, and the river being out, so that they durst not venture to proceed. One of the travelers seeing himself without any thing to do, took his fusil and followed the course of the rivulet in hopes of killing some game. He had not gone an hundred toises, before he was put into great surprise on perceiving a great opening, as when one is just getting out of a thick forest. He continues to advance, sees a large extent of water which he takes to be a lake; but turning to the left, he espies Les Petits Ecores, just mentioned, and he knew by experience, he must go ten leagues to get there in the ordinary way. He runs to acquaint his companion. This last wants to be sure of it; and both being now satisfied, they resolve that it is necessary to cut away the roots which obstructed the passage, and to level the little elevations. They then attempted to pass their periauger through by pushing it before them. They succeeded beyond their expectations; the water which came on, aided them as much by its weight as by its depth, which was increased by the obstacles in its way; and they saw themselves in a short time in the Mississippi, ten leagues lower down than they were an hour before; or than they would have been had they followed the bed of the river, as they had formerly been accustomed to do.

“This little labor of our travelers moved the earth; the roots being cut away in part, proved no longer an obstacle to the course of the water; the slope, or descent, of this small passage was equal to that of the river, for the compass it took; and, in fine, nature, though feebly aided, did the rest. The first time I went up the river, its entire body passed through this part, and though the channel was made only six years before, the old bed was almost filled with ooze which the river had there deposited; and I have since seen trees growing there of so astonishing a size that one might wonder how they should come to be so large in so short a time.”

Similar processes are continually going on in this remarkable river, which is ever at work making war upon the surrounding earth. We passed through a “cut off,” as it is called, by which the course of the river was shortened twenty miles. It was not, I should think, more than a mile in length, and the captain informed me it was the first time he had passed through. Everywhere, on landing to take in wood, I observed the water insinuating itself under the soft and rich alluvial bank, which, being soon undermined, falls into the stream, trees and all, occasionally carrying with it an unlucky cow imprudently venturing too near, and sometimes an outhouse or barn. It has been generally supposed that the color and consistency of the waters of the lower Mississippi are entirely owing to the infusion of those of the Missouri. That this is the case at the immediate point of junction is obvious enough; but I am of opinion that the perpetual caving in of the banks below contributes more to the character it uniformly carries with it afterward to the ocean, than the waters of the Missouri. It can hardly be conceived, notwithstanding the rapidity of the current of the Mississippi, that it carries the mud of the Missouri along for a distance of twelve or thirteen hundred miles. It must have new accessions, and these it filches from its own banks.

The Western steamboats are very different in their construction from those of the North. They comprise an upper and a lower world. The first consists of a long saloon, as it is termed, sustained by pillars resting on the lower deck, some eight or ten feet high, extending nearly the whole length of the vessel, and carpeted and handsomely decorated. On each side of the saloon is a row of state-rooms, each containing two berths, and the little articles required in a bed-chamber. By courtesy of our captain, I was permitted to have one of these to myself, which added greatly to the comfort of my voyage. These little rooms have each a half glass door, which opens on a gallery running all round the boat, with only the interruption of the wheel-houses, outside of which is a door of Venetian blinds, which being thrown open, you can sit in your room and see every object on one side of the river. Above is a platform, called, I think, the hurricane deck, which, being greatly elevated above the river, affords a view in all directions, bounded only by the windings of the stream and the deep forests skirting its margins. The appearance of these boats is singularly picturesque, and as they are all on the high-pressure principle, they announce their approach by a repetition of explosions resembling the firing of cannon at a distance. I frequently heard them puffing their way down the Ohio, at different hours of the night, as I lay in bed at the hotel in Louisville. I was assured by more than one person, that such is the nice and critical ear of the negroes living on the banks of the Mississippi, that they can distinguish the boats regularly plying on the river long before they come in sight, by what may be called their cannonading.

In the lower region of these floating castles, will generally be found a good number of the antediluvian race of navigators of broadhorns or flats, who, having disposed of cargo and boat at New Orleans, are making tracks homewards, as fast and as cheaply as possible. For this purpose, they make some kind of agreement with the captain, “to work their passage”—in nautical phrase—and find themselves, paying probably some trifle beside, though I am not certain, not being of the class of inquisitive travelers, and having little inclination to pry into other people’s affairs. They never visit the saloon, though they will sometimes ascend to the hurricane deck, and may be seen great part of the day reclining on a soft plank, or a cotton bag, which is considered a great luxury. They appear to possess great alacrity in sleeping by day or by night; and no man who enjoys this invaluable gift, in my opinion, has the least occasion to complain of his destiny. He has it always in his power to kill time most gloriously; to bury his misfortunes, if he has any, in the balm of oblivion; and must, of necessity, either have a quiet conscience, or—what I suspect is often mistaken for it—no conscience at all. They are nowise particular in their dress; eschew shaving; and, though never obtrusive, there is a good, honest republican air of independence about them which is peculiarly offensive to John Bull travelers. Like ghosts, they never speak first, but they have not the slightest objection to a long talk; and, to those who judge by the outward or tailor’s man, it is surprising to find what a deal of shrewd masculine sense, and what a fund of information they possess, not to be found in the books of the learned or the brain of the philosopher. They are like singed cats, much better than they look, and there is not one of them but can tell you a great deal you never knew before. Our people have more of the locomotive principle than any other, not excepting the Israelites and Arabs. Our forefathers wandered here, and their posterity have been wandering ever since. But the people of the “Great West” beat all the rest together. I hardly met a man, or indeed woman, who had not traveled from Dan to Beersheba, and back again, and “settled,” as they were pleased to term it, in half a dozen places, some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles distant from each other. The broadhorns are not a whit behindhand with the rest of their fellow citizens, and if I wanted information as to distances, or indeed any particulars concerning any place, no matter where, or how far distant, I was almost certain of getting it from some one of these wandering cosmopolites. I recollect one day conversing with a professor of one of the Western colleges, a very clever man, and a broadhorn at the same time. The former was much the most learned, but the other much the wiser of the two. Their dialect is somewhat peculiar; but I heard none of those strange, triumphant rodomontades, which I presume they reserve for the levee at New Orleans, or for occasions of extraordinary emergency.

To my great regret we passed Natchez late in the night. There are some historical recollections connected with this spot, and this name, that render it peculiarly interesting. It was here that the race of mound-builders, and worshipers of the sun, were first found by the Europeans who visited this country between the years 1682 and 1697; and it is here we see the first of those monuments which have excited so much interest, as furnishing the only memorials of a people whose name is unknown, and whose existence is a mystery. This nation, when first known to the white man, extended from Iberville, about one hundred and fifty miles from the ocean, to the Wabash, which is thirteen hundred and fifty miles distant, and it is extremely probable to my mind that none of these mounds and fortifications were beyond the region they occupied. That these remains indicate superior art and industry to that possessed by any nation of Indians, within the vast limits of the United States, is very certain, I think. The race which constructed them no longer exists within the knowledge of history, or even tradition, unless we refer them to the Natchez, whose final destination still remains uncertain. We know that the single tribe, occupying the spot which still bears their name, was expelled in 1730, in consequence of a massacre they perpetrated on the French garrison of “Fort Rosalie.” They were pursued and overtaken at a fortress they had erected on Silver Creek, from whence some few escaped and sought refuge with the Chickasaws. The rest surrendered at discretion, and, agreeably to the maxims and practice of that age, were either employed on the king’s plantations or sold as slaves in the West Indies. Father Charleroix, who visited this place in 1720, describes them as worshipers of the Sun, to which they had erected a temple, where they preserved a perpetual fire; as subjected to a despotism similar to that of the Eastern monarchies, insomuch that the Sun, as the great chief was called, had only to say, “go and rid me of that dog,” and his guards immediately knocked him on the head; and as offering up victims, both men, women and children, at the funerals of their chiefs and distinguished persons. He cites Garcilasso de la Vega, “who speaks of this nation as a powerful people, and about six years ago they reckoned among them four thousand warriors. It appears that they were still more numerous in the time of M. de la Salle, and even when M. d’Iberville discovered the mouth of the Mississippi. At present the Natchez cannot raise above two thousand warriors. They attribute this decrease to former contagious diseases, which in these last years have made great ravages among them.”^[1] Since then, this nation, which is said to have numbered five hundred sachems, has entirely disappeared, leaving nothing behind but those mounds and fortifications, which, in all probability, were erected by their ancestors, but which tell nothing of their history or their fate.^[2]

The declension and final extinction of so many Indian tribes and nations is a subject of great curiosity and interest. It has always been ascribed to their intercourse with the white men, with whom they have waged so many bloody wars, and from whom they have learned so many destructive habits. That these causes have materially hastened their fate I am not disposed to question or deny. The agency of small-pox, war, and whiskey in this process of extinction is sufficiently notorious. But it is also known, though perhaps not so universally, that the Indians of North America were subject to contagious, or infectious diseases, which extinguished whole tribes at once. When the pilgrims landed on the Rock of Plymouth, they found the whole surrounding country almost depopulated by a pestilence, which could not have been the small-pox, unless that disease was indigenous among them, for they had no intercourse with white men previous to that time. Nor does it appear that the contagious disease which so fearfully diminished the numbers of the Natchez was the small-pox, or that they traced it to their intercourse with Europeans. Whoever may have been the mound-builders, they have become extinct; and this not by the agency of white men, or most assuredly some memorials of the struggle would have been preserved. When, in addition to this, we take into consideration that the savage slate is one of almost perpetual wars, bequeathed from generation to generation; that they involve indiscriminate massacre; that from their improvident habits, they are frequently exposed to famine; and that any great increase of numbers is precluded by their modes of life, and the habits of their women, there is great reason to presume that many tribes have become extinct from these causes, or that, as is their custom when driven to extremities, they have sought refuge among other tribes, or wandered away no one knows where. We know that the Eries were exterminated by the Iroquois, and the Puants nearly so by the Illinois; and beyond doubt a thorough investigation would disclose many other similar examples. There is scarcely a tribe which has not preserved some tradition of having conquered the former possessors of the land they occupy, or having been itself driven from its ancient inheritance by some hostile invader. The subject is worth a more extensive examination than I can give it here, if only to relieve our forefathers, ourselves, and our posterity from some of those unfounded charges that have been urged against them, by the over zealous advocates of the race of red men, who in the fervor of their philanthrophy seem to have forgotten the just denunciation against the foul bird that pollutes her own nest. The contact of civilized with savage man has everywhere been productive of immediate results which can only be reconciled with the dispensations of a just and beneficent Providence by their ultimate consequences If mere existence be, as I have no doubt it is, in spite of all its drawbacks, a universal source of happiness, then the cultivation of the land, and all those arts of civilization which conduce to the multiplication and subsistence of the human race, is doubtless in accordance with the will of that great Being whose command it was to “go forth, and multiply and replenish the earth.” But I am wandering far away from the father of rivers.

One of the principal ingredients of variety in a voyage on this river is the process of taking in wood from the bank, which occurs at intervals of some twenty or thirty miles, perhaps. There are no pines on the lower Mississippi, and the principal fuel is ash and cotton wood, the latter much the most common. This is furnished by enterprizing persons, who set themselves down pretty much at discretion, and, I was told, without asking leave of any body, build themselves a hut, and selecting such trees as are most productive or convenient, cut away without ceremony. Nobody, I believe, molests them; the owner of the land, if it has any, probably taking it rather as a favor to be thus aided in the great process of clearing. The wood is piled up on a part of the bank, where the boat can lay close alongside—for there are no wharves on this rantipole river, which would undermine and sweep them away before they could be finished. The entire population of the lower region then turn out, and forming a procession, proceed back and forth from the boat to the wood pile, cracking their jokes, and full of fun. I always noticed there was one black sheep, generally a gentleman of color, who accommodated himself with a lighter load than the rest, but whose burden was fully made up by the jokes piled on his shoulders. In this way the process of wooding, which would otherwise be very tedious, is greatly accelerated.

While this is going on, the passengers of the upper region, many of them go ashore, and either ramble about as they list, till summoned by the bell, or amuse themselves in some other way. If there is a house or cabin near, they visit it without ceremony, and have a talk with whoever they find there. On one occasion our wheel received serious injury from a floating log which had got entangled in it, in the middle of the night, and we were detained some eight or ten hours repairing damages, fastened to the stump of a tree. And here I cannot forbear expressing my admiration of the exemplary patience displayed by the passengers. There was no fidgeting, no lamentation at the delay, and I heard no one plaguing the captain with questions as to when he would be ready to depart. All took it quietly, although a great portion of them were men of business, to whom time is money.

I had occasion frequently to notice this philosophic repose of character, which I can only account for by ascribing it to that universal practice of “whittling,” which is so prevalent with the people of this Western world. If a man has only a knife and a stick, he bids defiance to time, and all the ordinary accidents of traveling. He sets himself down, and snips away till nothing is left; and then, after appearing uneasy about something or other, gets himself another stick, and commences again with renewed vivacity. I used to admire the captain of one of the boats in which I came down the Ohio, who would fasten his vessel to a stump or a post, at some little town on the bank, and stand confabulating with some tall fellow in a chip hat for hours together, each with a knife and a stick, whittling away, and settling some mysterious business which nobody could fathom. Not a soul on board seemed in the least put out by this delay, and I could not forbear applauding this quiet resignation, so favorably contrasted with that desperate and inordinate passion for locomotion which animates our Northern people, more especially those who have least to do with their time in this whizzing, whirligig world.

This quiet self-command was favorably exhibited on the occasion to which I have alluded, when, in the dead of the night, a large floating log got entangled with the wheel, and broke some of the paddles, making a great noise, which roused most if not all the passengers. It was the general impression that we had run on a snag, and such accidents are almost always fatal to the boat, as well as many of the passengers. Yet I heard no screechings or screamings, though there were a score of ladies on board. Inquiries were made, and as soon as the cause was ascertained, all was quiet. The only exception to this was a singular and mysterious man who had come on board in the night, somewhere from the coast of Arkansas, and who, among all the originals and aboriginals congregated in this ark, most excited my curiosity. He was amazingly tall, and amazingly thin, with immeasurable spindle legs, narrow shoulders, little eyes the color of skimmed milk, light flaxen hair, a wee-bit apple head, and the smallest possible coon-skin cap, which he made a point of conscience never to take off, except at meals, when he did so with manifest unwillingness. He stalked about like a ghost, and like a ghost never spoke a word to any living soul—but measured the deck with his spindle shanks with a countenance of imperturbable gravity, one leg of his pantaloons inside, the other outside of his boots. I felt an unextinguishable curiosity to fathom this original, but no one could tell his name, his occupation, or his destination. The captain, at my instance, sent one of his people to sound him, with a view to entering his name in the list of passengers. His answer was—“Well, I’ll be shot if I thought the captain was such an old coon as to take a man on board without knowing his name!” and this was all that could be got out of him.

I noticed, however, that he was greatly agitated at the occurrence of the log, and mistook a passenger, who was bolting out with his rough head foremost from his berth, for a snag protruding through the bottom of the boat. Early in the morning, as we were alongside the bank, repairing the wheel, he came stalking up to one of the officers, gave his saddle bags and pocket-book to his charge, and announced his intention of making the remainder of his journey by land. The man attempted to persuade him to remain, as the damage was trifling, and would soon be repaired.

“No,” replied he, “this is the last time I ever mean to put my foot in one of these etarnal contrivances. I have been five times run high and dry on a sandbank, four times snagged, three times sawyered, and twice blown up sky-high. I calculate I have given these creatures a pretty fair trial, and darn my breeches if I ever trust my carcase in one again. Take care of my plunder; I will call for it at St. Louis.”

Saying this, he walked deliberately ashore, and making tracks into the forest, quickly disappeared.

While they were repairing the wheel, I strolled to a log cabin at a little distance, surrounded by a few cultivated fields, bristling with dead trees, where I was frankly and courteously invited in by a little middle-aged dame, carelessly, or, according to our notions, rather slovenly dressed—her head in picturesque disorder, and her shoes down at the heels. Her countenance, however, was intelligent, agreeable, and full of vivacity. The room was peopled with children of all sizes, sturdy little brats, with ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and yellow hair. There is no ceremony here, and in a few moments the little woman gave me her history, which was, to say the truth, rather more brief than a modern biography, that ninety-nine times in a hundred reminds one of Cowper’s Epigram—

Our heroine had been “raised” at Nashville, married a gentleman who appeared in a carriage and four, as a wooer, and afterwards walked on foot as a married man. When the little dame came to this, she laughed herself fairly out of breath. From thence she was carried to Arkansas, where her husband had made a speculation with the proceeds of his equipage, and settled down at a distance of ten or fifteen miles from any human habitation. Here she fell into another fit of laughter. Her husband had been absent upward of two months on a trading voyage to New Orleans, and they would have got on very comfortably in the mean time, had it not been for the bears, which came about at night, committing depredations on the pigs and chickens.

“I have nobody to drive them away but the dogs and these boys,” said she, pointing to a couple of sturdy little fellows, the larger certainly not more than twelve years old. “They were out last night after them, but they got off with a pig and two chickens!” and this was a subject for another laugh, Which, like the rest, had all the characteristics of genuine hilarity. I remarked the encroachments of the river, just in front of the house.

“Yes,” said she, “last year it carried away our barn, and a good piece of land. I suppose the house will go next!”

And once more she almost expired with laughter. Her merriment was not the result of folly or want of due reflection, but the admirable product of the schooling of a series of vicissitudes and exposures, that ever fortifies us against those excoriating rubs of life, which, to those who always bask in its sunshine, and revel among its flowers, would prove sufficient to wreck their happiness forever. Our little woodland philosopher was neither ignorant nor vulgar; and if any of our fashionable female readers, who permit a ferocious bewhiskered cosmopolite to take them round the waist, and whirl them through the voluptuous mazes of a waltz, a moment after the first introduction, should revolt at this frankness in the lady of the forest of Arkansas, I must entreat them to recollect that she lived in one of the most lonely spots on the bank of the Mississippi, and probably had not enjoyed such a good opportunity of talking for many a day.

In ascending the Mississippi, the first great tributary is the Red River, whose sources are in the Cordilleras of Mexico. It is a stream of great length and volume, but it causes no more sensible change in the magnitude of the former, than the accession of a single drop of water. Such is the case with this Great Father of Rivers everywhere, till you come to its junction with the Missouri, when a sensible difference is apparent. But the Red River, the White River, the St. Francis, the Arkansas, the Black River, the Osage, the Ohio, all streams which in any other part of the globe, except America, would be considered of the first class, and whose course is from eight to twenty-five hundred miles, successively render their tribute from the surrounding world without any perceptible addition to this vast treasury of waters. They frequently run parallel with the Mississippi, sometimes approaching, at others receding, as if fearful of the encounter; and when at length they venture to grapple with the mighty bully, are swept away in an instant, leaving only a few bubbles to indicate the feeble struggle that precedes their final dissolution. This peculiar feature, more than any other, impresses the mind with the idea of vast and almost incomprehensible magnitude.

Voyagers on this river complain of the monotony of its scenery, but though on it eight days in succession, I was never tired. The shores, it is true, are for the most part low and level; but the vast and magnificent forests with which they are every where crowned, give them an appearance of elevation quite imposing, especially as they seem towering in the skies, there being nothing behind them. They appear, at a distance, like massive walls or terraces of deep green, rising directly from the water, and following, as they do, the ever graceful windings of the river, exhibit everywhere endless successions of beautiful curves, projecting points, and corresponding bends on the opposite shore. From New Orleans to St. Louis there are but two or three reaches where one can see twenty miles before him, and consequently the voyager is never sated with the same view. The prospect is incessantly varying; for though the ingredients are always water, wood and skies, their combination is always different. As the prospect opens in front, it gradually closes in the rear, thus at all times presenting a moving panorama. Every moment the boat is shooting round some projecting point, and discovering scenery which is new, though it may resemble that we have just passed. There is always the excitement of anticipation, and the imagination is forever busy picturing something more beautiful beyond the dark barrier of the noble forest that everywhere bounds the prospect. There is perpetual change, and change is itself variety.

Steamboats and broadhorns are almost constantly in sight during the day, and the contrast between the perfection of art, and its earliest efforts, is not a little striking. The broadhorn glides lazily down the stream in all the luxury of passive indolence, a rude mass of rude materials; the other breasts the omnipotent torrent by a succession of triumphant efforts, puffing forth her snowy clouds of steam, in quick panting breathings that seem to indicate the mighty efforts she is making, and signalizes her progress by a repetition of cannonadings that may be heard for miles. They actually tremble with their exertions, and I sometimes imagined my very bones ached from pure sympathy, as did those of Sancho Panza, when he saw his master tossed in a blanket. It is the general impression of those who have investigated the subject, that the building of steamboats has been a losing business on the Western waters. This is greatly to be regretted, since, in other respects, the introduction of steam has contributed more to the growth and prosperity of this vast region, than any other cause, if we except the activity, energy and sagacity of its inhabitants, and the exuberant bounties of nature, which are not paralleled in any other region of equal magnitude on the face of the earth. It is here, with the blessing of Heaven, we are to look for a population of almost countless millions, whose own fault it will be, if they are not the happiest people in the world. Already the young giant of the West preponderates over the pigmies of the Union, and though I rejoice in the rapidity of his growth, I hope he will prove an exception to almost all the race of overgrown monsters, by making a judicious and moderate use of his strength, when he comes to years of discretion.

Yet, in going up the rivers of the West and South-West, one cannot help wondering where the millions who people this region have hid themselves. In our part of the country, the best houses, the best cultivation, and the closest population, are seen on the banks of the rivers, and it is there we always put the best foot foremost. But here, on the banks of the rivers, with now and then the exception of a little town, or solitary plantation, you see nothing but the primeval forests, their vast trees nodding over the margin. The people generally cherish an impression that the neighborhood of their rivers, which rise to a height of sixty or seventy feet during the freshets, that occur annually, where they are confined by high banks, and overflow the country where they are low, is unhealthy. For this reason they build their houses at a distance, out of sight of travelers, and the banks exhibit few traces of cultivation. This is particularly the case with the coasts of Arkansas and Missouri, where you see scarcely any traces of the hundreds of thousands who people these States, and who live beyond the recesses of the forest that skirts the margin of the Mississippi.

The formation of new points and islands is a process continually going on in this river, which is perpetually robbing Peter to pay Paul; and these constitute its most beautiful features. It wears away, or cuts off a point above, to create another below with the spoils. The islands are formed much in the same way. A great tree grounds on some shallow; or an eddy is formed, or a current subsides at some particular spot, depositing the sediment, or heaping up the sands of the river. Here a portion of that vast accumulation of wood which comes floating down from the tributaries, and centres in the Mississippi, is intercepted, and here the sand and sediment subsides. It is surprising how soon one of these islands is formed, and, as if by some effort of magic, clothed with verdure. The cotton tree, which everywhere abounds, receives its name from bearing a fruit or pod, which at the proper season expands, and fills the air with little tufts of a substance resembling cotton, which contain the principle of vegetation. These lighting on the new formations, almost spontaneously produce a little forest of cotton trees. Every year brings new accessions to the island, and a new growth of verdure, in regular gradation, from the little plant just peeping above the water, to the high tree growing on the part which was first formed.

Nothing in nature is more beautiful than these new creations, rising from the bosom of the river, which is one continued succession of Lake scenery, and exhibiting regular terraces of verdure, the growth of successive seasons, one rising above the other and as perfectly defined as if graduated with the most consummate art. The latest growth, apparently rising out of the water, is of an exquisitely soft delicate green; the tints of the growth of every anterior year become deeper and deeper, until they assume the dark hues of the primeval forest. These islands seem floating on the surface of the water, and sometimes in a peculiar state of the atmosphere, appear elevated above its surface, floating in the air. Though the ground itself is not more than a few feet above the level of the river, yet the regular succession of terraces of trees one above the other, convey the impression that they are planted on a conical hill, and have all the effect of elevations of two or three hundred feet.

The Mississippi at night, and especially moonlight nights, appears in all its glory, and during a voyage of eight days, we were favored day and night with delightful weather without a storm, and almost without a cloud. The nights were calm, clear and bright, and under the magic of the moonbeams all the unamiable features of the river disappeared. The expanse of water, sometimes two or three miles broad, was one smooth glassy mirror set in a frame of dark majestic forest, apparently enclosing it on all sides. The boiling eddies and floating trees that disfigure its surface and agitate its bosom, all disappear in the bright lustre which envelopes them, and the turbidness of the waters can no longer be detected. The skies of the Southern region are of a deeper blue, and purer transparency than those of the North, and I sometimes thought I could see far beyond the stars, which are not, however, so bright and sparkling as in our keen, frosty winter nights. Nothing is heard but the splashing of the wheels and the puffing of the steam, which in a day or two is scarcely noticed, and the dark forest-lined shores exhibit no sign of life or animation, except occasionally a distant light kindled on the bank, as a signal to stop and take in a passenger. The repose of the scene is profound, but not dreary, for every object above and around is sublime or beautiful, and I am tempted to regret that I have not more years of life before me, to enjoy its recollections.

The confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio is striking and grand. The latter approaches in a coy angle, a clear and gentle stream, about three quarters of a mile wide. The former comes rushing down like a roaring bully, and the placid Ohio, seemingly unaware of its fate, is suddenly seized upon by this voracious monster, like Proserpine by Pluto, and swallowed up in an instant. You see no traces of its current having made the slightest impression on Old Father Mississippi, who dashes on as if unconscious of this new auxiliary, and I found him as great a bully just above, as he was just below.

At the junction of these rivers, is a large accumulation of sand of some forty or fifty feet high, on which is founded the city of Grand Cairo, so famous in the annals of speculation. It is, indeed, a noble site, of which Father Charleroix thus wrote more than a hundred and twenty years ago, in recording his voyage to New Orleans.

“We passed on the left, by the fine river Ouabasche, (Wabash) by which one may go quite up to the Iroquois, when the waters are high. Its entrance into the Mississippi is little less than a quarter of a league wide. There is no place in Louisiana more fit, in my opinion, for a settlement than this, nor where it is of more consequence to have one. All the country that is watered by the Ouabasche, and by the Ohio which runs into it,^[3] is very fruitful; it consists of vast meadows, well watered, where the wild buffaloes feed by thousands. Furthermore, the communication with Canada is as easy as by the river of the Illinois, and the way much shorter. A fort, with a good garrison, would keep the savages in awe, especially the Cherokees, who are at present the most numerous nation on this continent.”

The good father appears not to have been aware that this fine site was sometimes overflowed by the Ohio on one hand, and the Mississippi on the other, than which two more formidable assailants could hardly be found in the world. But for this, it would be a noble site for a great city. I counted, I think, some forty or fifty buildings of various kinds, among which is an establishment for steamboat machinery, where some boats were repairing. Upon the whole, the speculation I should presume is rather premature than mad. New Orleans is actually below the Mississippi, when at its flood, and would be annually inundated but for the levee. The same means will protect Grand Cairo, and it don’t seem to me altogether impossible that a great town may grow up there, a hundred years hence. To be sure, this is a long while to wait, but Rome was not built in a day, and a century of anticipation is nothing now-a-days. Be this as it may, Grand Cairo is a favorite subject for quizzing, and has many good stories fastened on its shoulders. Among others, for which I don’t choose to be responsible, a respectable buckeye told me of a traveler, who, once upon a time, sailing over the city during an inundation, saw a man in a canoe sounding with a long pole, who being interrogated as to what he was doing, answered and said, “I am surveying the city and laying out lots, but find my pole is not quite long enough.”

I was informed, however, that the process of raising the site or protecting it by embankment, I forget which, was actually going on, the London bankers who furnished the capital for the first investment and expenditures, having agreed to further advances. I was in hopes there had been an end of this business of playing the fool at the expense of other people, and dancing while John Bull paid the piper. I thought our credit had become so bad that we could borrow no more, which in my opinion is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and almost worth the price of national bankruptcy. Unlimited credit will ruin any man, or any state; and the best possible security against foolish or unprincipled prodigality, is being so poor that nobody in his senses will trust us.

Here I left the Mississippi, and proceeded up the Ohio, on an excursion which has no connection with my present purpose, and from which I returned about a month afterwards, proceeding up the former river to St. Louis, and thence to the mouth of the Illinois. The temperature of the Ohio and Mississippi I found most sensibly and disagreeably different, on this latter excursion. The wind blew fresh from the North-west, and the nights were as cold as with us in autumn. Indeed, for the rest of my journey, though it was midsummer, I found no occasion for summer clothing, until I arrived at Utica, and descended the valley of the Mohawk. Above the Grand Tower, which we passed late at night, the river occasionally loses its uniformity, and especially about the old French settlement of St. Genevieve, becomes quite different. Here commence the mineral region and high cliffs of limestone rocks, with all their variety of tints and foliage seen nodding over the stream. We discover everywhere traces of this country having been first explored and occupied by the French, who found their way hither from Canada, establishing themselves at Kaskaskias, Fort Chartres, Tamaroas, St. Genevieve, St. Louis, and at the river Marameg, where are those mines which gave rise to Law’s famous Mississippi bubble, in the year 1719. As early as 1712, it appears from the records of the commonwealth of Virginia, that John Howard and others were sent to examine this region, and were made prisoners by the French, who came from a settlement they had on an island in the Mississippi, a little above the Ohio, where they made salt, lead, &c., which they carried to New Orleans in a fleet of canoes, guarded by a large armed schooner. The earliest pioneers were fathers Marquette and Hennepin, the Sieur Joliet, and the celebrated La Salle, whose adventurous exposures, toils and sufferings, present the most memorable examples of what men can do and dare, when animated by religious fervor, or incited by the love of wealth or the passion for glory.

We arrived at St. Louis early in the morning, and found the entire bank of the river in front of the city lined with steamboats, whose galleries and long rows of Venetian doors formed what appeared a street of gay summer-houses. This is by far the most flourishing town I visited in the course of a journey of seven thousand miles, and I know of no place where clever, industrious young men of any honest profession would in my opinion find a better opening for pursuing their career. There are several thousand Germans in this city, and I was surprised at the great numbers of them in almost all the towns on the Mississippi and Ohio. They are everywhere useful acquisitions, plying at their trades, cultivating gardens and infusing a taste for music, wherever they sojourn. This is a very handsome, polite, orderly city. Now and then, indeed, a rencontre takes place in the streets, or a visit is paid to Bloody Island, just opposite. But every place has its peculiar amusements, and there is no accounting for tastes.

Leaving St. Louis, where I had been detained by indisposition for some days, the first point of interest is the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi. This is perhaps the finest confluence in the world. Just above, the latter stream appears gliding down among wooded bluffs and islands, until it encounters the termagant Missouri, and meets the fate it inflicts upon all its other tributaries. The Missouri dashes right across against the opposite shore of the Mississippi, in a line as straight as an arrow, and as well defined as that between light and darkness. Here, for the first and only time, the Mississippi is conquered and acknowledges a master. Henceforth, its current, its waters and its banks undergo a complete transformation, and it retains nothing but a name to which its claim is doubtful. Both rivers are nearly a mile wide, and when the imagination expands itself to a conception of the vast distance of their sources, the immense regions they have traversed to come together, and the magnitude of their contributions collected from a boundless region whose extent is yet undefined, it is fully impressed with all the attributes of sublimity.

The upper and lower Mississippi are the antipodes of each other; and as, after toiling day by day against its turbid boiling current, we shot in an instant into a clear, calm, quiet basin, skirted with round woody hills, and dotted with verdant isles, it was like the sudden cessation of a whirlwind. To my great regret, however, the boat stopped several hours at Alton, and it was night before she proceeded on her voyage. I saw no more of this famous river, and awoke next morning, gliding quietly up the beautiful and gentle Illinois.

Proud Labor, Poverty Sublime.

A distinguished philosopher of our day dwells with much feeling and eloquence on the emotions with which the Georgics of Virgil must have been read by an ancient Roman, “while he recollected that period in the history of his country when dictators were called from the plough to the defence of the State, and, after having led monarchs in triumph, returned again to the same happy and independent occupation—a state of manners to which a Roman author of a later age looked back with such enthusiasm, that he ascribes, by a bold poetical figure, the flourishing state of agriculture, under the Republic, to the grateful returns which the earth then made to the illustrious hands by which she was cultivated. Gaudente terra vomere laureato et triumphali Aratore,”—Stewart’s Philosophy of the Human Mind, Part II. c. v. §2.

BY MRS. SEBA SMITH.

The unfortunate are always superstitious; just in proportion as the calamities of life impair the freedom of the human mind, do the elements of the dark and the mysterious gather about it. The past has been embittered by care and disappointment; and, in the words of Scripture, their “way is hedged up,” there is no hopeful vista to relieve the gloom of the present, and they appeal to omens, predictions, and the rude superstitions current amongst the vulgar.

Too feeble to boldly enter the precincts of Truth, grasping with a strong faith the very horns of the altar; and thus to learn how the temporary yields to that which is eternal; how the partial is lost in the universal; they linger about the threshold, perplexing themselves with dim shadows and faint intimations. They pause in the vestibule, where Superstition sits portress, rather than enter to worship Truth herself.

It is the error of their destiny more than their own. The light that is in them has become darkness. The clearness and vigor of perception is lost under the pressure of circumstances, in which human wisdom would seem to be of no avail, and they yield at length as to an irresistible fate.

The history of Saul, the first king of Israel, is an affecting record of this kind. Raised to the dignity of royal power, by no ambition of his own, but by Divine appointment, in compliance with the will of a people weary of their Theocracy, we look upon him from the first as an instrument, a being impelled rather than impelling.

Painful, indeed, is the contrast of the proud and handsome youth commencing his royal career in the freshness and freedom of early manhood, when life presented but a long perspective of sunshine and verdure, to that of the stricken man, weighed down by calamities, bereft of hope, bereft of faith, yet manfully marching to that fatal field where death only had been promised him.

From the commencement of his career the “choice young man and goodly” seems to have had a leaning to the occult, a willingness to avail himself of mysterious power, rather than to arrive at results through ordinary and recognized channels. We find him commissioned by his father, going forth in quest of three stray asses, which he seeks, not by the hillsides and pastures of Israel, but by consulting the seer, Samuel. The holy man hails him king, and gently rebukes him as to the object of his visit, by saying, “set not thy mind upon the asses which were lost three days ago, for they are found.”

Ardent and impulsive, he now goeth up and down in the spirit of prophecy, with the strange men who expound its mysteries, and anon he sendeth the bloody tokens to the tribes of Israel, rousing them from the yoke of oppression.

Generous and heroic, he repels the foes of his people, and loads the chivalric David with princely favors. Yet beneath all this, like hidden waters, heard but unseen, lurked this dark and gloomy mysticism, that embittered even his proudest and brightest hours. An evil spirit troubled him, which only the melody of the sweet psalmist of Israel could beguile.

Moses had been familiar with all the forms of Egyptian worship, and all their many sources of knowledge: but, as the promulgator of a new and holier faith, he wished to draw his people from the subtleties of divination, and induce them to a direct and open reliance upon Him who alone “knoweth the end from the beginning.” No insight to the future is needed by the strong in faith and the strong in action. Hence the divinely appointed legislator prohibited all intercourse with those who dealt in this forbidden lore—forbidden, as subversive of human hope and human happiness. For the mind loses its tone when once impressed with the belief that the “shadows of coming events” have fallen upon it.

The impetuous and vacillating Saul, impelled by an irresistible instinct to this species of knowledge, sought to protect himself from its influence by removing the sources of it from his kingdom. For this reason he put in force the severe enactments of Moses against dealers in what were termed “familiar spirits.” Thus betraying the infirmity of his manhood, by removing temptation rather than bravely resisting it.

Vain and superstitious, oh “choice young man and goodly,” thou wert no match for the rival found in the person of the chivalric David, the warrior poet, the king minstrel, the man of many crimes, yet redeeming all by the fervency of his penitence, and his unfaltering faith in the Highest. Yet the noble and the heroic did never quite desert thee, even when thou didst implore the holy prophet to honor thee in the presence “of the elders of the people,” and he turned and worshiped with thee. A kingly pageant when the sceptre was departing from thee.

Disheartened by intestine troubles, appalled by foreign invasion, the spirit of the unhappy king forsook him, and it is said “his heart greatly trembled.” Samuel, the stern and uncompromising revealer of truth, was no more. Unsustained by a hearty reliance upon divine things, Saul was like a reed cast upon the waters, in this his hour of trial and perplexity.

“When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams nor by prophets.” Unhappy man, thy prayers were those of doubt, not of faith, and how could they enter that which is within the veil!

In the utterness of his despair, he consults the Woman of Endor. She might not control events, but she could reveal them. Perilous and appalling as his destiny threatened, he would yet know the worst.

There was majesty in thee, oh Saul! even in thy disguise and agony as thou didst confront thy stern counsellor brought from the land of shadows—“the old man covered with a mantle.” When Samuel demands, “why hast thou disquieted me?” we share in the desolateness and sorrow which thy answer implies.

“God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams, therefore have I called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.”

The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would represent her hideous in aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and lovely in womanhood.

So great had been the mental suffering of Saul, that he had fasted all that day and night, and at the terrible doom announced by the seer his strength utterly forsook him, and he fell all along upon the earth.

Now cometh the gentle ministry of the Woman of Endor. “Behold thou hast prevailed with me to hearken to thy voice, even at the peril of my life; now, also, I pray thee, hearken to the voice of thy handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength.”

Can aught be more beautiful, more touching or womanly in its appeal? Aught more foreign from a cruel and treacherous nature, aloof from human sympathies, and dealing with forbidden or unholy knowledge?

To the Jew, trained to seek counsel only from Jehovah, the Woman of Endor was a dealer with spirits of evil. With us, who imbibe truth through a thousand channels made turbid by prejudice and error, she is a distorted being allied to the hags of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the witches of Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the Moll Pitchers of modern days.

Such is not the Woman of Endor—we have adopted the superstition of monk and priest through the long era of darkness and bigotry, and every age hath lent a shadow to the picture.

“Hearken to the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee.” Beautiful picture of primitive and genial hospitality! The Woman of Endor riseth before me in the very attitude of her kind, correct entreaty. The braids of her dark hair mingle with the folds of her turban; her oriental robes spread from beneath the rich girdle, and the bust swells with her impassioned appeal. I behold the proud contour of features, the deep, spiritual eye, the chiseled nostril, and the lip shaming the ruby. The cold, haughty grace, becoming the daughter of the Magi, hath now yielded to the tenderness of her woman’s heart.

Woman of Endor! thou hast gathered the sacred lotus for the worship of Isis; thou hast smothered the dark-winged Ibis in the temple of the gods; thou art familiar with the mysteries of the pyramids; thou hast quaffed the waters of the Nile, even where they well up in the cavernous vaults of the ancient Cheops; thou hast watched the stars, and learned their names and courses; art familiar with the sweet influences of the Pleiads, and the bands of Orion. Thy teacher was a reverent worshiper of nature, and thou a meek and earnest pupil. Thou heldst a more intimate communion with nature than we of a later and more worldly age. Thou workedest with her in her laboratory, creating the gem and the pearl, and all things whatsoever into which the breath of life entereth not.

There was nothing of falsehood, nothing of diabolic power in this. Men were nearer the primitive man, nearer the freshness of creation, and they who patiently and religiously dwelt in the temple of nature learned her secrets, and acquired power hidden from the vulgar, even as do the learned now, in their dim libraries, and amid their musty tomes.

Thus was it with the Woman of Endor. She was learned in all the wisdom of the East. She had studied the religion of Egypt, had listened to the sages of Brahma, and studied philosophy in the schools to which the accomplished Greeks afterwards resorted to learn truth and lofty aspiration; yet even here did the daughter of the Magi feel the goal of truth unattained.

She had heard of a new faith—that of Israel—a singular people, who at one time had sojourned in Egypt, and yet who went forth, leaving their gods and their vast worship behind, to adopt a new and strange belief. Hither had she come with a meek spirit of inquiry, to learn something more of those great truths for which the human soul yearneth forever.

Hence was it that her wisdom and her beauty became a shield to her when the mandates of Saul banished all familiar with mysterious knowledge from the country. She was no trifler with the fears and the credulities of men. She was an earnest disciple of Truth, and guilelessly using wisdom which patient genius had unfolded to her mind.

All night had she watched the stars, and firmly did she believe that human events were shadowed forth in their hushed movements.

She compounded rare fluids, and produced creations wondrous in their beauty.

There were angles described in the vast mechanism of nature, in the passage of the heavenly bodies, in the congealing of fluids, and the formation of gems, which were of stupendous power when used in conjunction with certain words of mystic meaning, derived from the vocabulary of spirits; spirits who once familiarly visited our earth, and left these symbols of their power behind them. These the learned, who did so in the spirit of truth and goodness, were able to use, and great and marvelous were the results.

Such was the knowledge, and such the faith of the Woman of Endor, the wise and the beautiful daughter of the Magi. She was yet young and lovely; not the girl nor the child, but the full, intellectual, and glorious woman.

She had used a spell of great power in behalf of Saul, who was in disguise, and unknown to her; and thus had compelled the visible presence of one of the most devout servants of the Most High God. Even she was appalled, not at the sight of the “old man covered with a mantle,” but that she saw “gods descending to the earth.”

The fate of Saul would have been the same had not the prophet from the dead pronounced that fearful doom, “To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be as I am,” but he might till the last have realized that vague comfort to be found in the uncertainly of destiny, and in the faint incitements of hope. Fancy might have painted plains beyond the mountains of Gilboa, where the dread issues of battle were to be tried, and he would have been spared that period of agony, when the strong man was bowed to the earth at the certainty of doom.

Saul and the Woman of Endor, ages on ages since, fulfilled their earthly mission, leaving behind this simple record of the power and fidelity of human emotions in all times and places; we cannot regret even the trials of Saul, in the view of enlarged humanity, for had he been other than he was, the world had been unblessed with this episode of woman’s grace and woman’s tenderness, in the person of the Woman of Endor.

BY REV. C. W. EVEREST.

BY MRS. ELLET.

The tourist who has loved to linger in the beautiful country of the Rhine—among its castle-crowned hills, and lovely valleys, its rich vineyards, its smiling hamlets and its noble cities, must often recollect, with peculiar pleasure, the delightful city of Bonn, on the left bank of the Rhine, and its charming environs. One of the loveliest villas near the town, in 182—, was owned by the Baroness Von Schonhold. This lady, still young and beautiful, was the widow of a man old enough, as report had said of him, to have been her father; he had married her when a mere girl, and after three years of wedlock, left her sole mistress of his splendid possessions. She continued to reside on her villa close to the river, and after the first years of her widowhood had expired, to mingle, as much as beseemed the most perfect feminine dignity and modest reserve, in the gaieties of life around her. She was greatly beloved by all her acquaintance; by the poor as well as those of her own rank; and as it began to be whispered among the gossips of the neighborhood that the fair lady might possibly not be unwilling to enter a second time into the bonds of Hymen—it may well be conceived that she had many admirers. But her demeanor was not calculated to give encouragement to any. She loved society, and her cheerful spirits and varied accomplishments fitted her to adorn the circles in which she moved; but she was cold to the voice of adulation, and among all the suitors whom her wealth and beauty drew around her, there was not one who could boast he had ever received from her a mark of special regard.

“And is it possible,” cried Frederick Herder to his friend Lanbeck, as he stopped at his lodgings in —— street, Bonn, one evening, “is it possible you think of declining the invitation of Madame Von Schonhold to her Erntefest^[2] to-morrow?”

“I do not feel particularly disposed to accept it,” replied his friend; “and my dull spirits would add but little to the entertainment of the company.”

“Why, truly, you seem not exactly couleur de rose this evening; but that is nothing. I must have your company. Besides, I promised Madame Froben to bring you.”

“I am much obliged to you and her, and will go, then.”

“Now it seems passing strange to me,” continued Herder, “why, with your advantages of person and address, and your menial accomplishments—(by no means to flatter you!) you do not join the race after the prize! Our fair widow is evidently pleased with you, and that is more than I could say confidently of myself, or any other gallant.”

Lanbeck smiled.

“You do not fear me as a rival. Your baroness can be amiable to a poor physician who has neither rank nor connections, without danger of awakening the jealousy of her noble suitors.”

“Too modest, by half. What does she want with wealth in a husband? Then as to rank—”

“It is said she occupied an humble station before her marriage with the rich old baron. People who have risen from obscurity are generally tenacious of rank.”

“There is some truth in that. But your parents, Edward, were of good old Saxon descent.”

“Certainly—that is some consolation,” said Lanbeck, laughing; “my English blood is of the best; but it is nothing to the purpose, Frederick; I shall not enter the lists with your German nobility.”

“Why not? ‘Faint heart never won’—you know the proverb.”

“In the first place, I am not in love with the baroness.”

“There you are singular. But you have been little in her society. See more of her, and find out how lovely and fascinating she is.”

“I see you are not in love with her, Frederick, or you would not advise me to this.”

“You ought to remember I am engaged to the pretty Josepha; and I have set my heart, Edward, on having you devoted to our charming widow.”

“Suppose I tell you my affections are also engaged?”

“I know better! Whom do you visit in Bonn? and have I not been your fellow student in France—your traveling companion in Germany?”

“True—but you know not all my history. What think you of this?”

And opening a small cabinet, he took out a picture, not highly finished in point of execution, but speaking as life. It was the picture of a young girl about nineteen years of age, and exquisitely beautiful. Herder looked at it some time without speaking.

“Who is the original of this portrait?” at length he asked.

His friend answered with some hesitation—

“There is a story connected with it, which I will tell you, when we have filled another cup of wine.”

Suiting the action to the word, he replenished their glasses, and Herder leaned back in his seat in an attitude of expectation.

“It is not many years,” resumed Lanbeck, “since I was at Stutgard, and remained there some weeks, while you were on your tour in Italy. There I formed acquaintance with a noble Spaniard, Don Montanjo Liger, an officer in the household of the Prince de P——, then on a visit to Stutgard. How well I remember his tall, thin, majestic figure, his broad forehead overshadowed by dark bushy hair, his deep-set, piercing eyes, Roman nose, and compressed mouth! His dress, too, was perfectly Spanish; his dark silk breeches, and large knee-buckles, with the long slender sword at his side, his high, pointed hat, and mantle of the finest cloth suited his measured and somewhat haughty gait. Altogether, his appearance caused him to be observed by all who glanced at him in the street, and set down at once for a man of consideration.

“My acquaintance with him commenced in a singular manner. We both frequented the gallery of the brothers Boisserée, where many fine paintings were exhibited; and both had eyes but for one picture from our first visit. It was a cabinet piece, of which this sketch is a copy. Boisserée himself noticed the interest I took in it, and told me the picture was three hundred years old. It was not until the third or fourth day that the stern looking stranger accosted me with an expression of his surprise that I could find so much to admire in a work, not after all a first-rate specimen of art. I answered by pleading that I was interested in the beauty of the countenance.

“Yes—” returned he, musingly; “and the portrait is not a flattered one. The family is remarkable for the beauty of its women.”

“What family?” I asked in some surprise. “I thought this a fancy piece, painted three hundred years ago! The owner told me so.”

“He is mistaken,” said Don Montanjo; “I know the original.”

“Who is she? where is she?” I asked in breathless interest.

“I should say—I have known her; twenty years and more ago—in Valencia—Yes—” he added with a sigh, gazing at the picture—“it is—it can be no other than Donna Camilla de Tortosi.”

“Twenty years?” I repeated—and my lover-like visions faded away. “She cannot look like this now!”

“May be not,” answered the Spaniard; “but no painter ever drew a more faithful copy than this is of her as I last saw her. Come to-morrow night to my lodgings, and I will explain to you why I feel an interest in her portrait.”

“You may imagine, dear Frederick, that I did not hesitate to accept the Spaniard’s invitation; anxious as I was to learn something of the original of the mysterious picture which had taken such strong hold of my imagination. I went; he received me cordially, and told me a tale of his love and his disappointment. It was a commonplace one—running briefly thus: Donna Camilla was his cousin, the only child of wealthy parents; beautiful, as her portrait represented, and possessed of every quality that could win the admiration of a susceptible youth. She came to Valencia after having completed her education at the convent; Don Montanjo saw her, loved her, and his suit being favored by her parents, was received into the family as her affianced husband. The lady herself was cold; but Spanish decorum required a certain degree of maidenly reserve. Don Montanjo’s visions of happiness were at length disturbed by his receiving information that the lady Camilla went frequently, unattended, to the house of a married friend, to enjoy the society of M. de Tannensee, colonel of a Swiss regiment quartered in Valencia—whom he himself had introduced to the family of Tortosi. Desirous of proving the fidelity of his betrothed, he laid wait for the Swiss colonel, and found his worst apprehensions verified. In the agony of his feelings, his first impulse was to slay his fortunate rival; but mastering his passion, he released him, after appointing a place of meeting for the next morning without the city gates. A storm of wild passion raged in Don Montanjo’s breast as he went home. Late at night, a servant of Donna Camilla’s brought him a letter; it was couched in terms of despairing entreaty. She confessed that she had never loved him, but that Tannensee alone possessed her whole heart; that she had been compelled to receive him as her suitor through fear of her parents; and she concluded by beseeching him to stand her friend, and shield her from parental anger, in her approaching union with the object of her choice. The struggle was severe in the breast of the unfortunate lover; but generosity triumphed. He fought with Tannensee, and disarmed him; the colonel, though brave and skilful in the use of the sword, would not resist the man he conceived himself to have injured. Don Montanjo not only spared his life, but promised him his influence to induce his uncle and aunt to consent to Camilla’s transfer of her plighted faith. The lady’s parents, however, continued inexorable; she set their authority at defiance by eloping with the Swiss officer some days after, and had never returned to her home.

“Such, dear Herder, was the Spaniard’s story. The portrait had been painted from the life by an Italian artist, before Donna Camilla’s marriage. I was so struck with it that I obtained permission to have a copy taken, which is before you. You may laugh at me for my romance; but I declare to you, on my word, that picture is dearer to me than any living woman whose name I know.”

Herder did laugh at his friend; said he had never suspected him of such boyish folly as falling in love with a painting; and described to him facetiously the matured charms of the lady Camilla—as she probably then existed, if she existed at all. “But now I look at it again,” he continued, “I could almost believe the portrait taken for Madame von Schonhold herself. Tell me, do you not perceive the resemblance?”

“It never struck me,” said Lanbeck hesitatingly—“the eyes of your baroness are gray, and her hair light brown; observe the raven locks of my Spanish beauty, and the large, dark, melting eyes!”

“True; but observe the Grecian nose, so perfect in its outline, the exquisite, rosy mouth, and the round chin! They suit better, too, with her blond beauty, than the dark hair and eyes. Depend upon it I will tell her you idolize her picture.”

Herder kept his word in part the next evening, when the festive company were assembled at the villa of the baroness, failing not to rally his friend on his inclination for an indifferent painting, whose original he had never seen. The lady and her guests expressed much curiosity on the subject, and desired to see the portrait that could thus captivate the affections of so grave a student. Lanbeck took revenge on his teazing friend by protesting that he had given him but half his confidence, and that he was by no means in love with a simple picture.

“Did you not tell me,” insisted Herder, laughing, “that it was dearer to you than any woman living?”

“No! I said—‘than any woman whose name I know.’ ”

“Oh! then your inamorata is incog. Let me remember—I thought you smitten with the prima donna at Leipsig! Or rather—the masked fair one at Vienna! You smile—there is nothing in that.”

“Your friend knows your discretion too well to trust you with his secret,” observed one of the guests.

“I have it!” cried Herder, after a pause. “Do you recollect our walk to the Louvre one night—some eight years ago?”

Lanbeck changed countenance; his volatile friend filled his glass with wine, and signing to the guests near him to do the same, said—

“Let’s have a bumper, friends. Here’s to Lanbeck’s unknown fair one—the Beggar Girl of Pont des Arts!”

An instant after, the gay but good-humored young man saw that he had unwittingly given pain. Lanbeck’s face was deeply flushed, but he looked grave, and said not a word. Herder set down his glass, and glanced round him uneasily; the company were embarrassed; the baroness looked as if something out of place had been said. Herder perceived his mistake, and with his usual tact, gave a turn to the conversation. The guests that chanced to be near were presently laughing heartily at some new sully of his wit.

As for Lanbeck, during the rest of the evening, it seemed as if he had all at once become sensible of the charms of their fair hostess. He led her repeatedly to the dance; he was at her side at supper; his eyes dwelt admiringly on her face while they stood in conversation; in short, he was the envy of all her less favored admirers; and several sneering expressions of wonder at the condescension of the baroness attested their chagrin. Could it be possible that a mere adventurer, after all, was to bear away the prize? It looked like it; for the lady seemed to have eyes only for him. The knowing ones pronounced it merely a flirtation. Herder whispered to his friend as he passed, that he stood already on the top round of the ladder; the hint appeared to displease Lanbeck, for he presently withdrew from the saloon, and after walking a few minutes on the balcony, descended to the garden, the avenues of which were gorgeously illuminated for the pleasure of such of the guests as chose to walk in the open air. He passed several groups in gay conversation, and in about half an hour unexpectedly joined a pair, who proved to be the baroness and Count L—— . The gentleman politely resigned the lady to his charge, being engaged for the next dance. Lanbeck’s surprise at finding himself so suddenly alone with the lovely widow, betrayed him into some awkwardness at first, which, however, she seemed readily inclined to forgive.

“You must pardon me, Mr. Lanbeck,” said she, before they had walked far, and he thought her voice the sweetest he had ever heard, “if I show some curiosity about your incognita. Pray, tell me, who was the beggar girl Herder spoke of a while ago? You seemed displeased at his mention of her.”

“Displeased that he should mention her so lightly,” answered Lanbeck. “Herder is thoughtless—but a good fellow at heart.”

“Did he know her?” asked the baroness, with an air of so much interest that it startled her companion, and flattered him not a little.

“If you can give me a few moments of your society, dear lady, I will tell you all,” said he.

The baroness assented, and they pursued the walk together.

“It is a matter of eight years,” continued Lanbeck, “since Herder and I were students of medicine in Paris. We were very intimate, and occupied the same lodgings in the Place des Victoires. We had some friends living in the Rue Taranne, with whom we often passed the evening, and returned late at night. One evening, it was about eleven, rainy, and the wind blowing cold and piercing, we were going from the Quai Malaquais, over Pont des Arts to the Louvre. Pont des Arts is only passable for foot passengers, and it happened that no one was stirring anywhere about us. We crossed the bridge, drawing our cloaks well round us, and I was already ascending the steps on the other side, when my attention was arrested by an unexpected sight.

“There stood, leaning on the bridge, a slender female figure. A dark colored hat was tied close down over her face, which was quite concealed by a green veil. She wore a dark silk mantle, and the wind, which blew fiercely against her, revealed the outline of a delicate and youthful shape. A small hand was put forth from her cloak, and held a plate; before her was a lantern, the feeble and flickering light of which fell on a foot that Cinderella might have coveted. Nowhere is there, perhaps, so much misery in contact with so much luxury and magnificence, as in Paris; yet the beggars seldom are seen pushing their way forward, or following the stranger. The infirm or blind sit or stand at the corners of the streets, quietly holding out a hat, and leaving it to the passer by to notice or disregard their supplications. The beggars I felt most for were those who took their station nightly in the streets, with heads covered; motionless, and apparently ashamed of their occupation. My acquaintance in Paris had informed me that these were, for the most part, people of respectable condition, reduced by misfortune to extremity; who, unwilling or unable to earn their bread, had resorted to this last expedient to prolong a wretched existence, till despair terminated it in the waters of the Seine.

“To this class undoubtedly belonged the female of Pont des Arts. I looked at her more closely; her limbs trembled more violently from cold than the flame of her lantern; but she was silent. I felt in my pockets, but could not find a franc—a single sou. I turned to Herder, and asked him for some change; but vexed at being exposed to the cold by my delay, he cried—

“ ‘Leave the beggar and come along; let us get to bed, for I am freezing!’

“ ‘Only a few sous, friend,’ I insisted. He caught me by the cloak to pull me forward. The poor damsel then ventured to say, in a voice trembling, but very sweet, and, to my surprise, in German—

“ ‘Oh, gentlemen, have compassion!’

“Her voice, and unexpected use of a language so familiar to me, affected me powerfully. I again urged my request for some change. Herder laughed.

“ ‘Here,’ said he, ‘are a few francs; make your bargain, but let me out of the scrape.’

“He hastened away as he spoke. I felt really embarrassed; she must have heard what my companion said, and I feared we had wounded the feelings of one in misfortune. I approached her, hesitatingly.

“ ‘My girl,’ said I, ‘you have chosen a poor place to stand; there will not many pass here to-night.’

“ ‘If only,’ answered she, scarce audibly, ‘if only those who pass have feeling for the unhappy.’

“There was something in her tone and manner that showed she had seen better times.

“ ‘I feel interested for you,’ I continued, ‘will you tell me if I can do more for you than give you this trifle of silver?’

“ ‘We are very poor,’was her tremulous reply, ‘and my mother is sick and helpless.’

“Impelled by an unaccountable feeling of sympathy, I asked—

“ ‘Will you conduct me to your mother?’

“She was silent; the request seemed to surprise her.

“ ‘Think not,’ I said, ‘that I have any other motive than the honest wish to aid you, if I can.’

“ ‘Then come!’ replied the veiled damsel. She took up her lantern, extinguished it, and hid it with the plate under her cloak. She then led the way across the bridge. As I walked in silence, a little behind her, I had opportunity to observe her. Her figure, as far as I could see, her whole air, her voice particularly, bespoke extreme youth. Her step was quick, light and elastic. She had declined the assistance of my arm in walking. At the end of the bridge she went into the Rue Mazarin.

“ ‘Has your mother been long ill?’ I asked, coming to her side, and endeavoring through her veil to catch a glimpse of her features.

“ ‘For two years,’she answered, sighing; ‘but it is eight days only since she became so bad.’

“ ‘Have you been often at that place?’

“ ‘Where?’ asked she.

“ ‘On the bridge yonder.’

“ ‘To-night, for the first time,’ she answered.

“ ‘Then you have not, as yet, found any good place; other thoroughfares are more frequented.’

“I had no sooner made this remark than I repented it; for I saw it must have hurt her. She wept, but suppressed her sobbing as much as possible, and faltered—

“ ‘Ah! I am such a stranger here, and I am ashamed to go into the crowd.’

“How deep must be the misery that had driven this creature to beggary! Once or twice, I confess, a thought of suspicion crossed me, but it was instantly banished. If she really belonged to an outcast class of females, why was she found veiled in a spot so unfrequented? Why did she so sedulously conceal a form and features, which, judging from what I saw, must possess the advantages of beauty? No! hers was certainly a case of real misfortune; it was this conviction, and her shrinking diffidence—her evident shame for guiltless poverty, that so appealed to my feelings.

“ ‘Has your mother a physician?’ I asked.

“ ‘She had—but we can no longer afford to employ one; and, indeed, she says it is quite useless.’

“The last words were interrupted by sobbing—and in raising her hand to wipe away tears, as I supposed, her mantle was blown back, and showed her figure more plainly. It was slender even to fragility, and very thinly clad, as I saw, by a hasty glance, before she drew the cloak again around her.

“We passed through several streets, and entered that of St. Severin, where she said her mother lived. We had not gone far down the street, when she stopped, and seemed much agitated.

“ ‘Indeed, sir,’ she said, ‘you must not go farther with me—it cannot be!’

“ ‘Why not?’ I asked, ‘perhaps I can assist your mother; I am a student of medicine; believe me, I am sincere in wishing to serve you.’

“ ‘My mother will be displeased,’ said she, weeping more violently; and I felt that I had no right to intrude on her. I gave her the silver change, and also a piece of gold I had about me. Her hand trembled as she took it; she thanked me, and was turning away.

“ ‘One word more,’ said I; ‘your mother may not recover soon; and you, my girl, are not made for such scenes as you have gone through to-night. Go no more to the bridge; but come eight days from this to the Place de l’Ecole de Médecine, wearing the same hat and veil. You can then tell me how your mother is, and I can assist you farther, if necessary.’

“She bowed her head, but I could not hear her reply—and walked rapidly down the street.”

Lanbeck saw that his fair companion was much interested in his narration. She wiped tears from her eyes, as he continued.

“Before the hour appointed, I was in a Café in the Place de l’Ecole de Médecine, looking over the papers—and glancing ever and anon down the street. It seemed long, to my impatience, before I saw the flutter of the well known green veil and dark silk mantle. The beggar girl came to thank me for my generosity, and said her mother had observed I must be either an angel or a prince.

“ ‘Neither one nor the other,’ answered I; ‘but tell me, have you any thing left of what I gave you?’

“ ‘Oh, yes,’ she answered, as if eager to prevent my giving more, ‘it sufficed to pay our apothecary’s bill, and a month of house-rent, and we have enough for the present.’

“ ‘Your store cannot be great,’ I answered; ‘now tell me—for I am willing to help you earn something—can you do any work?’

“ ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ she replied, seeming rejoiced at the question.

“ ‘Washing and ironing—or plain sewing?’

“ ‘Either—but I should prefer sewing—as I have little skill as a laundress.’

“I gave her a handkerchief to hem and mark, and directed her to purchase a dozen like it of fine cambric—and bring the first half dozen to me when finished. I gave her, also, money for the purchase. She seemed pleased as a child, and thanked me again and again. Before she left me, I ventured to ask her to remove her veil. She complied after a little hesitation; but I found I had not gained much. The upper part of her face was entirely concealed by a Venetian half mask, of black silk; the mouth and chin only were left exposed; but the exquisite beauty of these, and the delicately formed throat, dazzlingly white, sufficed to convince me that the face was one of rare loveliness. I could see that she blushed deeply as I scanned her features. When I asked why the mask was worn under her veil, she said her mother had been used to wear such in her own country, and had charged her never to go out alone without it.”

“How often did you see her afterwards?” asked Madame von Schonhold.

“Only twice—when she came to bring me her work; I resolved, on our next meeting, to visit her mother; but urgent business called me from Paris unexpectedly to London, where I was detained by the illness of my father. I had charged my unknown damsel, in case of any such occurrence, to come to the place of rendezvous on the first and fifteenth of every month. My first care, on returning to Paris, was to search for her; but I saw her no more. My inquiries were fruitless; and month after month I went in vain to the Place de l’Ecole de Médecine. Two years after this I was at Stutgard, and struck by a painting that bore a strange resemblance to the girl whose image filled my thoughts, at least to so much of her face as I had seen, I procured a copy, which I have treasured ever since. The only memorial I possess of her is this, and the handkerchiefs she wrought for me. See—here is one of them, with my initials marked in the corner.”

The baroness took and examined it. Lanbeck continued—

“I do not scruple to avow that I have felt, and still feel, an interest in this girl, which I have experienced for no other. The mystery about her—her misfortunes, her patience under them—her beauty—her artlessness—her devotion to her mother—all contributed strongly to enlist my feelings.”

“Would you have married a beggar girl?” asked the baroness, quickly, and in a low tone.

“Her poverty, surely, was no crime!” answered Lanbeck. “If I had found her what I supposed her to be, and of respectable parentage, that would have been no obstacle.”

“Generous man!” exclaimed the lady; but instantly checking herself, she turned and walked toward the saloon. Lanbeck followed, entreating that she would not betray him.

To make a long story short, he went to rest that night more than half in love with the baroness—reproaching himself for his want of fidelity to his unknown damsel, and still more for his presumption in thinking of one whom he could not approach without suspicion of mercenary motives. Full of heroic resolutions never to be thus traitor to his own pride, yet dissatisfied with himself, he rose early the next morning. Many of the guests, like himself, had remained at the villa, prepared to renew the festivities of the preceding day.

Lanbeck wandered listlessly through the grove that sloped toward the river; and seeing no one, threw himself on the green sward, and lulled by the murmur of the waters and the rustling of the foliage, at length fairly fell into a doze. How long he remained asleep is nothing to the purpose; he was roused by a slight touch on his hand, sprung up, and saw, just before him, a female figure in a dark cloak and hat, with green veil fluttering in the morning breeze. Stranger than all, the face was partly covered by a silken mask, and the features left exposed were the very features of the beggar girl of Pont des Arts!

For an instant, Lanbeck thought he was still dreaming. The stranger waved her hand, and vanished amidst the thick foliage. A sealed note had fallen at his feet; he stooped to pick it up, and then hastened after the retreating figure. To his astonishment, it was nowhere to be found. The note was addressed to himself, and ran as follows:

The note inclosed a ring of chased gold, marked with the initials—“J. de T.”

The perplexity of our hero is not to be described. His first thought was that a trick had been practiced upon him; but how could he be deceived in those well known, those beloved features? Half inclined to distrust the evidence of his own senses, he came to one resolution—namely, to say nothing of what he had seen.

“By the way,” cried the baroness, on the evening of that day, turning suddenly from a circle of her gayest guests, “you are a connoisseur in paintings, I believe, Mr. Lanbeck. I have never shown you the picture of my mother!”

And, taking his arm, she led him through several apartments to one that was untenanted, and drawing aside a curtain, showed a picture that had nearly turned her amazed companion to stone. It was a portrait of full size—but the exact counterpart of the cabinet piece he had seen in Stutgard!

“Ha! what does this mean?” exclaimed he.

The lady smiled—though her eyes were filling with tears.

“Who—who was your mother?”

“Donna Camilla de Tortosi, of Valencia.”

“Can it be possible? And you—”

He glanced at the picture, and in that brief instant the baroness glided from the room. A few minutes elapsed. Another door opened, and the same figure he had seen in the park, masked as before, with dark hat and cloak, and green veil, stood before him. A sudden light flashed across Lanbeck’s perceptions, and he seemed to himself a fool that he had not discerned all before. Encircling the masked lady’s waist with one arm, he kneeled and respectfully kissed her fair hand.

“Your own Jacqueline!” murmured the baroness, as her head drooped on his shoulder. “Not a word more now; to-morrow I will explain all.”

It would be useless waste of time to dwell in detail on the explanation that followed. The baroness went back to the years in which she was Jacqueline de Tannensee. When a child she followed with her mother the fortunes of a soldier. Told how her mother had drooped, like a stricken flower, from the day of her father’s death in battle, and pined for her own sunny land—how poverty and hardship had overtaken them—how they had lived two years in Paris by the sale of her mother’s jewelry and wardrobe—how Donna Camilla had grown daily worse, till Lanbeck’s generous and disinterested kindness, at the time when her misfortunes seemed about to overwhelm her, had caused her to hope she was not quite forsaken of Heaven—how, after his departure from Paris, a friend of her youth, the Baron von Schonhold, had visited Donna Camilla, bountifully supplied her every want, and furnished her with means to travel, so soon as her health should improve sufficiently to enable her to bear the journey into Spain—how their reviving hopes had been crushed by Madame de Tannensee’s sudden relapse after a third stage of their journey—how the baron, who accompanied them, had devoted himself to their comfort—how deep had been the gratitude she felt for him—and how almost the last request of her dying mother had been that she would consent to wed her noble friend, who had offered her his hand and fortune. Jacqueline saw that she was about to lose her mother, and had not a relative or friend in the wide world beside. Experience had taught her the bitterness of destitution. She looked on the baron as an angel sent to their relief. He had nobly succored them in their hopeless want; he loved her—but he forbore to advance any claim on her gratitude, and even offered to bestow independence upon her in case she rejected his proffered hand. She consented to marry him; her mother’s last hours were made happy by seeing her daughter united to one whom she knew worthy of being intrusted with her happiness; and after Madame de Tannensee’s death, the baron brought her to his native country.

“Here,” concluded the baroness, producing a small gold coin, suspended by a ribbon round her neck, “here is the last piece you gave me. I vowed never to part with it. The impression your kindness made on the heart of the friendless beggar girl has never been effaced. I do not now blush to confess—”

What she confessed may appear from the fact that it was speedily known among the aristocratic circles of the lady’s acquaintance that the rich prize of her hand was about to be bestowed on a stranger in Bonn, unknown to fortune and to fame; with whispers of what, in our Western settlements, would be termed a “priory ’tachment.” Further confirmation was furnished when the pale student, Edward Lanbeck, led to the altar the beautiful and wealthy Baroness von Schonhold.

Herder always insisted that the match was of his making; a circumstance of which he failed not to remind the happy husband, as often as the year brought round “The Erntefest.”

BY WILLIAM M. BURLEIGH.

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.

NO I.—JANE McREA.

FROM A MANUSCRIPT VOLUME ENTITLED “SPECIMENS OF ITALIAN LYRICS.”

BY RICHARD HENRY WILDE.

OR LITTLE LUCY AND AUNT LU.

BY MRS. A. M. F. ANNAN.

One might have thought the picture had been studied, so graceful was that of the family group assembled on the portico of North Hall; but it was a scene of every day—old Mr. Etherwood, full of the airs and whims of an obstinate valetudinarian, reclining in an immense chair, cushioned to the extreme of luxury, his dressing-gown of richly quilted damask, folded round his stooping figure and attenuated limbs, and his long gray hair falling from beneath his velvet cap, and mingling with the transparent ruffles that covered his bosom. So also was the position of his gentle daughter Lucy, his only child—Aunt Lu she was called, to distinguish her from a younger inheritress of the name. She was kneeling at his side, a lovely, devoted looking woman, and smoothing his fleecy white stockings, the work of her own fair hands, under his embroidered slippers, with as much tenderness as if his passive feet had been those of an infant. The remaining figure, however, presented a new aspect. This was the grandchild and niece, little Lucy still, for though nearly eighteen and well grown, the affectionate watchfulness of her aunt had so preserved her girlish simplicity of character, and consequently of appearance, that she looked full two years younger. She stood leaning against a column, and twisting in her fingers the fringed blossom of a passion-flower which festooned it, and though her eyes were fixed upon the gilded wires of a bird cage suspended among the vines, it was evident that neither the sparkling glances nor the coaxing twitter of its little inmate attracted from her a single thought.

The old gentleman had watched her anxiously for some minutes, and at length remarked—

“I have not seen you feed your bird this morning, Lucy.”

“No, grandpapa, but Aunt Lu did not forget it.”

“It is well that Aunt Lu thinks of every thing, or now that Clement Noel has gone, there would be many things forgotten.”

Lucy’s face glowed as brightly as the rose-colored ribbon round her neck, which, to her grandfather, was very unaccountable, as he had spoken kindly and with perfect singleness of meaning, and, after a pause, he resumed—

“I am afraid you are not well, child—what is it ails you? You know how it worries me to see any thing about me looking out of the usual way.”

“There is nothing the matter with me, sir—at least, I have only a little headache!” A woman’s answer.

“Dear child, you can’t make me believe that; when people have headaches they always complain, I never knew any body that didn’t; and you have not said a word about it before. You know that my greatest earthly solicitude is about your health, yours and your Aunt Lu’s; I am always trembling lest you should inherit some of my own distressing maladies. I feel confident that if your father had lived long enough, he would have died of some of them. And now you look listless, your eyes are dull, and I have heard you sigh heavily a dozen of times. Have you any fullness in the chest, any difficulty of breathing, particularly of nights? It would be a shocking thing if you should get the asthma.”

“Oh, dear no, grandpapa.”

“Is your digestion good? do you ever feel any nausea after eating, or any burning sensation here? look, Lucy, just here? Be always on your guard against dyspepsia, for it would make you miserable for life. You must be abstemious. I’ll give you some of my bran bread for dinner, and you must always take tapioca, after this, for your breakfast.”

“Indeed, grandpa, it is quite unnecessary.”

“Or perhaps you have taken cold—young people are always so deplorably careless. Have you any shooting pains in your limbs? any burning and stiffness about the ancles? any aching in the toes? any—”

“Any symptoms of gout, dear grandpapa? Oh, no—no!”

And Lucy’s languid face brightened for an instant with the merriest of smiles, and her voice rang with a momentary laugh, which was echoed by her Aunt Lu.

“Indeed, I am quite well—and to prove it, I will go and get your hat and wrappings ready for your ride.”

“The foolish child can’t deceive me,” said Mr. Etherwood, who, after having studied symptoms for twenty years, had no want of confidence in his own sagacity; “you must have noticed the change, daughter Lu—her pale face, her slow step, her low voice, her fits now of stupor, now of restlessness, her disinclination to her usual employments—if it is nothing more, it must be an affection of the nerves. As I am going to town to execute a certain new plan of my own, I’ll just stop at the doctor’s, and ask him to come out and give her an examination. Look at your watch, dear; is it time for the carriage to be round? I’ll go at once, for it is very imprudent to allow such things to gain ground. I must take care of her, as she is my only grandchild, and I don’t expect ever to have another. She has been in this state—let me see—ever since the day Clem left us, and that was Monday.”

Miss Etherwood never opposed her father’s hobbies, so she muffled him up in his own peculiar fashion, and assisted him into the carriage. Then, as she stood looking after him, she smiled to herself to think that, with all his skill in discovering causes from effects, the question had never struck him whether the event from which he so carefully dated Lucy’s indisposition, might not have had something to do with it. This said Clement Noel was a fine, handsome youth, possessing every qualification, gentle reader, that you expect and admire in a magazine hero; and had been, during his minority, two or three years gone by, the ward of Mr. Etherwood. He had just bid adieu to North Hall, after a visit of six months, to begin an extensive tour, which he had deferred from week to week during all that time, and had left behind him the memory of his society as that of an indispensable household comfort. Never was there a more useful young man. He had performed all sorts of philosophical experiments for the old gentleman, and read Zimmermann in the original, ay, and Hippocrates himself; and had arranged cabinets for Aunt Lu, and constructed Æolian harps, and classified dried plants, and tied up living jasmins; and toward little Lucy he had said and looked a hundred things too valuable even to be hinted to other people. These she could not have failed to understand and appreciate, yet he had gone away without asking if she had done so, and there was now nothing for her to do but to pine herself into a melancholy.

Aunt Lu, with feminine intuition, had perceived how matters stood, and that it was timidity alone that had prevented the young lover from declaring himself. She was the very person to sympathize with the sorrowing girl, for she, too, had had her early romance and disappointments; but she was of a happy, hopeful spirit, and suppressing a sigh which started at the thought of her own past experience and Lucy’s present trial, she trusted for a brighter future, and went cheerfully about her domestic vocations. With all her elegance and accomplishments, Aunt Lu was a notable housewife, as any phrenologist would decide by a glance at her portrait, and her niceness and habit of systematizing were all the indications ever named of her having been fore-doomed to be an old maid. Yet this portended to be her lot. The indefatigable, uncomplaining nurse and companion of a confirmed humorist, whose jealous fondness was no atonement for his exactions, she was bound, as well by promise as by her scrupulous sense of duty, to devote heart and hand to a life which, in spite of the drawbacks of a diseased fancy, might prove almost as long as her own.

Mr. Etherwood continued his morning drive considerably later than usual, but at last the carriage stopped at the gate, and he advanced up the portico with an alacrity altogether uncommon, forgetting even to limp. Aunt Lu hastened to receive him, and he saluted her with the question—

“What do you think I have been about all this morning, daughter?”

“Something very pleasant, I have no doubt, sir, as you look stronger and more animated than you have done for months.”

“You are right; I have been attending to business for you, which is always the most pleasant occupation I can have. After leaving a note for the doctor about Lucy, I drove round among some of your young friends, and promised to send the carriages to bring them out this afternoon, to a collation on the grounds, in honor of your birth-day.”

“My birth-day?”

“Ha! ha! my dear! did you think I had forgotten it? This is your thirtieth birth-day; I told them all so, and that, as I knew from your correct perception of the fitness of things, you would now give up all youthful amusements and frivolities, I would like them to take a lesson from you on entering a new state of life properly. Allow me, my dear,” stepping up to her delightedly, and kissing her cheek, “to congratulate you on arriving at the period of mature womanhood.”

For one moment Miss Etherwood looked vexed, but in another her good sense had conquered the little weakness, and she thanked him with her usual cheerful smile.

“And that was not all that I did. I took the note from Davis that you ordered him to carry to your milliner, and handed it to her myself, that I might have an opportunity to give her some directions about your dress for the future. I told her not to send you any more feathers and flowers, and other such fantastic things, as they are improper at your time of life. You know, those were the orders of Marie Antoinette, when she had reached thirty—a very sensible thought in her. I did not say any thing about taking the lilac ribbon off your bonnet, and putting on gray or brown, as I thought you would see the propriety of it, and attend to it yourself. My dear daughter, how impatiently I have waited for this anniversary—no more time wasted on furbelows”—(Aunt Lu was fond of a rich and tasteful toilette)—“but all shall be plain and matronly. I won’t insist upon a cap, for your poor mother used to worry me so with sitting, hour after hour, plaiting and puckering her caps. And I shall have so much more of your society, for of course, your habits and deportment will assimilate with your dress. I never felt perfectly sure of you before! But I must go and tell little Lucy about it; the excitement of company will help her circulation finely. She must get herself ready, for the carriages must go to town while we are at dinner, that the young people can return in good time. I promised to send them home before dark, as I consider late hours and night air ruinous.”

Her thirtieth birth-day! Seldom did Aunt Lu indulge thoughts so sombre as those by which this recollection was attended. They brought her, indeed, none of the bitterness of feeling which it is often a woman’s lot to share at the prospect of advancing years undignified by the ties which invest them with influence and authority, but they whispered a mournful warning that the hopes, hitherto preserving in her much of the freshness of youth, must be cast aside forever. We have said that she had had her early trials. She had loved with all the firmness and ardor of a strong mind and a warm heart, and her affection was her first sacrifice at the altar of filial obedience. The attachment that had elicited her own, yet followed her, strengthened by time, and enhanced in value by the ripened virtues of its possessor; but she had prayed against it as a temptation when, year after year, it was proffered to her acceptance. Still, to feel herself the object of a devotion so noble, was a precious consciousness, and she had trusted, though without a self-acknowledgment, that she might one day be released to reward it. But now she felt that to cherish such a dream was a weakness unworthy of one whose long course of self-denial should have been a preparation to sustain her in any effort. Had not her father’s peculiarities increased with his age; and were her patient services, even after a very few years, to be repaid with the gift of freedom, would she then be an offering worthy of one who richly deserved her in her best and brightest days? Her thirtieth birth-day! Would not her heart soon become chill, her person changed—was it not already fading? And she glanced at a mirror before her. But her cheek was as round as in the days of her girlhood, and almost as glowing; her hair was as dark and luxuriant; her eyes, they were even brighter than usual, for they were slightly suffused with tears; and her hand, the member which, perhaps, the soonest of all shows the creeping on of time, was white and full, and tapering as ever. Oh, no! there was no change for the worse in Aunt Lu, and the half smile which broke upon her face, showed that she perceived it; but she relapsed into her sadness, and sat still, taking her satisfaction of it.

She was at length aroused by a servant handing her a packet. She glanced at the superscription, and hastily broke the seal. An enclosure fell beside her, but she continued eagerly to peruse the envelope. Then she started up, seized the fallen letter, and, with a countenance all radiant, flew out of the room. She had quite forgotten her own griefs, in the prospect of being a messenger of happiness to another—just like her!

“Stop, stop, daughter Lu—what letter is that?” called her father, meeting her, but for once his voice was unheeded, and with her collar half blown off in the rapidity of her motion, and standing up from her neck like an Elizabethan ruff, she passed him swiftly as a bird.

Meanwhile little Lucy, at the request of her grandfather, had made her toilette, though carelessly and with great reluctance, to receive the first invoice of guests, and then gone into the garden to arrange a seat for him in his favorite summer-house. She had broken off, as she strolled listlessly along, some sprays of the brilliant pomegranate and the delicate wax-berry, unconsciously it seemed, though she had a latent remembrance that Clement Noel admired the contrast of the rich scarlet bells of the one with the pearl-like globules of the other, and when she had executed her errand, she placed herself on the pile of cloaks and cushions, with the bouquet in her hands. She thought over again the same things she had thought every hour for the last three days and nights—that never had any body been as miserable before—that she never could be happy again in this world, and if it were not a sin, she would wish to be out of it—and there would be some consolation to know that, should she die of a broken heart, there would be one person to grieve for her—one particular person besides her grandfather and her Aunt Lu.

Thus she sat, with pale face and compressed under lip, when her aunt approached and peeped at her through the shrubbery. Her light step had not been heard, and softly entering the door, Aunt Lu stole close behind the dejected girl, and reaching the letter over her head, dropped it into her lap.

Lucy turned round with an ejaculation of fright, but the seal of the letter caught her eye, and growing red and then whiter than before, she exclaimed, “Oh, aunt Lu! where did you get it?”

Aunt Lu assumed an expression of surprise at her agitation, and when Lucy made a trembling effort to open the letter, she caught her hands, saying, “Not so fast, my dear; you are not sure that it is for yourself. It is directed to ‘Miss Lucy Etherwood,’ and quite as likely it may be for me.”

Lucy clasped the letter closely, and, looking imploringly at her aunt, drew it away.

“This is a matter of some delicacy;” pursued aunt Lu, mischievously; “it is unlucky that it is not customary to use the convenient little words ‘senior’ and ‘junior,’ after ladies’ names. On common occasions we need not care to open each other’s letters, but when they come from gentlemen, there is no telling what they may contain.”

“It is for me, dear aunt, I know it is!” exclaimed Lucy, nervously.

“You should not be so positive, child; it appears to be the hand of Clement Noel, and it is much more probable that he would write to me than to you. It is amazing what strange things these young men sometimes get into their heads; supposing it is a love letter? At all events, as I am the elder, it is nothing but proper that I should read it first;” and as aunt Lu pretended to snatch it, Lucy retreated to the farthest corner of the summer-house.

“Why, Lucy, child; this is singular behavior, about a gentleman’s letter! But we will compromise by leaving it to chance; this wax-berry will be for you, the pomegranate leaf for me;” taking them from the bouquet and concealing them in her hands; “now, here—which hand will you have?”

The lot fell upon aunt Lu, and Lucy burst into tears.

“Ah, Lucy, Lucy!” said her aunt, tenderly throwing her arms around her; “I have hardly deserved such treatment at your hands! After having shared all your feelings from childhood as a mother could scarcely have done, do you think I would have withheld my sympathy in this, the most trying crisis of your life? Had you confided in me, perhaps you might have been spared this three days’ unhappiness, for in such straits we women are sometimes good comforters to each other. I know everything. Clement enclosed your letter to me, begging me to deliver it only if I thought it would be favorably received. He has been loitering about the city, undecided to go, yet dreading to return lest he should meet with disappointment. But read your letter, dear child, and I’ll turn my back and look after my geraniums.”

“I shall have to learn to love my flowers better;” resumed Miss Etherwood, as if to herself; “I shall have nothing else when little Lucy gives herself to another;” and she looked round in time to see the blushes with which her niece closed the letter; “you’ll go now and have your hair dressed, won’t you, Lucy? Your Madonna locks don’t suit you so well, now that you look bright and rosy again. But I believe you told grandpapa, yesterday, that you would never curl your hair again, didn’t you? And not to trouble himself to send your bonnet after you, for you did not care how dark you got—that beauty was of no use that you could see. But, Clement thinks differently, and you will now have to take care of yourself for his sake, and he will be out this evening. I know he will, as I shall write to him. You must do the honors, this afternoon, for I am not quite in spirits. Do you know, darling, that to-day, which yields you so much happiness, and shows you a future so fair, makes your Aunt Lu an old maid for life?”

The expected guests arrived, and, left to little Lucy’s charge, were speedily dispersed about the beautiful grounds which environed the house. Among them was a distinguished looking man, of thoughtful and intellectual countenance, who seemed rather a spectator of the festivities than a sharer in them. It was Walter Sidney, Miss Etherwood’s lover, who, strange to say, was always received as a welcome friend by her father, notwithstanding his nervous horror of her marriage. At length she is seen in apparently earnest conversation with him, and what has been said before may be judged by her reply.

“No, Walter, you must obey me, and never allude to the subject again, at least with that vain word, hope. Don’t forget what my father brought you all here for—to rejoice with him at the prospect of my initiation into the sober mysteries of middle age.”

“And it is ten years since!” said her companion, musingly; “we would have thought it a long time then, Lucy.”

“Yet, to me it has passed not so slowly;” said Aunt Lu, taking up his thought.

“And to me. I have lived upon hope, and you in the earnest discharge of arduous duties, for the performance of which I have loved and honored you the more, much as I have suffered by it.”

“I know it, and thank you, Walter. But it is time that we should look upon things as they really are. Though my father’s health is, and promises to be, better than it was then, yet he grows more and more jealous of my attendance, regarding my undivided care and affection as the very breath of his life. My course is plain; I must still live on as I have done, and, gradually losing my capacity for returning your feelings, become reconciled to the change. But you—you are still young—far younger than I am, though I have not numbered as many years. You may yet be very happy, and you owe it to Providence, who places the means of happiness in your hands, to accept them. You must marry, for you are formed for domestic life, and see how gently even these gay young creatures around us would listen to you! Do not think I would value you any the less; you have given me noble proofs of your truth, and I should be proud to resign you to a tie which would prove a blessing to you. I should know that I still retained your esteem, and even now of what worth is any thing else to me?”

The lover listened with a grave smile, and when she had concluded, he replied; “I have now become accustomed to my affection, Lucy, and even if I would, I could not part with it; therefore, if it must be so, I will wait ten years more.”

The company departed early, according to the arrangement of Mr. Etherwood, and after they had gone, Aunt Lu went her accustomed round in the apartment of the invalid; she spread out his night robes, arranged his lamp to a proper dimness, prepared his lotions and panaceas, and then waiting for farther orders, took her seat at an open window. There was a calm, soft moonlight, and she might have found it a sedative to her unquiet thoughts, but, through the luxuriant foliage, she could perceive the white dress of Lucy, who was now flitting gaily about with Clement Noel. The scene recalled similar ones in the early intercourse between herself and her faithful Walter Sidney, who, in her heart, she still persisted, should be weaned from his hopeless pursuit, and no wonder that a sigh escaped her.

“Do come away from the window, daughter Lu, and sit behind that screen;” said her father; “you are surely old enough now to understand the danger of night air. Your breath sounds wheezing, and I shouldn’t wonder if you had taken a complaint in the breast already. What has become of Lucy?”

“She is engaged with Clement Noel, father.”

“Sure enough; it was very foolish in that lad when he found the ship or steamboat wouldn’t go—which was it? not to come back to us. He ought to know how hard it goes for me to do without people when I once get used to them. It was a very foolish project in him to go traveling, putting himself in the way of all sorts of dangers, when he could so well afford to stay at home. But you never answered me, when I asked you what letter that was.”

“A love-letter, father.”

“What—what—a love-letter! Who is disturbing our quiet by sending love-letters again? I hope—daughter Lu—”

“It was not for me, sir, but for little Lucy.”

“For little Lucy! whew! if that isn’t comical! Little Lucy getting love-letters! And who under the sun would send one to her, poor child?”

“Couldn’t you guess, father? Clement Noel.”

A light seemed to break upon the old gentleman, and he looked at her without replying a single word.

“You think very highly of Clement, my dear sir,” pursued his daughter, encouraged by his silence; “and he has begged my influence to gain your favor to his cause. He will suit you better than any one else, for, of course, you would not wish little Lucy to live unmarried, too.”

Still he returned no answer, but sat musing for full ten minutes. At last he muttered to himself, “I wouldn’t like my family to be extinct—but give up little Lucy—give up my only grandchild—how would that do? I couldn’t live without a grandchild?”

“What did you say, dear father?” asked aunt Lu, approaching him.

“I don’t know what I said, but this is what I have been thinking about; that if I must give up little Lucy, you had better get married.”

Aunt Lu sprung forward, and throwing her arms round his neck, burst into tears, and the old man wept with her. “If we must begin to make changes,” said he, “I can as well put up with two as with one.”

And now an infallible clue being given to the termination of our story, who would thank us to go on? of course, nobody.

FROM THE GERMAN OF JULIUS MOSEN.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

I.—THE STATUE OVER THE CATHEDRAL DOOR.

BY W. W. STORY.

BY REV. WALTER COLTON, U.S.N.

TO THE LADY WHO PRESENTED THE AUTHOR WITH A CLUSTER OF FADED FLOWERS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE.”

CHAPTER I.

Some old gentlemen have the agreeable habit of holding forth at table; and when they have unpleasant things to say, and general fault to find, select the social and genial hours of breakfast and dinner for descanting on the chosen topic, when the family are all assembled to enjoy its benefits, and no offender can escape. Mr. Harcourt was one of this well judging class; and as his daughter Ellen opened the door of the breakfast room, on the morning when this tale opens, she saw at a glance that one of the family lectures was just pending. Economy, as is usual with old gentlemen, formed the favorite subject of Mr. Harcourt’s harangues; and, to tell the truth, it was a lesson much needed by his family. But when have lectures ever prevailed against example? and how could his children credit the necessity of retrenchment, when they saw nothing around them but luxury and expense? The pleasure of many a family meal was indeed marred and turned to pain, as on the present occasion, when Mrs. Harcourt sipped her chocolate with a long face and heavy heart, and the daughters listened in silence, knowing from experience, that the least said the soonest ended, as ’twas but a gust that would soon blow over, and only felt it a very unnecessary hardship to be compelled to endure it for the time, while their brothers shrugged their shoulders and thought it “devilish hard they could not even eat their breakfast in peace,” and any of the family that happened to be so fortunate as to hear the storm before they reached the scene of action, quietly kept at a distance till it lulled to rest, before joining the family circle.

The bills once paid, the scoldings were forgotten, and Mr. Harcourt gave his dinners, and his wife and children dressed and spent as usual. As Ellen reached the breakfast room she just heard the ominous words “I can’t afford,” and she took her place among the gloomy and silent circle, to eat her muffin with what appetite she might. After a pause, Mr. Harcourt said, somewhat impatiently,

“About this wedding; I suppose we must go, eh?”

“Yes,” replied his wife, hesitatingly, “we can hardly refuse—but,” added she, more doubtingly, “I don’t know what to wear.”

“Oh!” interrupted Mr. Harcourt, testily, “if you must have new dresses, we must refuse, for I can pay no more bills,” and muttering something, he left the room.

“Your father says we must retrench,” said Mrs. Harcourt, addressing her children, “but I am sure I do not know where it is to be done. If he would only lay down any consistent plan, I would do all I could to comply with his wishes, and economize as much as possible, if I only knew where to begin. He said something about your discharging your French maid.”

“Papa’s only idea of retrenchment,” said Ellen, “seems to consist in dismissing Elise, who more than saves her wages in dressing hair and doing up muslins. But, somehow, papa appears to think, because she is a French girl, and only waits on us, that she is more expense than all the rest of the servants put together. Papa need not give so many dinners, or he may dismiss the man, or do any thing he likes, but Elise don’t go with my consent.”

“No, nor mine,” said Julia, “I think Elise is the most useful servant in the house.”

“To you I suppose she is, Julia,” said Frank, smiling, “but not essential, you will admit, to the rest of the family. I agree with you, nevertheless, that her dismissal is not going to reform the household, if reform be necessary. There is no use, however, in fretting yourselves about the business. You know my father don’t mean what he says—it’s only a habit that he has.”

“If he don’t mean it,” said Ellen, “I wish he would not say it—such habits are not pleasant. Well, mamma, what about this wedding? Shall I refuse?”

Mr. Harcourt just entering as Ellen asked this question, said, hastily—

“No—no; Mr. Campbell was my partner many years, and it will not do to refuse being present at his daughter’s marriage. Accept, by all means.”

Ellen sat down to her writing-table, and as she sealed her notes, there was a little toss of the head, that said as plainly as toss could speak, “Then I’ll have a new dress, for I won’t go shabby!” but she said nothing, and the subject seemed dismissed for the time.

A few days after the party in question, Mr. Harcourt commenced at breakfast in his usual testy manner, when harassed for money—

“I suppose we must ask these people here, as we were invited to the wedding;” it was spoken half interrogatively, and to his wife, who replied—

“I do not see how we can avoid it, very well.”

“It is particularly inconvenient to me now,” continued her husband, with increasing impatience, when Ellen said—

“I do not see any necessity for asking them, merely because we were invited the other night. It was dreadfully dull, and I am sure I hope they will never ask us again. Besides, I don’t suppose half the people who were there will dream of giving the bride a party.”

“But they will expect it from us,” rejoined the mother.

“Let them expect, then,” said Ellen, carelessly; “we are not bound to fulfill other people’s expectations, particularly when it is inconvenient to ourselves.”

But Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt had not gained their popularity by letting others “expect” attentions which they did not receive, and Mrs. Harcourt looked reproachfully at her daughter, while her father said, hastily—

“Don’t talk such nonsense, Ellen. We must do what is proper,” and, turning to his wife, he added—“If I invite Rutherford and the groomsmen to dinner, I suppose that will do?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Harcourt, hesitatingly, “but we must ask his wife, also. If you do not wish to give a lady’s dinner, I’ll invite the bride and some young people to come in the evening, and—”

“Well—well,” interrupted Mr. Harcourt, “that will do—only don’t make a party of it.”

“Oh, no,” she replied, “not over twenty; no music nor supper—quite sociably.”

Ellen was silenced by her mother’s admonishing looks, and her father’s quick rebuke, though she could not feel the impropriety of her suggestion; but being never opposed to any scheme of amusement, she was quite satisfied that they should feel the present party to be a matter of necessity. Julia, thinking that “a committee of ways and means” was about to be held, which generally elicited remarks and observations not particularly agreeable, now quietly stole off, leaving Ellen and her mother to settle the details with her father alone, for Frank and Tom had despatched their coffee and omelette with unusual despatch as soon as the subject was broached, having a peculiar distaste to all family discussions that could be avoided. This time, however, the alarm was unfounded, for Mr. Harcourt said no more, and soon after quitted the house, leaving Ellen and her mother at liberty to talk and arrange as much as they pleased.

The fear is often worse than the fact; and to tremble in anticipation is frequently quite as painful as to tremble in reality; and so Mrs. Harcourt sat dictating a list to Ellen, that, from the mournful expression of her countenance, one might have supposed was meant for a funeral, rather than a party.

Insensibly the list grew, as Mrs. Harcourt remembered many who “must and ought to be asked,” and “others who could not be omitted,” while Ellen said, that “if they had five and twenty, they might as well have fifty, the expense being all the same;” and thus, like “the wild-brier rose, it grew and it grew,” till they ceased to count, and more notes were despatched than they would have cared to tell Mr. Harcourt. And there the matter rested for a few days, little or no allusion being made to it in his presence, as he seemed irritable and vexed, why or wherefore they knew not. In fact, they were so accustomed to the wheels of the family machine being deranged, when only knowing that they creaked and screeched dreadfully, till the impediment was removed, and the very air of the household seemed to be changed, matters resumed their usual course, and the temporary stoppage was forgotten.

Mr. Harcourt was nominally a rich man, though to all intents and purposes a poor one; that is, he had a large estate, with but little income, which careless habits and an expensive family did not tend to improve. Mortgaging, the usual expedient of such people, was so frequently resorted to, as to call forth the remonstrances of his agent, while diminishing to an alarming extent the value of his property.

It was at one of these extremities that our story opens—but the business transaction of the present moment being successfully concluded, the cloud cleared off, and Mr. Harcourt, knowing he had the money, and supposing he had the land, became once more cheerful and hospitable as usual.

“Ellen,” said Frank, “are you not going to have dancing?”

“No,” she replied, “papa vetoed a band at once, and you know there is no dancing after the piano. I am afraid it will be dreadfully dull.”

“No doubt of it,” replied the brother. “In which room are we to sup?”

“There is to be no supper,” said Ellen, mournfully.

“No supper!” ejaculated Frank, with a look of horror that might have done credit to an announcement of general famine; “no supper! Why, what in the name of conscience is in the wind now?”

“An economical fit!” replied Ellen. “I oppose the party being given at all—for a shabby affair is my aversion.”

“Shabby indeed!” exclaimed Frank; “I wish to Heaven I was out of the scrape. The young men will be so dissatisfied, and people get so hungry when they don’t dance. A mean concern, indeed. I wish it were over.”

“So do I, Frank. I dread it as much as you can do.”

Mr. Harcourt now joined them, and said, cheerfully—

“Ellen, what arrangements has your mother made for the supper of this party?”

“None,” said Ellen, in astonishment; “I thought there was to be none.”

“Oh, since we are in for the business,” replied her father, “let us do it handsomely,” and he left the room in search of Mrs. Harcourt.

“I thought,” said Frank, with a look of unutterable relief, “that my father could not mean to carry his economy to such a pitch as that.”

“I’ll go and see what I can do about the music,” said Ellen, “as papa says the thing is to be done handsomely.”

And so it ended in a regular ball and supper; the only remnant of the economical plan originally proposed, being the dinner to be given to the groom, to which Mr. Harcourt still adhered.

And thus ended the effort at retrenchment. Indeed, one would have supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt thought vexation of spirit equivalent to money, or that in some way it paid for each new extravagance committed, for seldom was any expense contemplated that its enjoyment was not dashed in the commencement, and marred in its progress, by the species of vexation and worry we have just related.

There was a sound of revelry by night, that brought the prettiest women and gayest men to Mr. Harcourt’s on the evening already so much discussed, when lights, music and supper all conspired to throw their charm over a scene that did not hint of economy or limited means.

In short, it was the crack party of the season; and when it broke up, at a late hour, no one was more pleased with the success of the entertainment than Mr. Harcourt himself, who felt that he had done a proper, handsome and liberal thing, in fêting half the town to do honor to the daughter of his friend.

CHAPTER II.

“What a charming family those Harcourts are,” said the young bride, Mrs. Rutherford, the morning after the ball; “they are so warm-hearted and hospitable. I am sure no one can know Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt without loving them, and their taste is certainly exquisite.”

“How Harcourt can maintain the style he does,” replied her father, “amazes me. It can’t last long, for I know that he is embarrassed now; and where the money comes from is past my comprehension.”

“Wherever it comes from,” replied his daughter, “there appears plenty of it. In fact, papa, I suspect Mr. Harcourt is richer than you are aware of; for, you know, for years you have prophesied that ‘it could not last long,’ and yet it still continues, and the Harcourts are as gay and prosperous as ever.”

“I tell you,” rejoined Mr. Campbell, impatiently, “that I know it can’t. I wish, for Harcourt’s sake, that it could. He is a warm-hearted, excellent man, and I believe the young people are well disposed; but the extravagance with which they live, is most reprehensible, and must end in ruin.”

“Well, papa,” said Mrs. Rutherford, not choosing to prolong the discussion, “I am sorry for it, for they certainly do spend with more taste and feeling, too, than any persons I know.”

“I never heard before, Emily,” said her husband, laughing, “of people’s spending with feeling, though I have with taste.”

“I mean,” replied she, “that the Harcourts do not fête the rich and gay alone. For instance, their giving us this party. They know we are to live in a very quiet, small way, and can never entertain them; but it is a feeling of genuine kindness that prompted them to show attention to an old friend’s daughter.”

“Certainly,” said one of her brothers; “and it was beyond comparison the most brilliant party that has been given this winter. How beautiful Ellen Harcourt looked!”

“She is, indeed, a pretty creature,” replied Mrs. Rutherford. “How beautifully those delicate white roses contrasted with her rich dark hair; and her dress was so very light and white that it was a pleasure to look at her.”

“I don’t know what her dress was,” replied young Campbell, “but I never saw her look more brilliant; her eyes seemed fairly to emit light. The first thing you women always think of is the dress. She might have worn a calico, for aught I know.”

“You would have known quickly enough if she had,” rejoined his sister. “You gentlemen feel the effect without knowing the cause, and many a time I’ve heard you speak of some one’s looking ill, when, in fact, they only looked shabby.”

“Maybe,” answered her brother, “but you’ll not persuade me that it was Ellen Harcourt’s roses, and not her eyes, that I admired last night.”

“I grant you, her eyes are superb,” replied his sister; “they are as deep as dark; you look in and in, like looking in a well—”

“Yes,” continued young Campbell, “and seeing truth at the bottom. I never saw a franker, nobler expression.”

“Julia is very pretty, too,” rejoined Mrs. Rutherford.

“Yes, but not equal to Ellen,” said the young man, with earnestness.

“I don’t know what prudent man will ever think of marrying either of them,” said the old gentleman.

A shade crossed his son’s countenance, but he remained silent, till his father left the room, and then he said, addressing Mrs. Rutherford—

“My father is always harping on Mr. Harcourt’s extravagance. His children are not responsible for his imprudence.”

“No, Lewis, they are not responsible for it, but I fear they must be spoilt by it for any other life. Ellen is all by nature that you say she is; yet I cannot think,” she added, smiling, “that she is a fit wife for a poor young lawyer.”

“She would never sacrifice herself for wealth,” continued he, warmly; “she will never marry without love.”

“No,” replied Mrs. Rutherford, “she is too warm-hearted and pure-minded to be mercenary. But I fear, Lewis, she is too expensive to be romantic. Not but what she might marry all for love, but somehow, she would expect to have the world, too. In short, Lewis, she might be induced to make the sacrifice, and try the experiment; but then how would she abide it? The details of small means are any thing but romantic; and to one so unaccustomed to exertion and privation, they might out-balance love.”

Lewis’s countenance changed, and he sighed as he said—

“That would be fearful, indeed!” and the conversation dropped.

Thus were the Harcourts talked over by the very friends for whom they thought it so incumbent on them that they should incur this expense. Among their fashionable five hundred friends, the matter was canvassed pretty much in the same style, but in a lighter and more careless tone. Many wondered where the money came from, but few cared, so that they had the benefit of the extravagance in pleasant dinners and suppers, and the Harcourts were universally voted “a charming family who certainly understood entertaining.” They, in their turn, discussed their friends, and criticised their acquaintance. Ellen remarked that “the bride looked downright shabby, and thought her father might at least have given her a handsome wardrobe when she married,” whereupon Mr. Harcourt said—

“Campbell is a close old fellow. To be sure, his means are small, and his family large, and he is not fond of spending.”

Mrs. Harcourt now suggested to Ellen the propriety of her not dancing and talking quite so much another time with Lewis Campbell, as she had the evening before, which caused her to open her bright eyes very wide, and ask, “Why?”

“Because, my love, I should be very sorry that there should ever be any coolness between old friends, like the Campbells and ourselves; and should Lewis have the madness to think of you, it would be out of the question for you to listen to him, and therefore you had better distance him at once.”

Ellen looked a little surprised, and then partly smiled as she blushed; but when Frank said “Lewis was a fine fellow, pity they were so poor,” a graver expression passed her countenance, and she said no more. Young Campbell, however, gave her no opportunity of putting her mother’s advice in practice, as he rarely called, and paid her little attention when they met, for his conversation with his sister had sunk deep into his mind. ’Tis true, she often caught his eyes fixed upon her, but he turned them quickly away when he saw she noticed it; and “she could not help his looking, could she?” and therefore it is not worth while to ask, “would she, if she could?”

At any rate, Mrs. Harcourt was very well pleased to see the flirtation at an end; and Mr. Campbell, who had not been less annoyed at his son’s attentions to Ellen than her mother, was equally gratified to find that there was no further foundation for his alarm.

For the next few months, time rolled on pleasantly enough. Mr. Harcourt had funds at command, and all was sunshine within and pleasure without.

In fact, had there been no pay day in this world, these Harcourts would have been as happy and joyous a family as ever graced society. They were full of fun and frolic, which was rendered brilliant by talent, and refined by education; but their careless habits of expense, without means to support them, marred every pleasure, and embittered the existence which nature had so qualified them to enjoy. And so time wore on. When Mr. Harcourt had the funds, he paid their bills without remarks; and when he had not, he scolded, as old gentlemen alone can scold.

These extremities becoming more and more frequent, Mrs. Harcourt sighed and talked more seriously of economy; and Mr. Harcourt spoke decidedly of retrenchment. And what is more, both husband and wife commenced taking some steps toward the reform they had been talking of all their lives; and now, indeed, their children began to think they must be in earnest, and believe there was a necessity for change.

The carriage was put down, and one or two domestics dismissed, among them the “invaluable French maid,” (for on that point Mr. Harcourt was very decided, the horses and coachman seeming to him scarcely less expensive than this one servant, over whom he had no control;) and he even retrenched in his dinners, and only gave one now where he formerly had given three; and altogether, there was a reduction in their style, in consequence of which there was soon a general feeling in society that “the Harcourts were going down hill.”

“I would not mind putting down the carriage so much,” said Ellen to her sister Julia, “if people would not torment me so whenever they meet us out, particularly if at any distance from home, by asking, ‘if I walked?’”

“Yes,” said Julia, “I was so provoked last night, as we were wrapping up in the dressing-room at Mrs. Hamilton’s. Miss Bernard fixed her large black eyes upon me, with such an expression of cool scrutiny and affected surprise, as she said—‘What, do you walk?’ I had to answer civilly, while I tried to look careless and indifferent, ‘Yes;’ but she continued to gaze fixedly and steadily at me, as I put on my over-boots, and said, very calmly—‘It is a very cold night!’ ”

“It must have been very agreeable intelligence,” continued Ellen. “It is very provoking. Nobody ever asked us, formerly, ‘if we walked;’ but all of a sudden our means of conveyance seems wonderfully interesting. I believe I’ll tell the next person that asks me, that ‘we carried each other,’ like Mr. Pickwick’s poor relations, and see if that will satisfy them, for it seems as if nothing less would.”

“And what do you think of old Mrs. Wright’s impudence in asking mamma if we were going to keep this house another year? and saying there were some very nice houses in 22d street for two hundred dollars a year?”

“And what did mamma reply to her?”

“Oh, you know mamma is too well bred to be any match for Mrs. Wright, so she only gave a look of surprise, as she said ‘Ah!’ as if ‘and what is that àpropos to?’ and I think even Mrs. Wright was a little dashed.”

And thus slights and mortifications commenced, but to accumulate with their increasing embarrassments and privations. Old friends and humble relations, who had formerly looked up to the Harcourts with some pride, not unmixed with a little fear of their superior fashion, now began to assume a patronizing tone, and told them where cheap bonnets and dresses were to be found, and other voluntary information of the same kind, as unasked as undesired. And when visiting such people, they were offered any rarity on table with an earnest and serious hospitality that seemed to say, “Do, you don’t get such every day!” Mrs. Harcourt, who had been prosperous and admired and courted from her cradle, was confounded by this change, in those too, the most marked, by whom she had formerly been most flattered. Ellen often lost her patience, but never her presence of mind, under trials which, though petty, were keen, but answered always with an indifference and promptness that astonished her mother; while her sportive wit, as high bred as it was caustic, often turned a tone of assumption to one of apprehension in those whose only claims were founded on their wealth.

CHAPTER III.

“Ellen,” said Frank, “do you know that your old admirer, Lewis Campbell, is married?”

“Indeed!” she replied, with some interest, “who to?”

“I forget the lady’s name,” answered her brother. “Some one we do not know. I met Lewis, the other day. He seemed in high spirits, and asked me to call and see him. I expect he is getting on pretty well in his profession. He has taken one of those small houses next to Mrs. Rutherford’s.”

“Do the Rutherfords live in that little bit of a box yet?” inquired Julia. “I have never called since I returned her bridal visit; and I remember my amazement at any body that I knew living in such a place as that; and the furniture was in keeping with the house. I never saw any thing quite so poor and scanty. But she looked very bright and happy, though I could not help pitying her, poor thing!”

“For looking bright and happy?” asked Frank, laughing.

“Yes,” replied she, joining in his laughing, “for I could not feel but that she was only making the best Of a sorry fate.”

“You are very much mistaken,” replied her brother; “Rutherford is doing an excellent business, and will probably end in being a rich man. But he will live in that house until he is so, for I never knew anybody quite so prudent as he is.”

“I have not seen Lewis Campbell for a long while,” said Ellen! “is he as handsome and agreeable as ever?”

“He looked very well the other day. I saw him but for a moment.”

“I wonder,” continued Ellen, after a few minutes’ pause, “whether his wife is pretty.”

“As I could not very well ask Lewis the question,” answered Frank, “I cannot satisfy your curiosity on that point. Suppose you call with me to see her.”

“Oh, no,” replied she, “if I call, she’ll expect, or I’ll feel (which amounts to the same thing) as if I ought to ask her here, and you know that is out of the question. Every thing has become so shabby, and the boy is so stupid, that I dread to have any body let in.”

“Ellen,” said Frank, presently, “I almost wonder that you won’t have Thornberry. He is a gentleman-like fellow, and very rich. I think if I were a woman I would.”

“No, Frank,” she said, earnestly, “if you were a woman you would do no such thing. He is too great a bore. I can hardly keep my eyes open till ten o’clock when he comes here, and I think I could not exist if I were married to him. Frank, poverty is an evil, but there are worse things in the world than poverty.”

The Harcourts continued thus struggling to maintain appearances, and keep the secret every body knew, trusting in the sanguine spirits of such dispositions that something (that refuge of the reckless) would turn up to relieve them from their embarrassments—but it would not do. The crash came at last, as all their friends had said long ago it would. Mr. Harcourt had mortgaged as long as he could raise any money on his property, which finally was obliged to go in the hands of assignees. And now, indeed, the Harcourts had to drain the bitter cup to its dregs. Their fortunes had fallen in the “sere and yellow leaf,” which brings anything but “troops of friends.” The last barrier that shielded them from curiosity and impertinence was broken down, and their domestic affairs exposed to the observation of every body. Some few, remembering only their kindness in days of prosperity, and knowing their unfitness to encounter the storms of adversity, grieved for their sorrows and coming trials. But the greater part, and those, too, who had been among their intimate friends and flatterers, dwelt upon their extravagance with indignation, and its results with something hardly short of exultation. Many heard of their misfortunes with indifference, or mayhap, if feeling particularly amiable, said, “Poor things, I am sorry for them,” and then, as they disappeared from society, were as completely forgotten as if they had never been.

A small annuity had been left Mrs. Harcourt by a distant relation, and secured to her in a manner that had often provoked her husband when he would have been glad to avail himself of the “pitiful trifle” which had happily been tied up beyond his reach, and which now was the sole support of the family. It was but a few hundreds, that they would once have deemed scarce enough to procure some of those superfluities, by them accounted necessaries of life; but it now sufficed to enable them to take a very small house in the outskirts of the city, which, scantily furnished from the shabbiest remnants of their once handsome establishment, they soon took possession of. A stout maid of all works, and one little girl, formed their household; and now those who had been reared in indulgence and luxury, were to learn the hard task of self-denial and exertion.

Mr. Harcourt, at first stunned by the blow, had been guided and governed by others throughout the crisis, and, until settled in his new abode, seemed scarcely to realize the change which had taken place in his situation. But when he found his sons compelled to leave a home that could barely afford a shelter to their mother and sisters, and his daughters reduced to toil and privation they were all unused and unfitted for, his spirit failed, and the old man, once so irritable and impatient, was now meek and humble as a child. Sometimes, indeed, in the forgetfulness of the moment, he would recur to former wants and habits in a manner that strangely blended the ridiculous with the sorrowful. As, for instance, one day, when Ellen ran into her mother’s room, half laughing, but with tears in her eyes, as she said—

“What are we to do, mamma? There’s papa in front of the house, calling for some one to hold Mr. Flemming’s horse, while he comes in for a minute; and who is to hold him, I or the little girl, I am sure I do not know. Poor papa! he cannot always recollect that there is not a man or boy about the premises. There is nothing to be done for it, however, but to let him call, unless Mr. Flemming’s patience gives out, and he rides off.”

Broken by the sorrow and suffering of the last weary twelve months, Mr. Harcourt sank to that repose the world could no longer afford him. Bitter were the tears that were shed over his grave, for to the grief that naturally attends the death of a dearly beloved husband and father, was added the misery of knowing that the mental distress he had endured during the last year of his existence, had shortened his days and embittered his last moments.

Melancholy were the months that followed this sad event to this lonely and blighted family. As Mrs. Harcourt gazed upon her lovely daughters, and thought of her boys, turned forth in the world to struggle for existence, and fight for their daily bread, her heart ached with anxiety and anguish. When friends told her, “there is a provision for the girls, and young men can always take care of themselves,” little did they think of the hardships and toils, and worse than all, the temptations of those thus cast forth from the anchor and shelter of home, to grapple with the trials and sufferings of life. God shield and guard them in their fierce encounter with the world, under which many a bright spirit has sunk, to be carelessly mentioned by the unfeeling or thoughtless “as having gone to the devil.”

But the Harcourts were brave-hearted, noble-spirited youths, and bound together by the deep and holy bond of strong family affection; and though the mother’s heart was sadly tried by the cheerless lot of her children, yet it often throbbed with pride and joy at some new proof of their integrity and worth.

Too proud to be patronized by those who once felt honored by their friendship, and too delicate and high-minded to receive obligations from their more wealthy relations, they withdrew as much as possible from society, and dwelt apart, sad and solitary, living in the past and hoping for the future.

Once only Ellen was induced, at the earnest request of her mother, who could not bear to see her so cut off from all enjoyments, to return to scenes of former gaiety, by accepting an invitation from Mrs. Rutherford, now the mistress of a pretty establishment, to attend a party at her house. But when again she found herself in gayly lighted rooms, surrounded by joyous groups and brilliant music, she was so strongly reminded of the past, and the present pressed so heavily on her heart, she could believe that time had been when she, too, a “beauteous ripple of this brilliant stream,” had been as happy as those she saw about her. She found, too, that the lapse of a few years had made her almost a stranger in society. Changes, that had not reached her ears, having withdrawn many whose places were filled by others whom she knew not. And the few she recognized looked at her with a somewhat surprised and dreamy expression, as if they had a sort of indistinct remembrance of her, as one among the dead or married, and hardly knew how to accost her. And when they did, she felt all the embarrassment of one who, not having kept up with the current of the world, was at a loss for the interest and chit-chat of the moment; and, in short, with that most painful Rip Van Winkle feeling of being forgotten and displaced, after a constrained and sorrowful evening, she returned, sadder and less disposed to quit her quiet home than she had ever been before.

“Julia,” said Frank, one day, “do you know I think my mother made a great mistake when she discouraged Lewis Campbell’s addressing Ellen? He is the only person, I think, she ever liked, and he is now at the head of his profession.”

“Indeed, Frank,” she replied, “I think our whole life has been a mistake. When I look around me, and see those we knew in former years living in simplicity and economy, now surrounded by their well-earned comforts, I see,” she added, smiling, “that those who began in small houses to end in large ones, are wiser than we, who began where they end, and end where they began. But I am glad to hear that Lewis Campbell’s industry and self-denial have been rewarded with success. There is no capital like good character, good abilities, and a good profession, which, thank Heaven, dear Frank, are left to you. For Ellen and myself, ‘whose baser stars have shut us up in wishes,’ there is no future but in your success.”

Frank’s eyes filled with tears, as from his pale and faded sister he glanced around the small and scantily furnished apartment, which, though shabby and poor enough, yet had that air the grace and refinement of its inhabitants will throw around the most desolate abode, and which marks the habitation of those who have seen better days, and thought of the many sad and weary years that must elapse before his brother and himself could revive the fortunes of those who had now fallen, Heaven help them, to the sad estate of a Decayed Family. “And thus the day drives on, though storms keep out the sun.”

A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

BY MRS. C. M. SAWYER.

BY GEORGE HILL.

HE SPECULATETH UPON THE WILL.

BY ERNEST HELFENSTEIN.

The Student may have been led to his subject from a conviction that, in one instance of his life, this faculty failed of its office; and he was defeated of success, because he failed in magnanimity to himself. Conversant with books, rather than the world, dreaming, it may be; but, alas, he knew it not. In the solitudes of mountain stream, wildering through the solemn woods of our beautiful state, he knew not he was creating men and women of his own, rather than thinking of such as already existed. He awoke from his slumber to find peace and life itself wrecked.

Let it pass—let us think of this high faculty of the true man, by which he gathers up the different parts belonging to his nature; thought, sentiment, and feeling, all that is his own; and as the strong man, with bit and rein, curbeth the motions of the fiery steed, even so doth his will hold the whole man in subjection. It is thus that he is powerful in himself, thus that he swayeth others. It is the will that imparteth power to subdue circumstances, overcome the elements, and subject the world unto itself. Nothing baffleth, nothing appalleth him of the strong will. Where another might defer, he goeth unfalteringly onward, and his very faith achieves the conquest. Hence hath the Great Teacher said, “if ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might remove mountains. As your faith is, so is it unto you.”

It is the strong will that knoweth not the impossible; that turneth not to the right, nor to the left, in the way of its purposes. It hath strange dreams, and they are realized—for it seeth no lion in the way. It was this that led Cæsar across the Rubicon to empire—the want of it, that lost Anthony the world. It was this that made Napoleon sublime. The Student talketh not now of justice, but of the omnipotence of will; and it was this, more concentrated in that one man than in any other of his race, that made men, nay, empires, emulous to bow before it. Napoleon was the man of will everywhere, in the camp, the field, the legislative body, and lady’s boudoir. What Napoleon was in energy of purpose, every man may be. Believe, act, and it is done.

There is a path for man—but he shapeth it by his own will. It must be one difficult, and beset with perils, or where were the glory of achievement? He may make it one brightening even to eternity, or dim, and covered with shadows and thick darkness. The student hath found that man treadeth this path, often for many years, idling as it were; then cometh the narrow and difficult pass. He is besieged by passion and circumstance—he feeleth now is the crisis of his destiny—now it is given unto him to choose—to reject. It is as if the Lord God thundered from Sinai, saying, “choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” Whichever way his choice lieth, he must feel forever, and forever it resteth with himself. It is the will that must be, is powerful to good, or to evil. It establisheth the monarch upon his throne, and keepeth the beggar in the dust. It lifteth up the one, and casteth down the other.

The student hath found the poets full of illustration. Shakespeare and he bendeth his head reverently in the utterance, everywhere unfoldeth the principle. Everywhere he maketh the will work itself to its purposes, independent of results, for the will is blind, save to its object.

To Macbeth he hath given all the baseness of an ambitious usurper. He covets the crown, but hesitates as to the means; and this, too, not, it would seem, from moral scruples, so much as a natural tenderness of character. He is the villain at heart, but the coward in action. Hence his wife taunts him with being “less in his own act and valor,” than he is in desire. This timid submission to the control of events, where he, looking at the prediction that had promised the crown, is half resolved to wait till time should accomplish it, saying—

She reproaches, thus—

It is not till crime and blood have driven the weak man all lengths, that the will becomes buoyant, and then it is that of desperation, when he cries—

His whole career is that of an infirm, cowardly assassin, with conscience enough to goad, but not to govern him. A moody, not concentrated will.

Not so his uncompromising wife, whose ambitious will scruples at nothing, and is subdued only when repose has brought insanity. She contrasts her own savage energy of purpose with the vacillation of her husband—

When the terrified and conscience-stricken Macbeth hath brought the bloody daggers from the room of death, she orders their return, and to his refusal, upbraids his weakness—

Iago is another example of unswerving constancy in evil; and the generous Moor and fond-hearted Desdemona struggle in his toils only as the poor bird doomed to destruction.

Hamlet, subjected to a fate too vast for his powers, everywhere deploreth his want of energy to enact the avenger.

When he should act, he falleth to speculation. He seeketh delay, and resorteth to evasions and expedients, and thus loseth the time for action. He is more intent upon convicting others of crime, than upon revenging it himself. He forgetteth power, love, even, in his deep sense of wrong. At first, affects insanity for his own purpose; finally, becomes half bewildered, and yet is no nearer the great work he hath to accomplish. Conscious of his imbecility, when the ghost reappears, his mournful self-reproach is in this wise—

And the ghost—

By a sudden impulse he killeth Polonius, hoping it may have been the king. But he hath no deadly concentration for premeditated vengeance—the will never becomes despotic.

Richard the Third deliberately starts upon his course of action. There is cool self-possession, and unswerving energy of purpose.

He redeems his pledge, through crime and blood, till he is fixed upon the throne. These are touches of Shakespeare only.

The modern poets afford but few instances of this high faculty belonging to man. The Student hath found that few of them deal wisely in strong emotions. Passion becometh with them disgusting in its excess, or its legitimate utterance is lost. A strong will belongeth only to a strong man. The full man must be great in reason, great in moral power, and great in impulsive passion. He may have reason and moral power, and become great as a theologian, a philosopher it may be, but he cannot be the great man without great passion. This it is that imparteth intensity of will.

In Byron we find the action of this principle, but scarcely powerful enough to control circumstances. Of the Corsair—

Despotic, cool, and courageous, governing himself even in his own devotion to love, he still—

A man must have within himself the elements of what he would wish to describe. He must feel himself, or he can never make others feel.

Of American poets few have the deep earnest feeling requisite for powerful construction of character. Few rise to the dignity of passion. They may be fanciful, just, perfect in their art, but they are not impulsive. The Student can, therefore, cite little from their pages in behalf of his theory of the will.

Hoffman, Dana and Longfellow have it in the highest degree; the latter displayeth it rather as an incitement, a principle, than any thing else; it is the star of the unconquered will, an ideal—not an action. Dana, in his Buccaneer, exhibiteth the principle in action. Others bow down before it, and the good and the lovely become its victims. Hoffman maketh the principle grand in its concentration. It all but usurpeth Omnipotence. There is something fearfully appalling in the fierce will with which he hath endowed his savage lover, by which he subjecteth the mind, body, life itself, of his foe.

And again—

The Student judgeth from the name, that Hoffman hath the German blood in his veins—he hath the German soul, and his pen telleth of the wild and marvelous. Let him visit the forests of Pennsylvania, would he recall his pre-existence, and his “ghost riders” may people their gloom, even as if the very Hartz were here.

The Student must forbear, lest his subject should grow to a volume, rather than an essay. It is the will that maketh us what we are now, and what we shall be hereafter. It is the will that curbeth the tempest of passion, saying, “peace, be still.” It is the will that graspeth the angel of prayer in the stillness of night, and saith, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” It is the will that saith to the dead, even, “Come forth!”

BY H. HASTINGS WELD.

“He’s a bad man, I tell you—I’m positive—and I never was deceived in my life.”

“How do you know, uncle?”

“Oh—why—indeed it would take a long time to tell. There are a thousand reasons why I think so. One is—but then it’s no matter. I tell you I’m positive.”

But Uncle Meredith had told almost his only reason for disliking any person who was the subject of conversation. The two last words, pronounced with extra emphasis, conveyed the principal cause of his antipathy. He had taken a dislike, and he was “positive.” Clara knew that to press the matter further would only make the case worse; she desisted, and the conversation ceased just in the nick of time—for in another instant Mr. Charles Stanwood, the identical “bad man,” was announced. Clara had time to check her smiles at the awkwardness of his apparition at such an inopportune moment, and positive Uncle Meredith took care to disappear between Mr. Stanwood’s approach and his entrance. Brief morning call commonplaces between the lady and gentleman may be imagined by the reader, and then he shall follow us down town with Uncle Meredith.

Uncle Meredith was a bachelor of forty-five. He took a father’s care of an orphan child, who called him uncle. With the best heart in the world, and every requisite to fill the place of that useful man in society, a husband and a father, he had remained a bachelor from the influence of the only fault in his character—his obduracy, and unwillingness to relinquish an impression once entertained. Warm-hearted where he formed an attachment, and as sudden in conceiving his likes as his dislikes, he passed through love passages in his early days, enough to earn for him, with those who did not know him, the character of a male coquette. Justice, however, compels us to say that Uncle Meredith never, even in the heyday of youth, commenced marked attentions to any one whom he had not fully determined beforehand to make a wife. From the first moment that he entertained a penchant he was “positive.” Some of his attachments—most of them, indeed—were snapped by the high spirit of the young ladies, who did not like his imperial way of wooing, as if he delayed proposing only to suit his own convenience, sure that when he did come to particulars, he had only to name the day, and hear it assented to. Once or twice he was “ridiculously jilted,” after he had gone so far as to order his wedding suit, and intimate to his friends the precise hour when the ceremony was to come off. This cruel mode of punishing a rather innocent presumption might have broken another man’s heart, but Meredith only said, “the loss is as much hers as mine,” and dismissed the lady from his memory with—“She will yet wish she had married me—I’m positive.” So one of them did. She married a man who not only squandered her property, but broke her heart, by a course of base conduct, ending in desertion. Clara was the offspring of this unfortunate marriage, and her mother showed her appreciation of Meredith’s character, by bequeathing to him the care of her unprotected and penniless child. When Uncle Meredith said to Clara, “I never was mistaken in my life,” he referred particularly to his prediction in relation to her mother, but of course he was too generous to impart to her that bit of history. She could not tell what made him repeat the sentence so earnestly and pertinaciously; and the graver he became, the more she smiled, till oftentimes she laughed outright. It was too merry and innocent a laugh to offend. The bachelor would shake his head imploringly, and Clara, puzzled, would check the outward manifestations of her mirth, in deference to her kind-hearted guardian.

“He is a bad man, I know. Birds of a feather fly together, and why should Mr. Charles Stanwood be so often seen with that old wretch Bingley? And what brought the man here, when every body thought him dead and buried? Why didn’t he die while he was gone? He couldn’t have done a better thing, I’m positive. But here he comes—he must not know that I recollect his villain face.”

And at that very moment, who should he meet but Bingley? The two men passed each other. Uncle Meredith looked as intently as possible upon nothing in particular, turning his eyes neither to right nor left. Bingley stole furtive glances at the sturdy bachelor as he passed him, and, thinking himself not remembered, stood still looking after Meredith, as if to make sure that he was not mistaken in his man. And as Meredith could not resist the impulse to take a look back also, their eyes met. It was awkward, very. Old Meredith’s neck had a “crick” in it for a week afterwards, from the suddenness with which he averted his head, and he stumped away as industriously as if he were running from a serpent. He could not conceal his disgust, and it convinced the other of his identity.

“If he would but give me ten minutes’ conversation,” sighed Bingley. “Like all the rest of the world he would annoy me with too much, if I chose to apply the true open sesame to men’s lips. But I will not. If the pauper gets few words, he generally gets direct ones, and tolerably honest.” And the old man pursued his way—a stranger among those whom be rightly judged that he could make emulous friends, in outward courtesy and seeming, if he chose. No one had a glance of recognition for him; for if any, like Meredith, remembered him, like Meredith they chose also to deny their acquaintance. The few who recollected him were generally feeble old men like himself. A younger generation made the bustle through which he picked his noiseless and unobtrusive course, and he felt more isolated among the thousands of eager passengers hurrying to and fro, than he did when alone with his Maker in his silent apartment. His countenance bore the traces of a long remembered grief—grief which had once been remorse. But over that pervaded an expression of calm resignation, as if he felt that he had done all within human power to atone for past misconduct; and that his repentance had been accepted, and he had been forgiven. He was conscious that his remaining days were short, and he was anxious to perform some still unaccomplished duty. “If I could have one word with him,” Bingley said again, aloud to himself. Two light-hearted girls started as his cracked voice unexpectedly sounded in their ears. A shade of melancholy passed over their countenances as they turned to look at one, whose like Holmes has so touchingly described, as “the last leaf on the tree.” The prettier and kinder of these girls was our friend Clara—Clara, of whom, by the way, we have not given one word of description! Was ever sketcher so ungallant? Haste we then to supply the omission.

Clara’s lips were not as Cowley hath it, and all the modern poets, after him, “twin cherries on one stem.” Nor was her neck alabaster, for we have already deposed to her having turned her head, and flexibility is not a trait of any mantel ornaments, save those horrid Chinese mandarins which used to nod their points at you in Dunn’s Collection. Her teeth were not pearls, her eyes were not stars, nor were her cheeks vermilion and white velvet. She was a good, healthy beauty; cheerfulness irradiated her expressive features, and easy propriety marked her manners. There, sir! If you cannot fall in love with such a woman, you may go further and fare worse. We have forgotten whether her eyes are black, blue, or hazel—and the reader must follow Mistress Glass’s kind general permission, and color “to taste.” At any rate they were of the right shade to be filled with Charley Stanwood; and if your lady’s eyes are of a hue as propitious, you need care not for a colorman’s classification of them.

It is evening. Clara is amusing Uncle Meredith with a song, accompanied by herself upon the piano. He will insist upon “The Young Froggy,” “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” and that song about a well in some happy land, the waters of which conferred domestic supremacy upon the husband or wife who should first drink of them after marriage. The bride in this “romaunt” took a phial from the magic well with her to church, which she drank at her leisure, while her husband ran back to the spring, astonished that his wife did not contend with him in the race. Such were among the piano music which Meredith had heard “in the days when he went Philandering—a long time ago,” and he will not believe that any modern music can approach them. He had just said, for the thousandth time—“It’s the way all women would do, I’m positive,” when Mr. Stanwood was announced. There was no escape for the old gentleman now—for he was in his slippers, and it was two full hours to any rational approach to bed-time. To attempt to flit would be too marked an insult, and Meredith dared not so much disoblige Clara; for he loved his ward, and she needed no other “gramerie” than her winning ways, to hold his eccentricities in awe in the presence of visiters, before whom indulgence in them would make her unhappy.

No young lady will probably require to be told how awkward one feels, when a person is present whose attentions are certainly not disagreeable to her, while an elder friend is fastened to the room, feeling himself not merely de trop in his own house, but unjustly so, as the compulsory host of a man whom he heartily dislikes. Clara trembled—not for the fear that any explosion, or any expression of her uncle’s real feelings would occur then, but lest Charles, in his happy innocence of any knowledge of the old gentleman’s dislike, should drop some expression, harmless in itself, which positive Uncle Meredith would torture into a new count in his indictment against him, to edify her withal at their next breakfast. And, as is usually the case where a lady or a gentleman undertakes, in nervous agitation, the direction of conversation, in order to steer it clear of quicksands, Miss Clara herself stumbled upon the very difficulty she would of all others have avoided. If she had let the old man alone, he might have fallen into inattention to their conversation, or have caught here and there a disconnected word only; but she chose to draw him out, and to compel him to converse, while she saw that it cost him immense struggles to be so gracious as to mingle more than by monosyllables.

“You must have hurried down town this morning, uncle—for I went out directly after you, and did not catch one glimpse of your hat even. I wanted to see you just then, very much.”

“Yes, Clara, I did walk a good pace.” And the old man fell to cogitating within himself. Stanwood then must have made a short call. Uncle Meredith reviewed his experience, and found that circumstance was ominous. When he was young and gallant, his general attentions to a young lady, made without a very particular object, led him to trifle away whole forenoons. His short calls were business visits, devoted to direct and important questions. He had invariably received direct answers, closing the negotiations abruptly. It was evident that Stanwood had met no such misfortune that day, or he would not have been at the house in the evening. Clara wanted to see her uncle just then. Meredith dropped into the brownest of brown studies, and Clara, despairing of making any thing of her uncle, addressed her next remark to Stanwood, who, too, began to show symptoms of discomfort. It was really an icy party.

“I dare say Jane and I must have lost our last chance of catching him when we stopped to look round at such a dear, unhappy old man—”

“A hey—what?—I’m positive—”

“Why, uncle! You have really waked up again. I am glad there is something that can fix your attention this evening.” Uncle Meredith looked as if he were any thing but glad, and Clara proceeded. “So venerable—so infirm—such an expression of loneliness and patient sorrow in his countenance! Nobody appeared to know him, and he knew nobody. Just as we passed him, he startled us with an exclamation—as if some former friend had refused him comfort. Now who could be so cruel to a feeble old man?”

Uncle Meredith fidgetted, and made no reply. Stanwood seemed elated, yet uneasy that the conversation had taken such a turn. He addressed leading questions to her, as if he guessed who the dear old man might be, and wished to establish his identity with some person whom he himself knew—Meredith meanwhile growing more uneasy at every word—till he rose at length from his chair, and paced the room in an agitation which he no longer made any effort to conceal. Clara looked at him in astonishment, utterly unaware what circumstance or utterance could possibly have given affairs this unpropitious turn—as unexpected as unpropitious. Charles waited a few moments, and then broke the silence, speaking in a tone that indicated his knowledge that the simple and apparently unimportant declaration he was about to make, required all his moral courage to breast the storm which he was sensible it would raise.

“Miss Meredith, the person who has attracted your sympathies is entirely worthy of them, and as needy of solace as he is deserving of it. I am proud to say that he is my best and dearest friend.”

Old Meredith slopped, utterly aghast at the boldness of this declaration. He raised his hands, and then let them fall at his side, as if the effrontery of the avowal just made had filled him with surprise too deep for words, and with indignation too extreme for expression.

“Tell me at least,” he at last said, “Mr. Stanwood, that you do not know this man’s history.”

Was he a murderer—a parricide—what horrible crime had he committed? A thousand such questions suggested themselves to Clara’s mind in an instant, as she leaned breathlessly forward, her lips parted in earnest attention to catch Charles’s denial. She shared her guardian’s horror when Stanwood calmly answered—

“I know every line and passage of his life.”

“Why he’s the worst man alive—and if you—well if he is your friend, and if there is any thing in community of thought and character—then—I’m positive! But there young man. I won’t think so badly of you. You have heard his own version of the story—and he’s an old deceiver. He has cozened you, and you will cast him off when you know all.”

“He has told me the truth and the whole truth, sir. I have found it corroborated by circumstances, and by the concurrent testimony of those who know him as well, apparently, as you do. When men assume a false character they do not claim a bad one. Cleaner breast could not be made by confession than Bingley has made to me. Cast him off I cannot, as I hope not to be cast off for my own errors and follies—not to say crimes—in which it was his superior judgment and experience that arrested me.”

Clara thought Charles had never before looked so manly, or spoken so nobly. Even the old man seemed struck with the generous conduct of the young advocate of the absent. He tendered him his hand, and, as he pressed it, said—“You are a generous young man—or,” and he dropped the hand again rather suddenly, “you are a rogue arch enough to be a match for Bingley in his best days. One or the other—I don’t know which—but—I’m positive! Come, sit down, and tell me all you know of him.”

“Must a witness criminate himself?”

“You’ve a merciful judge there, you rogue—and as for me—why hang me if I don’t like you too. You are too frank to be wicked—I’m positive. But I’ll send Clara off—oh, I recollect, she wanted to see me. I thought she fingered wild on the piano, before you came in—and now I remember she tried to help to bread instead of potatoes with a spoon, to-day. Yes—she does want to see me, I’m positive—and what she wants to say can’t possibly concern you. I’ll send you off, if you please—and talk to her first—or, I’ll take one of you at a time into the library, while the other is left here to poke out the fire. See how the poor child blushes! There’s something in this, I’m positive.”

Clara rose, blushing to her temples. Charles beckoned her to sit again, and, to tell the truth, she was not at all disinclined so to do. The subject had become very interesting to her—and no less confusing; for how to trace the disjointed connection which seemed to exist between Bingley, Charles, her uncle, and herself, she could not imagine. And yet a connection there certainly was, of some mysterious description. Charles commenced—

“You know I have made the tour of Europe”—

Old Meredith knew this, and had been “positive” when he first saw Stanwood, that no good could come of a young American who brought home a pair of moustaches and an imperial. Charles proceeded—

“During that tour, I spent a month in that centre of fashion, elegance, frivolity, and genteel vice, the city of Paris.” Clara looked “hush!” Charles smiled and continued. “One night I had lost large sums at play—”

Old Meredith “humphed.” Young Clara traced the borders of a nondescript flower in the carpet with the toe of her slipper.

“I was about to stake my purse and its contents on a last throw, in my desperation, when an old awkward servant stumbled against me with a salver in his hand, and we both fell. As I stooped to raise him he whispered, ‘It was intentional. Play no more, but meet me in a few minutes outside the door! The interruption made a good pretext for desisting from play, and I followed the old man’s advice. He met me, according to his appointment. ‘Your gentleman was cheating you,’ he said, ‘and none but an habitué could detect him.’ I wished to go back and demand reparation. ‘What!’ urged my new friend. ‘Better far accuse yourself of some crime to the first police agent you meet. It will be a pleasanter way of getting into prison, and save the awkwardness of violence. Don’t go back at all to-night, or ever,’ he added earnestly, drawing me from the door. ‘I was ruined there. Where I once played for thousands, I now sweep the floors, and look eagerly in my morning dust for such coin as may have fallen from the tables over-night.’ ‘Why do you remain there?’ I asked. ‘Why do I eat, and drink, and live?’ he answered. It is the best service for a ruined gamester. If I must serve my fellows for a menial’s livery, who of them will take me with a character from there as my last place?”

Clara felt relieved, and appealed to her uncle with a look of triumph. “So far so good,” said old Meredith. “The servant was Bingley, but no doubt he forgot to tell you that the property he lost there was, in part stolen from his wife, and in part the proceeds of forged paper.”

“Indeed he did not. I proposed to him that I would dismiss my Frenchman, who had kindly piloted me to the gambling houses of Paris, and take him instead, who had led me away from them. Then he told me that I could not trust him, and assigned the very reason that you have given. I did trust him, and found in him a mentor as well as a servant.”

Old Meredith paced the floor again. “It will all come out, I’m positive. It must—and the longer it is deferred the worse it will be.” He walked to Clara’s chair, and as he leaned over her, his tears fell upon her neck. He caught her to his heart, and then turning suddenly to Stanwood said—

“You believe in this man’s reformation. One more test, and that will settle your sincerity, I’m positive. Would you marry his daughter?”

“If I were unengaged—and—” He stopped—amazement was preparing for Clara. The old man said abruptly—

“There she sits. Yes—my ward—my more than child is Bingley’s daughter, born after his flight in disgrace. It can’t be helped—it must be known—prove your sincerity, or you are a bad man, I’m positive, and I never was mistaken in my life!”

Charles took the poor girl in his arms, and saved her sinking to the floor under this revelation, astounding as it was to both of them. The old man capered about the floor like a madman—then dashed tears from both eyes at once, and clasped the pair in his arms, if in a manner less sentimental than a younger man might have done, certainly with a heart as sincere. “All right!” he shouted, “now I am positive, and I never was mistaken in my whole life!”

A few words finish the story. Bingley had come over to New Orleans, as Stanwood’s servant. In that city he received the unexpected intelligence that the decease of some distant connections had left him heir at law to a large property. The proofs of his early crime were lost, the obligation to make good his peculation never could be. Nor did he desire it. He was ready to restore all, to the uttermost farthing. When a lovely daughter was presented him as the crown and comfort of his old age, and that daughter the affianced of his other best earthly friend, his happiness waited only their nuptials to be complete. We need not say that this was not long delayed.

Uncle Meredith protests that he always liked that young Stanwood—he knew he was a sterling fellow from the first—he was positive of it—and he “never was mistaken in his life!”

The moral of our sketch is obvious. Let no man’s ability for reformation be distrusted, and no one’s repentance be despised. While He who made us accepts forgiveness, it is only man’s wicked self-righteousness which would impotently deny the pardon which Heaven has accorded.

FROM THE GERMAN OF A. GRUN.

BY WILLIAM PITT PALMER.

FROM THE BOOK OF SAMUEL.

BY N. P. WILLIS.

BY EDWARD A. STANSBURY.

[A PICTURE BY LEUTZE.]

BY MARY L. LAWSON.

Although it is our general practice to limit our reviews of new books to those which are by native authors, or at least the issues of the domestic press, we have been induced, for several reasons, to deviate from our custom in the present instance. The first and principal cause is, of course, the intrinsic merit of the works themselves, and the erudition of the author, who unites the genius and inspiration of the poet to the highest classical attainment, the most thorough acquaintance of any living writer with the languages of the Scandinavian nations, a rare accomplishment in the tongues of continental Europe, and the exact science of the naturalist and botanist, in which last branch of knowledge he is everywhere admitted to be among the first living authorities. Mr. Herbert, who has risen to a high station in the Church of England—being at present Dean of Manchester, under which title he will probably be recognized by many of our readers as having, while presiding at the British Association, paid a tribute as happy as it was merited to Mr. Everett, our Envoy at the Court of St. James—was in his younger life a very rising member of the House of Commons, and practiced law in the admiralty court, well known as Doctor’s Commons, at the period so interesting to our countrymen, when the Berlin and Milan Decrees and the British Orders in Council were on the point of precipitating us into a second war with the mother country. He was at that time largely retained on the part of American ship owners, and one, not the least interesting of the papers in these volumes, is his argument in the case of the Snipe, delivered before Sir William Scott, on the 12th of July, 1812, at which time the declaration of war, though it had been made in this country, had not reached England. In his political views Mr. Herbert has ever been a consistent and liberal whig, and particularly distinguished for his kindly sentiments toward this country and her institutions. As a divine, he has shown himself no less liberal and tolerant to the consciences of others than strict and unpardoning to his own. He was from the first a strenuous advocate of the removal of the disabilities of the Roman Catholics, when the clergy in general earnestly opposed that great measure of justice; and he afterward favored the passage of the Reform Bill, having seconded Lord Morpeth’s nomination for the West Riding of Yorkshire, after that bill had been rejected by the Peers in 1831.

These works of Mr. Herbert, now published first in a collected form, consist of two large volumes of extremely miscellaneous matter, printed in conformity to his “Attila, or the Triumphs of Christianity,” an epic poem published by him in 1838, and pronounced by the Edinburgh Review to be the most sustained and grandest effort of that nature, couched in the chastest and most stately verse, since the appearance of the Paradise Lost. This review, with copious extracts from the work itself, proving the justice of the opinion, may be found in the New York republication of the splendid periodical which contained it, and, therefore, we prefer confining ourselves to the two other volumes, except that we will here quote a few lines from the exordium of the ninth book, embodying one of the most beautiful tributes ever paid in verse, to Washington—

The first volume, which consists wholly of poetry, is divided into the following heads: Horæ Scandicæ, or works relating to old Scandinavian literature; and contains Hedin, an original poem of extreme beauty in the Spenserian stanza; Helga, an original poem, in seven cantos of octo-syllabic metre, illustrative of the superstitions and mythology of those wild rovers of the deep, the Norse or Icelandic sea-kings, whom late discoveries prove to have been the earliest adventurers to this continent; three smaller pieces; and twenty translations from the various Eddas and Sagas, relating to the Runic Scalds and champions, with a dissertation on their poetry, and copious notes. This may safely be pronounced the most curious and striking publication, on a subject of deep interest, concerning which extremely little is known, that has ever been made in our language. The translations are admirably executed, in rough, bold, and stirring English—genuine Saxon English—well suited to the rugged thoughts of the old warrior minstrels; their fidelity to the text is unquestionable, as, independently of the air of undoubted originality which they possess within themselves, Mr. Herbert has accompanied many of them with literal prose translations, proving the strict correctness of the poetical version. The Hora Scandicæ is succeeded by Hora Pieriæ, or Poetry on Various Subjects; from the first piece of which, Pia della Pietra, an exquisite Italian story told in heroic couplets, we select the opening lines, as a specimen of the rich varied style, the modulated rhythm, and the glowing imagery of our author.

To all genuine lovers of true poetry such lines as these cannot fail to impart rare pleasure in these days of degenerate song. It is true that they are mere description, but it is description of the best and highest order. Nor would it be difficult to point out many a passage evolving pathos and sublimity in no less remarkable a degree than that we have quoted displays of sweetness and graphic beauty. Pia is followed by another tale of the same order, Julia Montalban, which, though by no means inferior in poetry, is hardly so great a favorite with us as Pia or the Guahiba, a tale in blank verse—which in our opinion is Mr. Herbert’s forte—taken from an incident mentioned in Baron Humboldt’s book on South America. The Wanderer of Jutland, a tragedy, in five acts, contains much fine and stately verse, and some striking and powerful incidents, yet is far from equal to the other poems. These are followed by a variety of smaller pieces, odes, canzone, and the like, some of them original, and some translations, among the latter being two of the Olympic odes of Pindar, in strophe and antistrophe, exhibiting not only the style and words, but the rhythm, accentual cadence, and harmony of the original. After these we find three original sonnets, one in Spanish and two in Italian; a sonnet translated from the Greek of Euripides into the Italian, which has been pronounced by the highest critical authority “the most perfect specimen of Italian verse ever composed by a native of the ruder North.” This is followed by an original Italian canzone, after the manner of Guidi, which completes the book. Then comes, concluding the first volume, The Sylvarum Liber, consisting of poetry in Greek and Latin, in many various measures, including a translation of Ossian’s Darthule into Homeric hexameters—several portions of the old English dramatists transfused into tragic iambics—a Sapphic and a Pindaric ode in Greek—Rhenus, a Latin poem which gained the prize at Oxford in 1797, and among several other Latin poems, last, though not least, a magnificent Alcaic ode on the bringing back of Napoleon’s relics from St. Helena, which we commend strongly to our classic readers. We should have stated above as a proof of Mr. Herbert’s intimate acquaintance with the tongues of the North, that the Scandinavian portion of the work contains an original poem in the Danish language and verse, dedicating the translations following to his friend Christian Anker of Copenhagen. Thus, independently of English, we have original poems in three modern and two dead languages, all of which, saving the Danish, with which we profess boldly our total unacquaintance, we venture to pronounce of rare and exceeding merit. The last volume, Horæ Pedestres, contains all the prose works of the author, with the exception of those on Botany and Natural History. The first five articles were originally published in the Edinburgh Review during its most palmy days, being a review after Componimenti Lyrici of Matthias, displaying a most intimate acquaintance with the poetry of Italy—one on the Harmony of Language and Mechanism of Verse, which is universally acknowledged in England to be the most masterly paper on that subject that has ever been published, showing the most extraordinary knowledge of the prosody of different languages, and evincing in every line the great industry and perseverance by which alone such erudition can be gained. This is followed by a note on Horatian metres, which is indeed invaluable to the student of that exquisite lyric, so much so, indeed, that we should be glad to see it and the additional note on Horatian metres, at page 151, published in this country as a school pamphlet. The reviews of “Isabel, by Horace Walpole,” of “Poulin’s Thompson,” and “Gifford’s Massinger,” are marked by great critical sagacity, able, fearless and impartial. It were well for our literary fame if such pens were wielded by our periodical critics here in America, for we are confident that unless stern and unsparing justice be done upon literary offenders, as well as full and overflowing applause bestowed on the few real adorners of their country’s language, no great or lasting school of literature can ever be established in any land, whatever may be the genius of its sons. Some able arguments on various principles of law; two most manly, liberal, and clear-sighted letters to the Archdeacon of York, on the Roman Catholic question; and nine sermons, on what are usually styled “occasional” subjects, complete the work. These sermons would do honor to the most learned and sincere divine who preaches the truth of the gospel in the great Anglo-Norman tongue, which has done and is doing so much, over all the world, to spread abroad the faith of the Redeemer, Every line is full of pious fervor, the language is vigorous and beautiful, and often imbued with that melting pathos which is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Mr. Herbert’s poetry. We have extended our review of these admirable works beyond our ordinary limits, and with reluctance take leave of an author from whom we have derived not pleasure only but much profit. We hope some publisher will be found in this country to give these writings to the public. We have no doubt that the prose portion of them, especially, would meet a warm reception and a ready sale. We feel reluctant that to by far the greater portion of our students and men of taste they should remain a sealed book.

For several years the writer of this pamphlet has been known as one of the most earnest and able advocates of the rights of authors in this country. His speech at the dinner given to Charles Dickens, at New York, his “Appeal on the subject of an International Copyright,” in this magazine, and other arguments on the subject, have attracted a large share of attention both here and in England, and if not unanswerable, they certainly have not been answered. In the Lecture before us he attempts to show—

I. That the mind of the country is now engrossed by a foreign literature, and one which does not in any considerable degree harmonize with our institutions. Throughout large sections of the United States reprints of British works, inculcating or suggesting sentiments peculiar to the nation whence they emanate, are read by the masses, and no books by American authors follow to correct their errors or modify their opinions.

II. That from the absence of due encouragement, (as well of public sentiment as of remuneration,) the kind of literature which has grown up in the United States is unworthy of its origin, and fails to represent the national character. It should be bold, manly, and vigorous, with the faults of a rude and lusty prime, perhaps, but in every lineament warm with life and truth. It is now degenerate, borrowed, servile, and full of effeminate refinement. It will hardly be denied that our country is at the present time, in letters, a dependency of Great Britain.

III. The absolute need of a national literature to mature and regulate opinion, in a country like this, with a government of opinion: “A government of opinion living in the soul of its authors and teachers, from that alone drawing its true life, and beyond that holding its existence a prey to swift confusion, to blood, and disorder, and angry riot:”—to represent and embody its institutions to the eye of the people at home, and confirm by the graces of invention and genius a love for them; and, abroad, to convey to the world what it could never know of us in the quietude of our remote career.

The lecturer supposes that the passage of a proper law would effect, firstly, the entire reorganization of the book trade—now in a great degree disturbed and broken—on a suitable foundation, with the establishment of just relations between publisher and author; secondly, a greater productiveness in literature among us, by regulating the introduction of foreign works, and creating a discrimination between the good and bad: improvement in criticism, etc.; thirdly, the growth of a purer and better tone of opinion at large. A certain nobleness and unity of thought and action which marked this country at an earlier period has been, by some means, impaired. A characteristic literature would lend to restore this, and would aid in steadying opinion, and maturing a consistent reliance on men and truths at home. The right, the clear, indefensible right, of the British author—of all authors—in the property of their genius, is enforced; and legislation in regard to literary property, on higher and broader ground than has yet been occupied, recommended, by every incentive which should have influence in a patriotic government. There is a general consideration added: the lecturer does not attempt to indicate, to detail, the operations of a new system. “The spirit of a wise legislation will act like the creative law, breathing truth and order among the elements of confusion. It will reconcile, renew, separate, and combine, so subtly that no eye can foresee or follow all its operations.”

We dissent from Mr. Mathews in a single particular only. The law should not be “international.” It should simply prohibit the publication or republication of the works of any author—American, Englishman, German, Buenosayrean or Kamschatkan—without the consent of such author or his representatives—the legislation of other countries entirely out of the question.

The fullness of the title to this valuable work, which we have copied above, renders any other account of its general character unnecessary. We have only to express our judgment of the manner in which the author has carried out his design, and this we are enabled to do by a very familiar acquaintance with the contents of the volumes. In the parts relating to Astronomy, Geology, Botany and Zoology, Mr. Murray was assisted by Professors Wallace, Jameson and Hooker, and Mr. Swainson, of Edinburgh; and in all these departments, as well as in regard to the industry, commerce, political institutions, and civil and social state of the different countries, we believe the Encyclopedia of Geography is decidedly superior to any similar publication extant. It is worth a dozen like Maltebrun’s, which is the only work of the kind ever printed in the United States with which it would not be an absurdity to compare it. The proprietors are issuing it in weekly numbers, at a price so low as to bring it within the reach of almost every person in the community.

This is one of the most valuable works republished in this country for years. It is full of information upon subjects interesting to all—upon the practical operations of the arts, the scientific principles and processes of mechanics, and the history of all inventions and improvements in the various departments of science and industry. The very high reputation which it enjoys in England, where it has gone through many editions, and where works of this description must possess the greatest merit to succeed at all, we are confident will be equaled by its popularity here as persons interested in “arts, manufactures and mines,” become acquainted with its character.

This is in our opinion the best work that Bulwer has ever given to the public; and in many essentials the finest novel of the day. It is founded on incidents of great and stirring interest. Its scene is laid in one of those transition periods—those eras of change from one phase of society and civilization to another—which are beyond all others suited to the historical romance. Its hero is one of the noblest that can be imagined, or could be chosen by the novelist—Richard Neville, the great Earl of Warwick, better known as the “king-maker.” Its title is derived from the following sententious passage in Hume’s History—“He was the greatest, as well as the last, of those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the crown.” We do not intend to destroy the pleasure of our readers who have not yet taken up this work, by anticipating its interest and disclosing its plot; nor, if such were our intention, would it be possible for us to do so, the limits which we cannot transgress forbidding an attempt to analyze a book so copious, so full of stirring matter, and comprising so many master characters. Our great reason for preferring this to the other works of Bulwer is the comparative absence of that pseudo philosophy, of that continual attempt by specious sophistry to raise the worse above the better cause; and the entire absence of that pandering to corrupt or vitiated tastes—that palliation of sensuality, and that straining effort to undermine our most sacred institutions and to subvert the morality of marriage—which are features so transparently concealed, and when discovered so offensive, in the former works of this brilliant but false and dangerous writer. Even Rienzi was not free from this reproach. We feel real pleasure in recording our opinion that The Last of the Barons is a grand, stately, manly English novel; that, although it contains descriptions of vice, those descriptions are open and revolting, not poetical and seductive; that it does not contain one passage detracting from the sanctity of marriage, or justifying seduction and adultery; but that, on the contrary, the moral of the work is stern and pure; and that it exhibits nothing which need call up a blush to the cheek of the chariest maiden.

The main plot of the work is the revolution which changed the government of England from a feudal aristocracy to an absolute tyranny, by the destruction of almost all the mightier baronial families at the battle of Barnet and the confirmation of Edward IV. on the bloodbought throne of the sixth Henry—a revolution which, beginning with the battle of Barnet, was completed by that of Bosworth—the first and foremost cause of the change of England from an agricultural to a commercial nation, and the after establishment on her throne of a line of absolute and supreme despots, which was overthrown only by the counter revolution of 1612—a change which could never have occurred but by the demolition of the great baronial race which stood between the people and the throne, checking alike the aristocratic tendencies of the one and the democratic tendencies of the other. There is a kind of under-plot, which is most absurd, most characteristic of Bulwer—the history of an inventor of a steam-engine! yes, reader a steam engine in the year of our Lord 1467!—which is of course utterly apocryphal, and unworthy of the most dignified style of modern writing, the historical romance, in which it is a standing law that every thing which is not true must be like truth, and consonant to the spirit of the age, the country and the men among whom the scene is laid. For the some reason we object to the Tymbesteres, who are not by any means English, but oriental; or if not oriental, German, in the conception of their character and the part they play. We think, moreover, that the outrage offered by Edward to Anne of Warwick is in accordance neither to historical truth nor historical probability. No such event is recorded, to our knowledge, in any history; and if the novelist has discovered in his researches, which evidently have been deep and careful, any such circumstance, he should have put it, and its authority, on open record.

Bulwer’s style and language in the Last of the Barons are, as usual, involved, artificial and meretricious; but probably less so than in his other romances; though there is an abundance of attempts to convert pompous nothings into striking antitheses by dint of capitals and quaintness. These faults admitted, it is, as we have said before, a great and striking work, full of fine scenes and stirring conversations, and high thoughts and deep research.

Mr. Borrow, known before the appearance of this work as the author of “The Gipsies in Spain,” is one of the most remarkable men of his time. As a linguist he is quite equal to our “learned blacksmith,” of New England, but in addition to his knowledge of languages and general scholarship, he has a thirst for adventure, an indomitable perseverance, and a peculiar chivalrous feeling about him, that, four hundred years ago, and in Spain, would have made him one of the first knights errant of Christendom. In November, 1835, he left London, under the direction of the British and Foreign Bible Society, to print and circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. The account which he gives of his mission is exceedingly interesting, but by the mass of readers his book will be valued most for its personal adventure, anecdote, and graphic descriptions of character and manners. Mr. Borrow wandered in the footsteps of the hero of La Mancha, and no work relating to Spain, in the English language, is so worthy to be placed beside the immortal creation of Cervantes. We regret our inability to review it at length in these pages. The late period at which we received it enables us only thus briefly to commend it to our readers.

Written by a missionary, and therefore connected mainly with the religious purposes which the author had chiefly in view, this work still embodies a very large amount of interesting and valuable information concerning a country but little known and deserving of attention. It is written in an easy and agreeable style, and bears the marks of manliness and honesty. The author wrote to gratify no personal end, but to impress upon his countrymen the feasibility and duty of advancing the spiritual welfare of the people among whom he resided, by making their character and wants more widely known. We are sure the work will be read with general pleasure and advantage. The striking sketches of personal character, the graphic descriptions of natural scenery, the details of curious incident and adventure, all combine to place it among the most popular books of travel recently published. It contains twenty-seven colored engravings, illustrative of the manners, costume, etc. of Persian society, and other embellishments.

Many valuable private journals and letters written during the Revolutionary War remain still to be published, and the earlier they are given to the press the better, as from carelessness or unavoidable accidents there is great danger of their being lost if suffered to remain in manuscript. In the lofts of one of the stores destroyed by the “great fire” in New York was perhaps the largest and most interesting collection of original letters relating to that interesting period, in the possession of any individual or family. It embraced several hundred by one of the most celebrated wits of the day, whose epistolary style is said to have been equal to Sir Horace Walpole’s. A venerable maiden lady in one of the rural districts decided last summer to “move to town.” In her garret were a dozen or more trunks filled with old letters—some of which were by one of the most eminent English noblemen of the age, and others by celebrated American and British statesmen and soldiers, written during the Revolution. The good lady thought it a needless trouble to carry them about with her, and made a bonfire of such a melange of “love, war, and politics,” as our Philosophical Society would have thought cheaply purchased by a monument to their possessor as high as a lighthouse. All publications of this kind, therefore, which possess any value, should be encouraged. The correspondence of the men who founded the Republic, or who lived in the time of its establishment—especially their private letters relating to public characters and events—will ever be read with interest and possess intrinsic worth.

Judge Curwen was descended from one of the most wealthy and influential families of Salem, in Massachusetts. He was educated at Cambridge, became a merchant, then an officer of the New England forces engaged in the expedition against Louisburg, in 1745, and afterward a justice in the Admiralty court. On the breaking out of the troubles with the mother country he went to London, and in 1784 returned to his native town, where he lived in seclusion until his death, in 1802. In adhering to the royal government he doubtless acted with honesty. His diary and letters show that he was warmly attached to his native country. With other true-hearted men, he erred in judgment. Though the principle which in any event causes a person to sustain the prerogative of a sovereign at the cost of the rights of a subject is ignoble, it is not criminal. We have read Mr. Ward’s Memoir, as we read the recently published Life of Mr. Van Schaack—also a Tory—with great satisfaction, and we commend both of these works to all students in American history.

The necessity of introducing our own writers more largely in the common schools, by giving selections from their writings in place of the old and frequently worthless compilations of foreign literature now used, has been often urged and generally acknowledged. The volume before us embraces what the editor deems the best poems of Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Longfellow, Sprague, Whittier, and others, suited to this purpose. We of course have nothing to say of the manner in which he has executed his task. The book is much more elegantly printed and embellished than any of a similar description with which we are acquainted.

Every body acquainted with Blackwood, has a lively recollection of the famous nights at Master Ambrose’s, where the “most excellent magazinity,” sat in council one evening in every month, to discuss politics, morals, religion and law, letters and art, and indeed every thing which at the time attracted or deserved regard. These “Noctes” were for a long time the chief distinguishing feature of the magazine. No series of papers were ever more admirably sustained—none ever contained more wit, humor and pathos, more shrewd observation and acute criticism, more merciless personal satire, or more frank, cordial and enthusiastic recognitions of truth and genius, in foes as well as friends. They furnish a brilliant running commentary on the political and literary history of Great Britain for the period through which their publication extends. While reading them in their collected form, we “turned down the corners of the pages” in which passages of peculiar beauty or wit attracted our attention, and the thickness of the volumes was nearly doubled by the operation. Did our limits permit us to do so we should like to quote the touching account which the shepherd gives of Mary Morrison, the graphic descriptions of Macaulay, Shiel, and others, and a hundred things beside, which are hardly equaled in their way but by Christopher North. Yet the Noctes Ambrosianæ have their faults: their uproarious conviviality, for instance, is hardly in keeping with the spirit of “this temperance age;” and there is somewhat too much of bitterness in the denunciations by Christopher and his crew; but their extraordinary merits so exceed these slight blemishes that the reader will be quite willing to forget them. The publishers have done the public an acceptable service by bringing out the Noctes in so excellent a style.

—To Professor Wilson’s “Miscellanies” and these “Noctes” we hope the publishers will add a uniform edition of his Poems and Tales, the first of which would make one and the latter two volumes, and thus complete their collection of his works.

Our readers who live in the country, and are engaged in agricultural pursuits, will thank us for calling their attention to this very valuable publication. The original work which forms its tests is one of the most popular on the subject ever published in England; but our climates, soils and productions are so different from those of Great Britain, that many alterations were necessary to adapt it for the use of the American farmer. These alterations have been made by an experienced and scientific agriculturist, who has carefully revised the book and added much new and useful matter in its several departments. It is what it professes to be, a “complete encyclopedia of rural affairs,” well written well printed, and well illustrated with engravings exhibiting the different kinds of horses, cattle, sheep, grasses, weeds, etc. It will be completed in sixteen numbers.

We are not acquainted with his originals, and cannot therefore judge of the fidelity of Mr. Greene’s translations; but his style is exceedingly correct and graceful, and in their English dress these tales and sketches possess great merit.

Literature of the Season.—We are to have few valuable books hereafter in this country, or if good works appear they will come in such a “questionable shape” that those who have been used to the elegant typography of former days will be chary of reading them, and still more so of admitting them to fellowship with the good old editions in their libraries. Cheapness is the only cry. Novels which once cost a dollar may now be purchased for a shilling, and the only penalty is three or four hundred to the occulist, and a few months confinement in a darkened chamber—matters of little consequence, so that the books be “cheap.” In earnestness, the wretched condition of the copyright law—which by “protecting” the native author but makes his productions utterly valueless to him—and the present extraordinary laxity of “commercial morality,” have so disordered the business of publishing and bookselling, that the old houses will do very little indeed, and the “news-venders,” who have taken up their trade, will give us such writings as they may think proper, in a style so repulsive that they will be read with little pleasure, however brilliant or valuable.

We await with interest the appearance of the Life and Remains of the late Dr. James Marsh, of the University of Vermont, from the hands of Professor Torrey, his successor in the chair of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. Beside many philosophic sermons and occasional discourses, with an outline of Psychology, and a Treatise on Logic, Dr. Marsh left behind him a large collection of letters, which we understand will make up the body of these volumes. To the young, they will be among the most valuable and instructive publications of the day. The spirit of a scholar, of a profound thinker, and above all of one who through his life was the “bondman of duty” and of truth, marks these as well as all his other productions, and gives to them a far higher worth than belongs to much of the more ambitious literature of the time. The Memoir by Professor Torrey will be a chaste and tasteful record of a life not abounding in striking incident, but distinguished by a stately growth, and a true development of the highest principles of action and of thought. We understand that the work will comprise two large octavo volumes, and that it will be published during the coming Summer.

There are several other books of great value at Burlington, awaiting the pleasure of those who have them in charge to be allowed to see the light. We fear the distinguished literary gentlemen of that vicinity are somewhat selfish in their views, finding, perchance, a sufficient reward for their productions in the labor of producing, and thinking not enough of the wants of the world around them. We are especially anxious to see in print Professor Torrey’s translation of Neander’s Church History, a work greatly needed by the whole body of theological students in this country. It is the only complete translation of Neander that has been made. Two volumes were once presented in an English dress, in London, but the whole eight have never before been translated. The appearance of a new edition of the original, in Germany, has probably some connection with the delay in its publication. Professor Torrey has also in manuscript a translation of Schilling’s Discourse on Fine Art, which we should be glad to see printed. Professor Benedict’s work on Conchology was announced several months ago, and considerable progress was made in the preparation of the plates. We are not advised of the probable time of its appearance. We hear also of a very profound Treatise on Music, by the late Dr. Lincoln, of Burlington, one of the most gifted and scientific men of his time. It was left, we believe, in the hands of Mr. George P. Marsh, known to the public chiefly by his extended researches into Scandinavian literature, and Icelandic philology. We trust it will be published.

There will be the usual number of annuaries published for 1844. “The Gift” will be issued by Messrs. Carey & Hart; and the new volume will surpass any of its predecessors in the merit of its literary contents and the beauty of its embellishments. The “contributions” will be chiefly by the writers for this magazine; and pictures by Page, Sully, Chapman, Cheney, Huntington, and other eminent painters, will be engraved for it. “The Christian Offering,” edited by Rufus W. Griswold, and illustrated by J. G. Chapman, N. A., will be issued by Mr. Riker, of New York. It will contain articles by many of the most eminent theological and literary writers of the country, and its embellishments will be of a unique and beautiful description. “The Rose of Sharon,” a religious annual, will be published in Boston.

Little & Brown, of that city, will publish in July or August The History of the Conquest of Mexico, with the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Cortes, and a Preliminary View of Ancient Mexican Civilization, by William H. Prescott, author of the History of Ferdinand and Isabella. It will be founded on original documents, chiefly derived from the Archives of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, and the collection of its President, Señor Navarette—the result of fifty years’ researches in the public and private repositories of Spain and the Colonies; and other materials obtained by the author, from Mexico, Paris and London. From England, the best market for a work of this description, the author will not receive a penny for his copyright, in consequence of the absurd and iniquitous absence of laws for the protection of literary property in this country. Two houses in London have advertised editions of it.

We noticed at length in a recent number of this magazine the first volume of the Natural History of the State of New York. Two additional volumes have since been issued—in large quarto, with admirable pictorial illustrations—and we learn with surprise and regret that the four others, necessary to complete the work, will probably not appear at present, on account of a very ridiculous theory of “retrenchment” in the State Government, which, instead of curtailing extravagant salaries and abolishing sinecures, strikes first at the New York Foreign Historical Mission, and at this publication—the noblest of the kind ever made in this or we believe any other country. We hope the concluding volumes will be published, and thus the implied contract of the state with those who have purchased the earlier volumes, fulfilled.

A new edition of “Hinton’s History of the United States,” in two volumes quarto, with numerous maps and illustrative engravings on steel, will be published in New York on the first of May—edited and continued to the present time by the Rev. John Overton Choules, a most honest and able writer. Of the first American edition of this work there were sold in a few years more than ten thousand copies.

A new historical romance entitled “Hoboken,” by our correspondent, Theodore S. Fay, author of “Norman Leslie,” “The Countess Ida,” etc., will be published by the Harpers in a few weeks. The same house have in press a “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” from the best authorities, and embodying all the recent discoveries of the most eminent German philologists and jurists, illustrated by a large number of engravings. This edition has been corrected and much enlarged by Dr. Anthon. They also advertise, “The May-flower; or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters among the Descendants of the Pilgrims:” by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe; “The Speeches of Joint Caldwell Calhoun,” and several reprints of foreign works.

The fourth volume of Mr. Bancroft’s History of the United States—the first of the History of the Revolution—will appear early in the Summer. It will comprise eight chapters, entitled “Revolution at Hand,” “Conquest of the Ohio Valley,” “The Stamp Act and the American Protest,” “Rebellion Menaced,” “Resistance Organized,” “Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill,” and “Independence Declared.” Mr. Bancroft is said to have had for the preparation of this volume many materials never before used, consisting of the unpublished journal of the Committee of Correspondence of Massachusetts, MS. letters from Adams, Franklin, Gadsden, Richard Henry Lee, Hancock, and other lending characters, etc.

A splendid gift-book, entitled “The Hesperian,” will appear in October. It will contain several of the finest descriptive and narrative poems written in America, illustrated by Chapman, and edited by John Keese, well known as the editor of “The Poets of America, Illustrated by one of her Painters,” and other elegant publications. We are pleased to learn that “The Sinless Child and other Poems, by Mrs. Seba Smith, with an Introduction and Mental Memoir,” by the same accomplished critic, will appear in June. Mrs. Smith belongs to the first class of the writers of her sex, and the forthcoming volume will, of course, be most favorably received.

We have recently read in a weekly periodical, of which she is editor, several “Letters from New York,” by Mrs. Lydia M. Child, author of “Hobomok,” “Philothea,” etc. which we venture to pronounce superior to any writings of the same kind ever published in this country. Mrs. Child is a woman of genius. To a feminine tenderness and grace the unites remarkable freedom and energy. Her thoughts are original and truthful, her imagery affluent and apposite, and her style neat, chaste and scholarlike. Will none of our publishers bring out these letters in a volume? Those already printed would fill a respectable octavo.

A new volume of poems by Professor Longfellow, embracing the admirable drama, “The Spanish Student,” will soon appear from the Cambridge University press. The last number of Sargent’s Magazine, alluding to this work, remarks—“The Spanish Student, originally published in Graham’s Magazine, we regard us by far the best dramatic production from an American pen that has yet appeared. It abounds in passages of extreme beauty, and the dialogue is remarkably animated and pungent.”

The new edition of the works of Jonathan Edwards, just issued in New York by Messrs. Leavitt & Trow, is complete and well printed. It embraces a general index, prepared expressly for the edition, and a well-written memoir of the greatest metaphysician of his age and country. It is a little remarkable that while no American publisher would venture to reprint the works of the most eminent author the new world has yet produced, enough copies of the splendid English impression, in two very large octavos, have been sold here since the “Worcester edition” was exhausted, to pay the cost of its publication.

The Boston Miscellany of Literature has been discontinued, and Messrs. Bradbury & Soden, its proprietors, retaining possession of the publishing list, have contracted for several thousand copies of Graham’s Magazine with which to supply their subscribers. This arrangement will considerably enlarge the number of our readers. The Miscellany had been conducted with distinguished taste and ability, especially since Mr. H. T. Tuckerman, one of the most chaste and elegant writers of the time, became its editor. That gentleman will hereafter be a frequent contributor to the pages of our own periodical.

“The Connecticut Poets,” edited by Rev. C. W. Everest, will appear in a few weeks at Hartford. Among the Connecticut poets are Dwight, Trumbull, Percival, Halleck, Brainard, Rockwell, Pierpont, Hillhouse, Goodrich, Burleigh, and Mrs. Sigourney—a large and brilliant company for the “little state with ‘calculating’ inhabitants,” as she was styled in one of the British Reviews. Mr. Everest is himself a poet, and will doubtless prove himself by his selections and commentaries a judicious critic.

Messrs. Harpers, of New York, have commenced the publication, in weekly numbers, of a new work by President Olin, of the Wesleyan University, entitled “Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa and the Holy Land.” The scenes visited by the reverend and learned author have been made familiar by the journals of Stephens, Robertson and others; but the high reputation of Dr. Olin induces a belief that his book will nevertheless possess great interest, especially to the religious reader.

“Bibliotheca Sacra” is the title of a new work to appear quarterly, and to contain tracts and essays on topics connected with biblical literature and theology, edited by Professor Edward Robinson, the distinguished Oriental traveler. The first number, published in New York by Messrs. Wiley & Putnam, embraces articles by the editor, Professor Stuart of Andover, and other learned writers.

The Speeches of Henry Clay, of Kentucky, have just appeared, with an able Memoir, in two large octavo volumes, from the press of James B. Swain, of New York. Mr. Calhoun’s Speeches, as we have elsewhere mentioned, and those of Mr. Buchanan, will also be soon published.

Among the new historical works recently published, are The History of New Hampshire, from its Discovery, in 1614, to the Passage of the Toleration Act, in 1819, by George Barstow: octavo, 426 pages; and The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, by Rev. Zadok Thompson, of Burlington: octavo. Both of these works give evidence of industrious research.

An American edition of Mr. Charles F. Hoffman’s “Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie,” we are pleased to learn is in press in New York. This work was originally published in London, where it passed to a second edition, and was most favorably received by the critics. The new edition will be much enlarged by the introduction of new “Scenes,” etc.

The Fables of La Fontaine, translated from the French by Elizur Wright, Jr. have passed to a fourth edition. Mr. Wright’s admirable version of these inimitable writings has everywhere been received with applause. The first impression, on large paper, was probably superior in embellishments and typography to any book of the same description ever printed in this country; the last edition it printed in a more common manner, for “general circulation.”

Traits of the American Aborigines, by our countryman Henry Rowe Schoolcraft—more familiar than any other author who has written on the subject with the Indian character—will be published in the German language, at Stuttgart, in June.

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Some photographs have been enhanced to be more legible.

A Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience.

[The end of Graham's Magazine Vol. XXII No. 4 April 1843 edited by George Rex Graham]