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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

WRITTEN IN 1813.

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

Not many years ago, there lived in the outskirts of a certain village of the New World, a wise man and a fool. There were plenty more of each of these classes among the inhabitants, but these two were pre-eminent in their way. The great leading maxim of one was, never to put off till to-morrow what could be done to-day; that of the other, never to do to-day what could be put off till to-morrow. They had, however, pretty much the same opinion of each other. The wise man despised the fool because he never took time by the forelock; and the fool contemned the wise man for not letting the old gentleman pass on, that he might see what was behind him. The name of the sage was Solomon, the appropriate appellation of all wise men; and that of the simpleton, Ninny, or Squire Ninny, as he was called by his neighbors. They equally valued themselves on their wisdom, and were accustomed to meet together often; sometimes by accident, at others by design; on which occasions they seldom failed to enter into discussions which always confirmed each in his own theory more obstinately than before. At parting, nothing was more usual than for Solomon to predict that Squire Ninny would always lose the race by lagging behind till it was too late to enter at the starting-pole; and for the Squire to retort by foretelling that his wise neighbor would meet with the same catastrophe by tiring out his horse in his haste to be there too soon.

“Why don’t you,” said Solomon, “why don’t you learn wisdom from the birds, which are out by daylight in the morning, taking time by the forelock, and catching insects and worms for their breakfast?”

“Thank you,” replied the squire; “I learn wisdom from the fate of the insects and worms, which might escape being devoured, perhaps, if they did not take time by the forelock, and venture out so early.”

“Plague take thee for a fool!” muttered the wise man.

“Deuce take thee for an ass!” quoth the fool.

And away they went their different ways; one to do all that was possible, the other to do nothing but what he was obliged to perform. It is singular enough—or rather it would be, were it not so common—that both these persons were entirely convinced, not only that they were right in the great maxim each had adopted, but that it was the result of reason and reflection, sanctioned by experience. Now, the fact is, it was no such thing. Nature had made one headlong and impatient; the other, lazy and deliberative—and they only followed their destiny. Even when boys, Solomon always ate his egg raw, because he could not wait its boiling; while Squire Ninny suffered it to boil as hard as a bullet, for sheer lack of energy to take off the skillet. In short, one could not bear to be idle, the other to be busy.

These two worthy people were nearly of the same age, that is to say, some fifty years. One a married man, with a family, the other a bachelor. Solomon had taken time by the forelock, and wedded a shrew, solely because he did not choose to put off till to-morrow what could be done to-day; while Squire Ninny stuck close to his favorite maxim, which not exactly suiting the meridian of female vivacity, he somehow or other uniformly missed his mark, simply became the bird flew away before he could take aim. Some married, some died, and some waited so long for the squire to make up his mind, that they slipped down the hill of life before they became aware they had reached the top, and notwithstanding all their exertions were never able to recover their lost ground. In the mean time, the family of Solomons increased and multiplied, to the great satisfaction of the father, who never failed to crow over the squire, and, whenever they met, commiserate the fate of a poor forlorn bachelor, without a companion, a solace to his cares, a domestic fireside, or children to comfort him in his old age, and carry down his name to future generations.

“Never mind,” answered the squire, “there should always be at least one bachelor in a family to take care of the children of those who have married in too great a hurry.”

The squire had heard that Solomon’s wife combed his hair sometimes, for the town was too little to contain a great secret, and, like a pistol, always went off with a great report when overcharged. On these occasions they would always separate mutually pitying each other—Solomon, to worry himself for something to do; the squire, to smoke his pipe and ponder on the expediency of putting off something till to-morrow.

Both followed the business of farming, that noble profession, which, upon the whole, is perhaps more favorable to human happiness and virtue than any other to which man becomes the slave. As may be supposed, each carried his favorite maxim into practice in this their daily occupation. Solomon was always beforehand with his neighbors; the squire represented the last spark of the burnt paper, and lingered till all the congregation departed. Yet, somehow or other, at the end of a few years, the account was pretty square between the wise man and the fool. One season the squire’s wheat was destroyed by the Hessian fly, because it was planted too late, and came up so tender in the spring that the insect preferred it to that of all his neighbors.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” said Solomon; “next time I suppose you will take time by the forelock, and follow the wise maxim of never putting off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.”

The following year the squire had his revenge. He had as usual planted after every body else, and Solomon was still more beforehand, having the example of the last year before him. The winter set in severely, but scarcely any snow fell; the seed that had been early sown, and sprung up in the autumn, was scathed by the bitter blasts and nipping frosts, while that of the squire not having sprouted, escaped scot free, came up blithely in the spring, and produced a noble harvest.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” said he to Solomon; “next time take my advice, and adopt the wise maxim of never doing to-day what you can put off till to-morrow.”

Solomon said nothing. He thought the squire as great a fool as ever; but there is no arguing against what turns out well.

One day, the squire and Solomon had arranged to attend a meeting some few miles from town, which had been called by some public spirited busy bodies, who wanted better bread than can be made of wheat, and to improve their property at the expense of their neighbors. Solomon, of course, called before his time, and, equally as matter of course, the squire was not ready.

“Don’t you see,” cried the former, “there is a thunder-shower rising behind the mountain? It will rain in less than an hour.”

“Well, let it rain,” said the other; “it is very much wanted, and besides, my good friend, I can’t prevent it by being in a hurry.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Solomon, and, out of all patience, spurred his steed and galloped away.

Before the squire got fairly ready, and by the time the other was half way to the place of meeting, he was overtaken by a pelting shower that in an instant wet him to the skin, and what was worse, there was no meeting, all the public spirited gentlemen being kept away by the prospect of a shower.

“Well,” said Solomon, rather gruffly, on his next meeting with the squire, “I got finely peppered by waiting for you.”

“You mean by not waiting for me,” replied the other, very coolly.

“Pooh! I mean no such thing—I mean precisely what I said. If you had not been behindhand, as you always are, I should have escaped a ducking.”

“Yes—and if you had not been beforehand, as you always are, it would have come to just the same thing. But how did matters go on at the meeting?”

“There was nobody there,” said Solomon, rather sheepishly.

“Then, after all, you got a wet jacket for nothing?”

“Yes—but then I had the satisfaction of being there in time.”

“And of being wet to the skin—while I had the satisfaction of staying at home, and being as dry as a biscuit. What a pity you are always in such a hurry, my good friend.”

“Pooh! it would be well if you were sometimes in a hurry, too. Didn’t you lose the opportunity of buying old Martin’s farm by coming after the sale was over?”

“To be sure I did—and did it not ruin the purchaser? Didn’t some of your public spirited friends, and be hanged to them, get a turnpike made quite in another direction, and draw off all the business from the store, which was worth more than the land?”

“Hum—and didn’t you lose your passage in the stage to New York, and get nonsuited in a trial, which had cost you more than a hundred dollars?”

“To be sure I did—and was it not the luckiest thing that ever happened to me, for the stage broke down on the way, killing two passengers, besides breaking the bones of all the rest? and my lawsuit never cost me a dollar afterward, for I let it die a natural death.”

“And didn’t you lose the opportunity of marrying Squire Silly’s sister, who had ten thousand dollars in the Swindleburg Bank, by fixing the time of the wedding, and then, according to your wise maxim, putting off till to-morrow what you should do to-day?”

“Yes! and didn’t the bank blow up, the cashier run away to Texas, and the directors quarrel about whose fault it was, till the public thought they were all rogues together? And didn’t the squire’s sister turn out as great a scold as—as—the wives of some folks whose names I will not mention?”

“Pooh! pshaw! you have wasted more time by being too late than—”

“Not more than you have by being too early, and thus being obliged to wait for every body. The world has always dragged me along, because I have kept behind; while you have worried your life out in trying to pull it after you. You put me in mind of a pair of horses of mine. One is a quiet, sober creature, the other a fellow that never thinks he can get on fast enough, and always pulls horse, plough and all after him. The consequence is, one is like me, as plump as a partridge—the other skin and bones, just like you.”

“Pish! every body calls you a fool, squire!”

“And you a wise man. The difference is, that I walk quietly and moderately behind Old Time, who never interferes with my loitering; while you take him by the beard, and often get a cut of his scythe for your pains.”

The conversation here ended, and the wise man and the fool parted, as heretofore, without either being a convert to the maxims of the other.

The truth is, neither of them was entirely satisfied with the course he had adopted. Solomon so often found by experience that he might better have left undone many things he had done; and the squire had so frequently suffered by leaving things undone which ought to have been done, that in their hearts they mutually admired and envied each other. But they had so long pursued the path of direct contrast, and had so many discussions to the advantages of the route each had chosen—that pride now supplied the place of conviction, and they continued to become only more obstinate as they advanced in years.

It is remarkable enough, that notwithstanding the opposite ways they took, to woo her good graces, they continued equally the favorites of Fortune, who not unfrequently, in a fit of female caprice, is caught by neglect, rather than importunity. Indeed, if we look steadily around us, and watch her ever whirling wheel, we shall not fail of perceiving that quite as many fortunes are lost by grasping, overweening Avarice stretching his withered hands to snatch at the shadow while the substance escapes him, as by the most reckless prodigality, or the most careless disregard of the maxims of prudence. Solomon was not, however, a miser, though by no means insensible to that secret, never-failing source of delight arising from the consciousness of perpetual accumulation, which, were it not for the fortunate discovery of the bump of acquisitiveness, might otherwise puzzle the philosophers. As to the squire, he, too, had a sneaking kindness for the root of all evil; and although he took special little care to grub it up, somehow or other he continued to keep pace with his rival in wealth, while he was always behindhand in time. In this process, however, he only furnished another example of that great truth which every body acknowledges, and nobody acts upon. He found, to his surprise, that his happiness by no means kept pace with his money. On the contrary, the acquisition of wealth only conjured up a new want. He had no child to inherit his property, and his relatives were not only distant in blood, but space. He had, in truth, often thought of writing to a second cousin, of whom he had accidentally heard favorable accounts, and who he knew had several daughters, with a view of requesting him to send one of them to take care of his household, and minister to his growing infirmities. It is often thus with man. The hardened unbeliever through youth and manhood frequently, when old age brings him nigher to that dread hour which is to decide the great question of extinction or immortality, crouches at the shrine of the Being he has hitherto defied; and so, too, does the sturdy old bachelor, when his infirmities thickly beset him, when hireling services become irksome, solitude misery, and affection a want of the heart, call to his aid some gentle spirit of love, and install her in his house as a beneficent divinity he has hitherto neglected or despised.

The squire had, however, put off his letter to-day because he could write it to-morrow, and it is somewhat questionable whether it would ever have been written, had not some occasion arisen to call him to a visit at some little distance, where resided a worthy old man, a martyr to the rheumatism. Here he beheld the beautiful and affecting relation between father and daughter exemplified in a manner that deeply touched his heart. The mother had been long dead, but the daughter more than supplied her loss, for the tie between husband and wife is but artificial, while that which unites parent and child, not only springs from the living fountain of nature, but is rivetted by a thousand recollections of kindness on one hand, gratitude on the other. Filial and parental love are the fruit of the natural tree, on which conjugal affection is only engrafted. No parent can ever replace a lost child, but there are millions of proofs how easy it is to forget a deceased wife or husband. There is less of selfishness in filial and parental love, than in any other feeling of the human heart, not excepting that of piety. When the squire saw with what tender, duteous devotion this amiable daughter administered to the infirmities and sufferings of her parent, and with what submissive patience, what gentle forbearance she bore the occasional expressions of impatience or dissatisfaction wrung from him by his agony, he could not help contrasting the spectacle with his own fireside, where no ministering angel ever soothed his pains, and he determined at once to send for his relative that very day. When, however, he got home, he felt so fatigued, that, upon the whole, he concluded to put it off till to-morrow.

Shortly afterward, he met his friend Solomon, who seemed in great dudgeon, having just had his head combed by his wife. He was in that state of fermentation when the feelings require a vent, and when, if the bung-hole is not freed, the barrel must explode. He accordingly opened his heart to the squire, lamented the perverse ill nature of his helpmate, and concluded by exclaiming—

“Ah! squire, I wish I had followed your maxim of putting off things till to-morrow, and not married in such a hurry.”

The squire, who, to tell the truth, was so taken up with the thought of the kind-hearted daughter ministering to the infirmities of her parent, and his own forlorn state, that he had paid little attention to the complaint of his friend, answered him accordingly—

“Aye—yes—you are quite right, my friend; I wish I had taken time by the forelock, and not considered so very long about choosing a wife.”

Solomon was so tickled with this unexpected acknowledgment, that he forgot his own private griefs, and exclaimed with great glee—

“Well—I am glad you have come round to my maxim at last.”

“Not I!” said the squire—“you have come round to mine.”

“No such thing, sir, you have come round to mine. Didn’t you just now acknowledge your regrets that you had not taken time by the forelock, and not considered so long about getting married? Answer me that, sir.”

“And didn’t you just now express your sorrow that you had not followed my example, and not married in such a hurry? Answer me that, sir.”

Neither could deny the assertions of the other, nor was either inclined to give up a long cherished opinion on a subject they had been discussing for the last thirty years. The consequence was, this first coincidence produced an argument which ended in each one retracting his concession, and they parted worse friends than they ever had been before, one grumbling out—

“What an obstinate old blockhead!”

The other—

“What a conceited, superannuated fool!”

In good time the damsel the squire had sent for, to minister to his growing infirmities, arrived. Her name was Fanny Holliday. She was about seventeen, with hazel eyes, a pretty figure, and a mild, agreeable countenance. In short, though not beautiful, she was altogether a pleasing subject for contemplation for a young man who had nothing else to think about. The squire received her graciously, but was rather affronted at seeing that for the first few days she seemed rather melancholy, and her eyes sometimes red with weeping. This he thought very ungrateful in one whom he intended for his heiress; and, upon the whole, he wished he had considered a little longer before he took such a decisive step, which he considered almost equal to marrying outright. In the course of a month, however, Fanny got over her fit of home-sickness, and resumed her natural cheerfulness. She grew accustomed to look up to the squire as her protector and parent, and by degrees became easy and familiar in his company. She had been used to take turns with her sisters in housekeeping, according to a good old custom which has been somewhat impaired by the progress of the age, and the development of the human mind; and the squire soon began to feel that mysterious influence which the eye of a prudent, careful mistress exercises over her awn proper dominion, the domestic circle. Fanny had never attended lectures on anatomy, physiology, nor any other of the numerous family of ologies; nor had her head turned topsy-turvy by those pestiferous declamations on the rights of women, which in these, our days, draw such numerous and approving audiences. The town she resided in had been indeed visited by one of these disciples of insubordination, and Fanny was sorely tempted by a Blue Stocking to attend one of them; but she only laughed, and said in a voice as soft as an echo—

“Good gracious! what do we women want? Don’t we rule the hearts of men, and don’t the heart rule every thing else? For my part, I am satisfied with this—but you may go if you please, and learn how to govern kingdoms.”

The Blue Stocking gave her a look that turned all the cider in the cellar sour, and Fanny skipped away with a heart as light as a feather, humming a blithesome song. She was a sensible, sweet tempered girl, and if the squire had known all he would have stuck still closer to his old maxim of never doing to-day what can be put off till to-morrow, for his salutary delay in writing had saved him from the adoption of Fanny’s eldest sister, a tumultuous sort of lady, who fortunately married in the interim. The old gentleman fell ill, a few months after Fanny’s arrival, and it was then that he congratulated himself on his happy selection. Most people are sufficiently irritable and troublesome when sick; but a hale, hearty old bachelor, who has never been broke in, is the quintessence of a refractory patient. The squire’s maxim did not at all apply to his present case, and never man was so impatient to get rid of his pain off-hand, instead of postponing it to another time.

“My dear father,” so Fanny called him, “my dear father, have a little patience—the doctor says you will be better to-morrow.”

“To-morrow—d—n to-morrow—and the doctor, too. He’s always insisting on my taking physic to-day, and putting off getting well till to-morrow. I never saw such a pedantic, pragmatical blockhead in all my life. Oh! this infernal pain! Oh!—upon my word, Miss Fanny, you seem mighty easy all this time! Why the d—l don’t you get out of patience, like me? You have no more feeling than a dead pig!”

What an odious comparison for the prettiest girl in a hundred miles round. It was enough to make a saint angry. But Fanny soon soothed the testy squire into a better frame of mind. The very manner in which she smoothed his pillow, carried with it a mysterious influence over his fretted mind; and her soft low voice giving utterance to words of unaffected sympathy cooed him to acquiescence, if not repose. There was nothing officious or intrusive in her attentions, and the squire more than once thought to himself—

“There is nothing interested in Fanny—I can see that with half an eye. It is all good, unaffected tenderness of heart, without one single thought about herself. What a lucky man was I, not to delay my letter any longer; and how different she is from that diabolical old nurse Mrs. Goggin, who always used to keep up my spirits by raising ghosts, and telling me of all the doctors in fifty miles round. I’m determined to make my will as soon as I am well enough, and leave her every shilling I’m worth.”

The good squire recovered in time, but did not make his will. He gathered himself together several times, but could never make up his mind whether to begin in the good old solemn style, “In the name of God, I, Hercules Ninny, being of sound mind,” &c., or in the flippant slip-slop phrase which was then becoming fashionable, and has in all probability aided in producing that want of reverence to the will of the dead, now become as common as it is disgraceful.

Let us now see what has become of Solomon, the wise. Though the last bout between him and the squire ended in the manner before related, it did not produce any permanent rupture. They had been differing all their lives, and the habit had softened the effect of contradiction in both. Solomon was hasty, but not ill-natured; and when he heard of Fanny’s arrival, paid her a visit, accompanied by his son, a clever young fellow, about nineteen or twenty years old. He did not ask his wife to go with them, partly because he knew she would not go, and partly because he thought her room rather better than her company. He took Gideon, as he was called, there occasionally afterward to see the squire during his illness, and one day, on their return, opened his battery upon him, as follows:

“That seems a nice girl the squire has adopted.”

“Very,” replied his son.

“She’ll have a nice fortune, too. The squire, to my certain knowledge, is a warm fellow—though how he made his money, I can’t conceive, in a man with such ridiculous notions of putting off every thing—and he told me just now he intended to leave her all he is worth.”

“Did he?” said Gideon.

“Why, Gid—are you asleep?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why don’t you say something?”

“Because I’ve nothing to say, sir.”

“Well, boy—I have made up my mind—in fact, I made it up as soon as I heard the girl was sent for—Gid, you must court Fanny, and marry her—or rather, you must marry, and court her afterwards.”

“What, right off, sir?”

“Yes, right off the reel. You know my maxim, never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. You shall go this very evening, and offer yourself.”

“This evening, sir!” exclaimed Gideon, in great alarm.

“Yes, boy, this very evening. How do we know what will happen between the going down and rising of the sun?”

“Just as much as we know what will happen between this and sunset, or between this moment and the next, I believe, sir.”

“You do—do you? Well, there is some truth, after all, in what you say, but that don’t prove it is not wise to take time by the forelock. So I insist that you go this very evening, and offer yourself.”

“But, sir, I have hardly spoken ten words to her since she came here. You know she has been always engaged in nursing the squire of late, and before that, I—I—somehow or other, I could not muster courage to look at her, except when her face was turned the other way.”

“What a gander you are, Gid? Why, I married your mother after only two meetings, and one of these was at a funeral.”

Solomon began this speech in a tone of triumph, but ended it with a sigh, perhaps on account of the person whose funeral he had attended, that being always a melancholy subject of recollection. The discussion continued all the way home, and ended in poor Gideon’s submission, as the alternative of a lasting breach between himself and his father. He by no means demurred to Fanny; on the contrary, he felt a decided preference for her. But his heart revolted at this precipitation.

That evening he went on his mission of duty and love, with feelings that can only be realized by a man just going to be hanged. He felt the preposterous folly, the consummate impudence of the offer he was about to make, for he was a youth of sense and modesty. But he had been brought up at the feet of the Gamaliel, his father, who, like many honest men, made himself amends for his abject submission to a wife, by tyrannizing over his children. Solomon’s helpmate had the instinct of government about her, and never interfered with his dominion over others, so long as he submitted to her own.

If Gideon had only carried a satchel at his back, he might have passed for an overgrown truant, going to school with a reasonable expectation of being flogged. He stopped every minute to look at nothing, and went four times round the squire’s lot, before he could find the house. As he was proceeding to the fifth circuit, he was recognized in the moonlight by the squire, who brought him to, and called him into his presence. People may talk of wild partridges and prairie wolves, but these are nothing to the skittishness of a modest young fellow, compelled to make love on compulsion. If Solomon had only let his great enemy, Time, have his way, ten to one all would have happened just as he wished; but he brought his old maxim to bear on the castle Cupid was building, and demolished it before it was half finished. Gideon had already begun to have dreams and visions, and Fanny had more than once thought he was a handsome, well behaved, sensible young man, though they had, as poor Gideon said, hardly exchanged ten words. But folly is even worse than murder—it will not only out at last, but betray itself the very first moment. There are sentiments and observations altogether above the capacity of a fool, as there are others totally beneath that of a man of sense. Fanny was, therefore, not altogether premature in her conclusion.

This evening, however, Gideon talked and acted in a manner that compelled her to believe she had altogether overrated his capacity. He never asked a question, or answered, without making almost as many blunders as words; and he seemed to be talking to all points of the compass, instead of the subject in hand. His actions were, if possible, worse than his words; he insisted on holding a skein of thread for Fanny to wind off, and attempted to snuff the candle with it. Being reminded of his blunder, he threw the skein into the fire, burnt his fingers in attempting its rescue, and finally presented himself before her holding out the snuffers, with a thumb in each of the rings, for her to wind off.

“The old boy is in that fellow,” quoth the squire, who was half-dozing in his chair; “he has either lost his senses, or never had any—I don’t know which.”

Fanny was obliged to run out of the room, on pretence of getting another skein of thread, but in reality to laugh till she almost died. She soon, however, returned with a face as grave as a judge, and the squire just then bidding good-night, Gideon as savage as a tiger beleaguered in a jungle, determined to make one desperate plunge for life. The squire had hardly turned his back, when he seized Fanny’s hand, devoured it with kisses, declared his unquenchable love, and then stood with eyes wide open, staring as if in astonishment at his own intrepidity. The young damsel was at first so fluttered at this unexpected assault, that she could do nothing but snatch away the hand with which she was sorely tempted to give him a sound box of the ear. But a few moments sufficed to rally all the modest dignity of her sex, and she replied to poor Gideon’s words so scornful and indignant, that as she was afterward sorry for having uttered them, we will not rescue them from that oblivion in which they have long since been buried. Gideon, who had expended all his powder in the assault, did not wait for the final denouement, but seizing his hat, decamped without beat of drum, leaving Fanny in doubt whether she was most astonished, mortified, irritated, or disappointed at his preposterous conduct.

It was some time before Gideon could make out to find the house of his father, whose first question was as to how he had sped in his wooing.

“Just as I expected and deserved, sir,” replied he, forgetting, in his vexation and mortification, that profound respect which he had ever preserved toward his father; “just as I expected and deserved, sir. I was sent on a fool’s errand, and have returned a little wiser than I went, I hope.”

“And pray, sir, what has your wisdom taught you?”

“It has taught me, father, that in affairs of the heart, the heart alone should be consulted. Had you left the matter to time, as I wished—had you suffered me to follow my own feelings and judgment, which would have prompted me to try to win her affections by a course of quiet attentions, such as the most modest woman might receive without a blush, and the most fastidious think not derogatory to their delicacy or their pride, I might have perhaps succeeded in time. But you, sir, took advantage of a sense of duty which I have, I hope, never violated, to urge, nay, to force me into a situation which will bring blushes to my cheek, and anguish to my heart, to the latest hour of my life.”

“Phew!” whistled Solomon; “all moonshine! Try again, boy. Take time by the forelock, and go to her to-morrow morning. I insist upon it, sir, or you are no longer a son of mine.”

“Father!” replied Gideon, in accents of the deepest, most solemn determination, “father, I have hitherto obeyed you in all things; often when both my wishes and my reason revolted at the nature of your commands, because you were my parent, and I felt I was but a boy, who had no right to stake my inexperience against your knowledge of mankind and the world. But this is a different case. It is an affair in which Fanny and myself alone are concerned; it is an affair of personal delicacy and feeling; it involves the violation of that respect which every man deserving the name owes to the delicacy, the dignity, and the feelings of a virtuous woman. I have insulted Fanny once—I will never do it again. I have outraged my own feelings, betrayed my own judgment, and have been punished so keenly, so bitterly, that I declare, in the face of heaven and my father, that rather than repeat the scene, I will subject myself to a parent’s curse, and become an outcast from my home.”

Solomon was absolutely confounded at this sudden running up of the flag of rebellion. Though a very wise man in the opinion of his neighbors, and his own too, because he Always took time by the forelock, he had not yet learned that the lower you pull the sapling toward the earth, the higher it will fly when it escapes from your hand. Hitherto Gideon had been the most submissive of sons, and the last thing Solomon expected was an outbreak of this sort. He was one of those men who are all obstinacy, until they meet with opposition, but who, like a brawling stream, always turn aside from a rock. Accordingly, finding Gideon immovable, he moved on one side himself, and, in conformity with his usual custom, solaced his self-sufficiency with a prediction.

“Well, sir—well—have your own way, but mind what I say—you will be sorry you had not taken time by the forelock, and followed my advice, before a year passes over your head. Remember what I say.”

Fanny could not sleep that night for thinking of the strange, unaccountable behavior of Gideon, and wondering whether he was in earnest or not, in his professions of love. To be sure, his passion must have been very violent and sudden in its progress; but there was certainly such a thing as love at first sight, and this might be a case in point.

“If he is in earnest—why then I can have him when I please; and it must be confessed that he is good-looking—some think very handsome—and every body speaks well of him. If he had only waited till we had got a little acquainted, I dare say I should have been brought to like him—but to be so insulted—yes—it was certainly a downright insult, almost strangers as we were, to kiss my hand as if he was going to eat it. But that might have been because he could not help it. Poor fellow! he seemed as if he didn’t know what he was doing. Heigho! I wish he had not been in such a hurry, though I dare say it was all owing to his father, who is always preaching up taking time by the forelock. Heigho! I wish—I wish I had not spoken so harshly to the poor fellow!”

Thus thought Fanny as she lay awake in her bed, and the moon peeped into the window to have a look at her, in order to judge whether she was so handsome as report made her out to be.

The next morning the squire was very curious to know what the deuce had got into Gideon the night before to behave so ridiculously, and declared his solemn belief that the young man was tipsy. Fanny warmly defended him from this accusation, and certainly nobody had a better right, for during the scene of the preceding evening, they had been for a moment in such close juxtaposition, that she could distinguish the quality of his breath, and it was as sweet and fresh as that of a blithe spring morning. Fanny fell a strong impulse of duty to disclose the truth; but reflecting that it was not quite fair to expose a discarded swain, she kept the secret, and thereby afforded a memorable example to her sex. It was observed, however, that she was not quite so cheerful as usual, but appeared almost always thoughtful, and at times somewhat depressed. She saw nothing of Gideon for some time afterward, except at church, where she occasionally stole a look at him, and was rather affronted at finding that he was neither pale nor thin, and had nothing of the appearance of a disappointed swain. She never caught his eye, for he never could see or think of her without a most bitter twinge of mortified pride at the recollection of his own folly, and its merited punishment. Neither of them could ever give any account, either of the text or the sermon, when they came home.

Fanny took long walks, and Gideon became a great fisherman, not because he had the patience of Job, a quality indispensable to that philosophical profession, but because it led him from the haunts of his fellow creatures, who, with that self-consciousness which is one of the great castigators of folly and crime, he took it for granted were laughing at him. There was a clear crystal stream, almost a river, which meandered round the village, through rich meadows, along whose margin the elms, plane trees and basswood grew in all their primeval majesty, and in whose bosom the silvery sided fishes sported, or watched the cricket and grasshopper as they ever and anon heedlessly jumped into the stream. This little river was spanned by a bridge, about half a mile from the town, over which, however, there was little traveling, the village being in a retired part of the country, distant from any high-road or thoroughfare.

In this little pastoral river Gideon was now accustomed to exercise his piscatory skill to little purpose, his mind being busily employed in the agreeable occupation of preying upon itself; and on this bridge, which afforded a prospect of the river as it meandered musically along through the green world, until finally lost in the bosom of a distant craggy mountain, Fanny was one pleasant summer afternoon pensively leaning over the railing, thinking of any thing but the time, the place, and the beauties of nature that lay smiling before her. She had no business to be there, and was wrong to be thus rambling about all alone. She should have stayed at home, and minded her business, and she was punished for her transgression. She had not noticed a little black cloud that was slily and quietly creeping up the firmament, and which all at once, without giving any warning, puffed forth a snug little whirlwind, that in an instant blew her bonnet into the stream. In the surprise of the moment, she gave a scream, which reached the ear of a young men who was slowly advancing up the stream, with a long pole in his hand, and who, seeing the bonnet floating in the water, very precipitately concluded there was a female belonging to it. Without waiting to verify the fact, he plunged in and seized the bonnet, but no lady was there, and none could be found, after swimming and groping about till he was almost drowned. He, however, brought the bonnet ashore in triumph; but this feeling soon changed to one of deep solicitude when he discovered by the color of the ribbons, and other marks constituting what logicians would call personal identity, that it was the very one he had seen Fanny wear at church the last Sunday. It is a singular fact, that though Gideon never looked at Fanny, he always knew how she was dressed by a sort of instinct. As this bonnet had a very material agency in producing the events which follow, it would be proper to describe it more particularly, were it not for apprehension that fashionable people might turn away from this history in disgust; for it actually served the purposes for which such conveniences were originally devised, by at once protecting the head and face from the sun.

This discovery was on the point of occasioning Gideon another ducking, when, fortunately, he heard himself called by name in a voice so sweet, that he mistook it for the turtle-dove cooing, and looking to the spot whence it seemed to steal out, recognized Fanny standing bare-headed on the bridge. The whole affair flashed upon him at once, and he perceived that he had been risking his life for a bonnet, instead of a lady. The poor lad, who labored under the utmost horror of being laughed at, and was still suffering the sting of his former contemptuous rejection, stood still and stupified at this awful recognition. He was pondering in a fever of conflicting emotions, when he heard the same soft voice calling his name again, and saw Fanny beckoning him to come and bring her the bonnet, which, not knowing what a good friend it would ultimately prove, he unjustly stigmatized as an accursed bonnet. There was, however, no alternative between carrying it to the owner, and throwing it down and running away. With infinite compunction he chose the former, and approaching the lady, with all the ardor of a criminal brought to be sentenced to the State prison for life, he delivered the bonnet he had so gallantly rescued from the waves.

As he approached he observed that Fanny looked beautiful, and the nearer he came the more beautiful she looked. There was a glowing blush on her cheek; the wind had produced that graceful disorder of hair which art cannot imitate, and there shone an indescribable expression in her face and eyes that Gideon actually interpreted into a welcome. She took the bonnet that he presented in silence, and offered her thanks in words of simple gratefulness, adding—

“It was not worth the risk of your life, Gideon.”

“I thought it was yourself,” replied he; and these brief words, pronounced in the simplicity of his heart, seemed to penetrate into hers. She colored all over her face, neck and bosom; and it was some few moments before she could answer, in a voice trembling with emotion—

“And so—and so—you were willing to risk your life for me?”

“Certainly,” replied he, in a manner and words utterly destitute of gallantry, “certainly, madam, or for any other person I thought drowning?”

“Ah! yes—old Mrs. Goggin, I suppose—or Uncle Cæsar, the black sexton—or your father’s old blind horse, Pepper,” answered Fanny, trying to laugh, though in fact downright angry. She had felt a glow of gratitude, which being thus met by a cold chill of indifference, produced a sudden revulsion.

“Spare me your ridicule, madam,” replied Gideon, “I have once bitterly felt its power, and though I deserved it, I have never forgot its poignancy. But there is every appearance of rain, and I would advise you to return home as soon as possible.”

They proceeded side by side toward the village, for Gideon could not bring himself to leave Fanny, as he had good reason to believe it would rain in a few minutes. For some time neither uttered a word, though at every vivid dash of lightning, followed by quick sharp crashes of thunder, she involuntarily pressed closer to him as if for shelter. Suddenly he heard a low rumbling sound behind him, and looking round beheld the neighboring mountain capped with a white fleecy veil rapidly descending down its sides. He announced the necessity of immediately seeking some shelter—but none was nigh, except an old patriarchal elm, whose antique body expanding at the root, as is not uncommon, to a great size, a few feet above the ground, inclosed a considerable hollow cavity, into which he placed Fanny without ceremony, as the big drops began to fall apace. There was, perhaps, room enough for both, but Gideon stood modestly outside, in a direction to keep off from her as much of the rain as possible. But when Fanny saw the rain pelting him from head to foot, and the dashes of lightning playing about him, she felt her heart reproach her, and insisted on his coming inside.

“You forget I am wet already,” said he.

Yet he obeyed her, notwithstanding. They were thus placed face to face, and so close that they actually breathed upon each other, which every body knows is a very critical position. Gideon was sorely incited to try whether the balmy gale really came from the ruby lips that almost touched his; but the recollection of the terrible set down he got on a certain memorable occasion quelled the mischievous tempter, and he remained like a statue, sometimes looking up the hollow of the tree, with an appearance of great curiosity, and sometimes out, expressing, like a great blockhead as he was, his extreme solicitude for the clearing up of the storm. What the deuce put it into Fanny’s head, nobody knows, but she suddenly—just after a great clap of thunder—asked Gideon if he had heard that Miss Jones was just going to be married to Mr. Smith.

“No,” replied he, wincing, “I understood she had refused him some months ago.”

“O, yes! But you know she may have changed her mind since. She told me she thought he was rather hasty in his first offer, as they had hardly had time to become acquaintances, much less lovers; but Mr. Smith persevered, and Miss Jones finding that he was not so forward as she first thought him, when he offered himself the second time they met, has accepted him at last.”

“I think Mr. Smith was a great fool to risk a second refusal. For my part, if a woman rejected me once, I should think myself a great fool to expose myself to her scorn and ridicule a second time.”

“O! Gideon—Gideon! I didn’t mean to wound your feelings so deeply!” exclaimed Fanny, and what more she would have added was cut short by a flash of lightning that appeared to shatter the universe, accompanied by a burst of thunder that seemed little leas than the crash of its falling ruins. The old tree which had stood unscathed for centuries now met that fate which age had so long threatened; its limbs were shivered to atoms, and the electric fire passing down the outside, tore up the earth at its foot.

“Dearest Fanny!” cried Gideon—and “Dearest Gideon!” exclaimed Fanny, as she cast herself forward into his arms almost insensible. This seemed the last dying speech of the storm. The last cloud passed over with it, and in an instant the glorious sun looked out smilingly on the earth, which was sparkling with jewels. Fanny and Gideon returned together in silence, except that eyes are sometimes said to speak; and the former, on being interrogated by the squire as to where she had been, answered mischievously—

“In a hollow tree, father.”

“And what, in the name of sense, brought you there?”

“The storm, sir.”

“Poor girl! And were you all alone by yourself in that terrible thunder and lightning?”

“No, sir—Gideon was with me.”

“He was? How came he so wet, and you so perfectly dry?”

“Why, sir—he jumped into the river after my bonnet.”

“Hum—ha—um—this seems very like a cock and bull story—jumping; into the river—hollow tree—what hollow tree?”

“Why, sir, the old elm tree, at the side of the road, about two or three hundred yards from the bridge.”

“Ah! yes—hum—I remember hiding there when a boy. But, zounds, Fanny, you must have been pretty close together, for it was just large enough for me at that time.”

“Oh! but my dear father—you can’t think how much bigger it has grown since!” replied Fanny, blushing, half in jest and half in earnest, half in modesty and half in triumph, so that there were four halves to her blush.

The squire, in the end, insisted upon knowing the whole story, which Fanny, with a self-denial almost supernatural, committed to Gideon, who, after relating all the particulars, suddenly electrified the squire by beseeching him to bestow his adopted daughter on him as a wife, notwithstanding Fanny held up her finger at him, and exclaimed—

“Beware, Gideon—remember the skein of thread and the snuffers!”

“What—aye—yes!—I remember the snuffers. I see it all now—the youngster was just falling over head and ears in love, and that made him such a fool. But what shall I do for a nurse when you are married; and how can I live all alone in my old age, with nobody to take care of me but that infernal old woman, Mrs. Goggin? Ah! it won’t do. Besides, what’s the use of your being in such a hurry; better put it off a few years.”

“My dear father, I will still be your nurse. I will not leave you, but continue lo live with you, and take care of you, till one or both of us die.”

“By the Lord Harry—so you can!” exclaimed the squire, rubbing his hands—but his countenance suddenly fell, as he added—“but then you will have enough of your own to take care of, let alone me—yes—yes—yes.”

And then he fell into a deep fit of musing, from which he started forth briskly—

“The little rogues will be company for me—I can dandle them on my knees, teach them their A B C, and buy toys for them to make them love me. I give my—but hadn’t you better take a little time to consider—for you know a wise man never does to-day what he can put off till to-morrow.”

“My father thinks and acts directly the contrary,” said Gideon, smiling.

“Your father is a great block—but you don’t wish to put it off till next year, hey?”

Gideon protested he had no such wish.

“But what say you, you little sly puss—I should like to know your opinion?”

“Why—why—my dear father—though I thought Gideon was rather too much in a hurry the first, I think he has taken quite long enough in considering the second time.”

“Well—well,” said the squire, “take her, Gideon. You will be a happy man if she makes you as good a wife as she has mode me a daughter. Well,” added he, laughing, “I have read of love in a cottage—but love in a hollow tree! I’ll swear there is not room enough in it for two crooked sticks! But you’d better consider. No? You shake your heads. Well then, I say again, take her, with all I am worth, and my blessing into the bargain.”

The marriage day was fixed at no distant period, and though the good squire was quite as anxious as any body, except the parties more immediately concerned, yet he never failed every day to set forth the ill consequences of doing things in a hurry, and to recommend putting off the ceremony till another day. Solomon, on the contrary, urged the shortening of the period of probation, and, strange to say, Gideon perfectly coincided with him on this occasion, though he had differed so decidedly before. This union of the two families did not in the least affect the relations of the wise man and the fool. It is true that time and experience often brought the conviction home to one that he frequently burnt his fingers by not approaching the fire with due caution, and to the other, that he more than once missed his aim by being too long in taking sight. But what are the lessons of experience when arrayed against long cherished habits? They continued to their dying day to adhere each to his favorite maxim, insomuch that when the squire was on his death-bed, and the physician assured him that day was his lost, he answered, almost unconsciously—

“Doctor, hadn’t you better put it off till to-morrow?”

Solomon survived him a few years, and having nobody now to dispute with, and little to do, passed most of his leisure in meddling with the affairs of other people.

“Why don’t you reap your harvest?” said he, one morning, to a neighbor—“don’t you see it is over ripe already? Never, my friend, put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.”

The good husbandman, having a great opinion of Solomon’s wisdom, fell to and cut down his wheat that very day; but there fell out, immediately after, a long, warm rain, which set the poor man’s wheat growing again, and it was all spoiled. These and other similar inroads on Solomon’s maxim greatly undermined the opinion of his wisdom, and the villagers would often exclaim on these occasions—

“Ah! what a loss we have had in poor Squire Ninny—he never did things in a hurry, but always considered well beforehand, like a wise man as he was.”

Solomon fell a victim to his great maxim at last. He was one day a little indisposed.

“We must take time by the forelock,” said he.

So he sent for a doctor, and that did his business.

DEDICATED TO REV. EDMUND NEVILLE.

BY JUDGE CONRAD.

BY J. B. TAYLOR.

BY MRS. A. M. F. ANNAN.

“All the beauty and fashion of the city,” as the journals of the next day had it, were assembled in the —— Concert-room, to listen to a selection of ancient music by a company of amateurs, mostly possessing both skill and courage for the undertaking. Every thing went on and off as such things generally do, till at length a female voice, of so much grandeur, so much fullness, richness and power, broke upon the auditory, in a solo of Handel, that it was with difficulty they could restrain themselves from a burst of such tumultuous applause as the prescribed etiquette of the occasion prohibited. The singer was a new one, and the recess which immediately followed was welcomed as an opportunity for remarks and inquiries.

Among those whose surprise and admiration were the most markedly exhibited, appeared a gentleman who presented in his stately figure and noble features almost every external perfection of mature manhood. He had arisen from his conspicuous seat, and was leaning forward toward the slight screen which concealed the performers, with an interest that might have seemed unjustifiable in consideration that he was cavalier to two of the loveliest women in the house. Who this party were, we must stop to tell before going farther.

Colonel Frankfort had been esteemed, for the last ten years, by every unmarried lady in his circle the greatest speculation it contained. He had tempted the calculating by his great wealth, as well as the romantic by his personal graces. He had subdued one class of the ambitious by heading a select literary club; another by distinguishing himself for a couple of terms in Congress, and a third by proving himself the most able tactician, while he displayed the most splendid figure in a series of military pageants. And with those who required more than mere extrinsic recommendations, he had won his way by preserving a spotless character, and by exercising a benevolent and discriminating generosity in the disposal of his immense income. He had but one fault to lessen the force of his several and aggregate attractions—he was not a marrying man.

The lady who sat nearest to him, remarkable for her majestic figure, the animated beauty and commanding style of her countenance, and her superb dress, was a Miss Hazleton—a personage not less envied and enviable than himself. She was the uncontrolled heiress of a very large estate, intellectual, noble-minded, and not yet twenty-four. An admirable match for Colonel Frankfort! thought the disinterested; but that was out of the question. She had been engaged for several years to a man, equally worthy of her, who, being too chivalrous to rely upon the portion of a wife, was now absent from the country, rapidly accumulating by commerce the independence with which he considered he should be entitled to claim her.

Her companion, Fanny Milman, was a fresh, sweet, lovely girl of nineteen, gentle and graceful in her manners, and bearing in every tone of her musical voice, and in every change of her expressive face, the assurances of a sensitive, yielding, trusting, womanly spirit. She was the daughter of an aunt of Miss Hazleton, who had borne a mother’s part to her from childhood, and was now the matron of her household. The cousins were models of female friendship, and though in the relative positions of protectress and dependent, they shared each other’s employments, studies and amusements without a shadow of patronizing or exaction on the part of the one, or of envy or obsequiousness on that of the other. They were now anxiously waiting to learn something of the new singer.

“Can you distinguish her, Colonel Frankfort?” asked Miss Hazleton.

As he replied in the negative, a middle-aged lady, who occupied a seat before them, with three or four well-behaved little girls ranged systematically beside her, looked over her shoulder and asked—

“Were you not delighted with her, Miss Hazleton? and do I not deserve a great many thanks for introducing her to the association?”

“Pray who is she, my dear Mrs. Hawley?”

“Have you not heard? a young German lady—the music teacher of my little girls.”

“But where or how did you find her?”

“Oh, it is a long story, and there is not time to tell it all just now. She came over better than a year ago, with her father, a man of talents and learning, who was in reduced circumstances, and who expected to obtain a professorship, or something of that kind, in this country. He was disappointed in his calculations, and to obtain a livelihood resorted to teaching languages to such pupils as he could find. He lost his health, and a few months ago he died, leaving this poor girl, who was a pattern of filial excellence, to struggle for herself. I happened to hear of her great proficiency in music, from a person who had boarded in the same house with her, and after calling on her to satisfy myself, I offered her the charge of my daughters.”

“Is she handsome?” asked Colonel Frankfort.

“Ah, Colonel! always the first question with you gentlemen! She is handsome—remarkably so, though her beauty is of a peculiar kind, seldom seen amongst us.”

“Has she found no other patrons?” inquired Miss Hazleton.

“Yes, my dear; at my recommendation my friends Mrs. Clemmens and Mrs. Webb also engaged her for their children. They have three apiece, and as I have four, we monopolize her time altogether. The poor creature was overjoyed to have our employment, and we have made arrangements by which she is insured female protection and home comforts, without the expenses and exposure of boarding-houses. She stays with us alternately a month at a time.”

“Boarding round, in the good old school-marm style,” said Miss Hazleton, smiling; “and that expedient, of course, enables her to be much less extravagant in her terms than the masters you formerly employed.”

“Certainly; she saves her board, you know, and we give her what we think fully sufficient for all her other wants, which ought not to be great.”

“Ah, yes, I understand. Is she otherwise accomplished than in music?”

“Very highly; she is a perfect mistress of all the modern languages, and of every thing that belongs to female education. I forgot to say that she has become governess in general to our little girls.”

“I should like much to see her, Mrs. Hawley; if you have no objections I shall call on her.”

“Pray do so, my dear Miss Hazleton; the countenance of a lady so influential as yourself could not fail to be grateful to her. She is at my house now.”

“I believe you have not given us her name, madam?” said the colonel.

“Landorf—Madeline Landorf.”

They were interrupted by the renewal of the performance, during which the brilliant execution and the thrilling expression of the fair stranger again enraptured all the rapturable portion of the audience, and afforded matter for at least half the talk on their different ways homeward. It was especially the case with the party who occupied the splendid equipage of Colonel Frankfort, all of whom were devout admirers of musical skill. Miss Hazleton, in particular, was enthusiastic in declaiming her enjoyment.

“I shall go to see her to-morrow,” said she, as she ran up the steps of the elegant house of which she was mistress, “and if she realizes Mrs. Hawley’s description, I shall make some effort to serve her. I don’t know a more cheerless destiny to a woman of education, talent and refinement, than that of seeing her graceful accomplishments caricatured by such chits as she is operating upon. As to the ‘home comforts,’ I am too well acquainted with the characters of those three enterprizing dowagers, not to know of what class she will find them to be.”

So intent was she upon her project, that she failed to notice its having been received without comment, and also that Colonel Frankfort, after carefully assisting her young cousin to the door, had slightly pressed the hand which she withdrew from his arm.

The third day after the concert Miss Hazleton was seated in her front drawing-room, with her cousin; Fanny seemingly intent upon her needlework, and her companion engaged in the triple occupation of sewing, talking, and occasionally looking into the adjoining room, with as much apparent pride and pleasure as if she had had before her some precious and newly acquired work of art. The object of her attention, revealed through the folding-doors, was no other than Miss Landorf, who was reading, and who appeared, from her placid countenance and the repose of her attitude, to be quite at home. She was exceedingly beautiful—more regularly so than either of the others; with a complexion of the exquisite white of the mother-of-pearl; large, soft blue eyes, and luxuriant hair, which might have been too light even for a skin of such dazzling fairness, had it not gleamed in every wave with a tinge of the brightest gold. She was dressed in a simple suit of black, which exhibited a form tall, slender and graceful, well assimilating with the intellectual and delicate cast of her face.

“As I was saying,” proceeded Miss Hazleton, to her cousin, “there is no genus of society with whom I have so little patience as your ‘single men.’ I don’t mean old bachelors whom nobody will have, nor youths who would have almost any body; but men of mature minds, and of qualifications to make themselves acceptable in female society, who, from an overweening estimate of themselves and of their independence, take pride in being non-marrying men—who, notwithstanding, are never without some object of devotion, and presuming upon the publicity of their sentiments with regard to matrimony, use it as a privilege to transfer their favors from one to another, just as the whim may take them. In short,” she added, fixing her black eyes searchingly on Fanny, “such a man as Colonel Frankfort.”

“Do not be unjust, Letitia,” returned Fanny, her cheeks flushing to the hue of the rose she was working; “from what do you judge him to be a proper instance of that class?”

“From his attentions to a dozen since I have known him, not omitting myself.”

“But those attentions were chiefly to such as required a gentleman’s services from having no fathers nor brothers on whom to depend for them, and such as could be elevated in society by his apparent respect and esteem. As to yourself—did you not, with your usual tact and honesty, put a stop to his assiduities by confessing your long-standing engagement? It was easy to see to what they tended.”

“A warm defence! and just to please you, Fanny, I will yield to it so far as to admit the probability that he will marry some time, yet what sort of a selection he will make completely baffles my penetration, and I pique myself on being particularly acute in such matters. He is indifferent to fortune, for he has plenty of his own; he demands beauty, yet our mere beauties can do nothing with him; talent he must have, as a matter of course, yet it is so seldom united with such other attributes as he requires, that no blue has met with any kind of success. My strongest impression is that he will make en eccentric match at last—marry some pretty and innocent child, and educate her to his taste, or become fascinated by some brilliant actress or female artist, and bestow upon her his hand with all its valuable concomitants. Between ourselves,” she continued, lowering her voice, “the idea has just struck me that we are throwing a lure in his way—that our new charge, yonder, with her wonderful beauty and endless accomplishments, may prove the very person to subdue him.”

“Letitia!” exclaimed Fanny, her blushes growing deeper and deeper, and then fading quite away.

“It was just an involuntary thought of mine,” said Miss Hazleton, satisfied that she had made the discovery she was aiming at, but appearing not to have noticed her cousin’s emotion; “you may be sure I have no wish it should be so, on the contrary, it would be much more pleasant to believe that the good genius, which in other things seems to govern him, will prevail, and that he will at length surrender to some gentle and elegant woman of his own rank—one loveable and companionable, with pure tastes and refined feelings, who will initiate him into the peaceful and rational pleasures of domestic life, and will constitute his pride and his happiness—such an one, for instance, as my own cousin Fanny!”

Before Fanny could reply, Colonel Frankfort himself was announced, and her consciousness of the probing she had received gave her little composure to confront him. He, however, required no effort, for the compliments of meeting were scarcely over, when he turned to Letitia and said—

“I congratulate you, Miss Hazleton, on the success of your laudable purpose. I took the liberty of calling this morning on Mrs. Hawley, to make some farther inquiries about her fair protegée, and learned from her that you had preceded me, and had yesterday removed her hither.”

“Indeed!” said Miss Hazleton, returning his animated expression with a look of great coolness, from a feeling that such active interest was any thing but favorable to the cause of her cousin.

Fanny instinctively understood her, and hastened to correct her by her own manner.

“Miss Landorf has just left the room, Colonel Frankfort,” said she; “on her return we will introduce her to you. You cannot fail to admire her, and would respect her quite as much, if aware of the nobleness of her character. Before Letitia decided upon inviting her hither, we called upon the family with whom she and her father had boarded, and the story we learned of her patience, industry and devotedness was so touching that I would not venture to repeat it. The old gentleman was for a long time ill, utterly helpless, and, besides nursing him, she toiled day and night to afford him the best medical attendance, besides every comfort an invalid could require. She took charge of his pupils, adding to the usual amount of services to retain them, and laboring every spare moment at elegant and ingenious fancy articles, that, by disposing of them on any terms, she might add a little to their funds. Letitia has never had an object so worthy of her kindness, and is, I am confident, thankful for the occasion which brought her to our knowledge.”

“And how did you prevail upon the stock company, Mesdames Hawley, Clemmens and Webb, to part with their joint speculation?” asked the colonel.

“I did not attempt that,” returned Miss Hazleton, recovering her good-humor; “I merely offered myself as a partner, willing to take the burden of the outlays on my own hands. I saw at once that Miss Landorf would insist upon adhering to her engagements with them, and I promised that they should retain the benefit of her labors, while I would provide her with a permanent home. Then by proposing myself and Fanny as additional pupils—we do wish to learn German—I removed from them all suspicion of a plot, besides conquering her scruples to become an inmate here without a claim.”

“Your usual able diplomacy, my dear Miss Hazleton, as well as your accustomed benevolence,” said Colonel Frankfort, smiling; “but you have not told me, Miss Fanny, whether her personal attractions are worthy of her moral excellencies and mental accomplishments.”

“She is a perfect lily for beauty, grace and sweetness,” said Fanny, warmly.

The colonel started with affected surprise.

“It is astonishing, as well as refreshing,” said he, “to hear such ardent and disinterested commendations of one lady from another,” and he was interrupted by the appearance of Miss Landorf.

Fanny could not help watching him when her cousin presented him to the fair emigrant, and to her dismay she saw his countenance change to an expression of intense interest and admiration. He took a seat near her, addressed her with his most winning air, begged to lead her to the piano, when he saw that she was not inclined to talk, listened while she played with the most rapt attention, and appeared bent upon being as fascinating as possible. The other two ladies seemed almost to have escaped his recollection, and even while taking leave, though he directed his words to them, he kept his eyes upon her.

“There it is—just as I anticipated,” said Miss Hazleton, when he had withdrawn.

The manner of Miss Landorf was timid, flurried and nervous, altogether different from what might have been expected of her, and from the graceful composure that Colonel Frankfort was known to admire. If she could captivate him under such a disadvantage, the cause of poor Fanny was hopeless. So thought Letitia, and she decided upon losing no time nor effort to remove her cousin’s misplaced attachment.

The very next morning the colonel repeated his visit, and, as before, almost his first question was for Miss Landorf. She had been sitting with the cousins, and, at the moment of his entrance, had stolen into the back-parlor, placing herself, as if for concealment, at a large embroidery frame. Her retreat was indicated, and the gentleman walked straight toward her, and again took a seat close by. After inquiring about her health, he watched her delicate fingers entangling themselves among the floss silks, chenilles and zephyr worsteds, and then, as if to relieve her of her superfluous shyness, he discoursed on various kinds of embroideries as understandingly as could have been expected of a gentleman and a bachelor. Still Madeline continued silent, and to give elevation to his theme he digressed to Queen Anne tapestries, and Gobelins, occasionally wandering off to Persia, China and Tyre, but with no better success. At length he addressed her in a short sentence of German, and the effect was electrical. She blushed, turned pale, threw down her working implements, and answered with eagerness and energy. The colonel apologized for continuing the conversation in the same language, presuming that he was understood by all the company—a presumption altogether groundless, of which he must have been aware, though he did not wait to be reminded of it, and the two wondering spectators sat looking on in tantalizing ignorance. So excited Miss Landorf became, that in a short time she left the room, and though it was under the plea of visiting her pupils, full an hour passed before she descended the stairs to go out. Colonel Frankfort arose to go, immediately after she had retired. As he was making his bow, Miss Hazleton asked, with an effort to conceal her displeasure—

“Who was that young gentleman, Colonel Frankfort, with whom I saw you yesterday evening?”

“My nephew and namesake, Ferdinand Frankfort. He arrived in the city a few days ago, and is desirous to be presented here. With your permission I shall do him the honor to introduce him.”

“Very ingeniously arranged,” said Letitia, when he had gone; “I suppose he designs to console us for the withdrawal of his own favors, by the notice of his nephew. What did you think of the appearance of the young man, Fanny?”

“I really did not observe him.”

“Did you not? a strikingly handsome youth, I must allow—tall and graceful, with a high, pale forehead, silken ringlets, and a most romantic cast of face—altogether such a person as would be likely to make an impression on a sensitive, sentimental damsel like yourself. But I give you warning not to think of him. He is the only son among a large family of daughters, and has been educated without a profession by a scheming mamma, and half a dozen ambitious sisters, his submissive father out of the question, for the sole purpose of making a fortune, and adding to the dignity of the house, by marrying an heiress. They have had him studying the graces in Paris, and the humanities in Germany—the colonel himself took him over—and now he is ready to enter upon his career. He is said, indeed, to be rather too honest and retiring to be perfectly pliant to their requisitions, but, no doubt, they hope that, as he gets older, he will get rid of his weaknesses, and improve in worldly wisdom.”

“It was well you cautioned me,” said Fanny, attempting to smile, “for, of course, with my empty purse my case with him would be hopeless.”

“True—so, perhaps, the colonel intends to supply his salvo to me. I am out of all patience with him. Madeline herself has observed the impression she has made, and we may rest assured that all is over. This comes of my philanthropy. I am half inclined to declare, like Paul Pry, that I will never do another good-natured action as long as I live.”

“Shame—shame! Letitia! after proving by your interest in her that you thought her worthy of good fortune, to grudge it to her without reason! If Colonel Frankfort is willing to supply it to her, we ought to be gratified that our services are so ably seconded.”

“That’s a dear, good girl! My whole concern was that you might be jealous, for from his constant assiduities I really hoped that you had made the decisive conquest, until these late incidents have renewed my doubts of his good judgment.”

“You must be reconciled to finding yourself mistaken sometimes,” returned Fanny, with a slight tremor of voice; “his attentions must have been merely offered through respect and kindness, for I am convinced he is too honorable a man to belong to the class among whom you place him. If your supposition is correct of his predilection for Madeline, we should be candid enough to commend him that it is so disinterested and undisguised.”

The next morning the two young ladies went out to make visits.

“Has any one called?” asked Miss Hazleton, on their return.

“Colonel Frankfort, with a young gentleman,” replied the footman; “they waited for nearly an hour, and have just gone.”

“Waited? How did that happen? My aunt is not at home.”

“They asked for Miss Landorf, and I showed them in.”

“Worse and worse, Fanny; we are left altogether out of the plot. The colonel, I suppose, was desirous of submitting the future aunt to the cultivated taste of his nephew. I think when we furnish stage, machinery and heroine for an impromptu tragedy or comedy—which is it?—we should at least be invited to take part in the performance.”

The visit of the gentlemen was the commencement of a series. Day after day they called, and if Miss Hazleton had not provided herself with inferences, their conduct would have been inexplicable. In spite of her prejudices she could not avoid acknowledging that the nephew was a young man of whom any family might have been proud. Added to his remarkably fine person, he exhibited highly respectable attainments, generous feelings and upright principles, all enhanced in value by a modesty as rare as commendable. His manners were the most inappropriate in the world for a fortune-hunter. While he was evidently indifferent, though polite and cordial toward Letitia, he watched every word and look of Madeline with a timid and respectful attention; and if that might have been accounted for by the intentions of his uncle, still, toward the almost equally portionless Fanny, his bearing was scarcely less admiring and deferential. Thus they came for a fortnight, inquiring for the ladies collectively, or for Madeline alone, if the others were out, and, at last, one morning the colonel came by himself and requested a private interview with Miss Landorf.

“This, I suppose, is to bring matters to a climax,” said Miss Hazleton, when she and Fanny had retired to a little work-room up stairs; “I have been, for several days, in a state of the most vexatious uncertainty as to how the matter would terminate after all. Ferdinand, with his soft tones, his abstracted eye and his undecided manner, is a perfect riddle; and as to the colonel, I really began to think that he was so charmed with your generous kindness to his fair inamorata, your perpetual efforts to relieve her of her trepidations, and to show off her attractions to the best advantage, that through gratitude he was almost ready to restore to you a portion of his allegiance.”

A deep blush overspread the face of Fanny, which she was herself conscious had grown very pale of late, and, to conceal it, she turned to a window that fronted those of the drawing-rooms. Letitia followed her, and a scene, which palpably contradicted her hopes, met their eyes. Madeline was sitting full in view, and the colonel, bending over her, was holding her hand in his. She made a movement to withdraw it, and as he yielded it up, he stooped down and kissed her cheek. Fanny turned quickly away, and before her cousin could make a comment, had fainted on a sofa.

Though greatly shocked, Miss Hazleton had sufficient presence of mind not to call assistance, and when the disappointed girl revived, she made a passionate confession of what had been her hopes, which were blighted, and her dreams which were broken forever. She received all the consolation that her sympathizing friend could suggest, and then withdrew to her chamber. Colonel Frankfort sent a message, before leaving the house, to Miss Hazleton, wishing for a few minutes’ conversation; but too indignant and too much grieved on account of Fanny, she declined to comply.

The next morning, before leaving her room, Letitia heard a gentle tap at the door, and supposing it to be that of Fanny, she hastened to open it. To her surprise she found Miss Landorf, divested of her mourning garments, and looking surpassingly lovely in a dress of simple, uncontrasted white.

“My dear Miss Hazleton,” said she, blushing and faltering in her sweet but imperfect accent, “I wished to see you last night, but hearing that you were with Miss Milman, I feared to intrude. Forgive me for so long using concealment with you to whom I am so much indebted, but my heart was too full to let me trust myself to speak. And besides, my mind was so bewildered, that it was only yesterday I could satisfy myself that it was right to consent to—to—”

“I understand, Madeline—you are going to be married.”

“You do not speak as you have always done, dear Miss Hazleton,” said Madeline, taking both of Letitia’s hands in hers, while the tears came into her eyes; “you condemn me, as I feared you would, but my feelings pleaded so strongly against my judgment! I know that I am not worthy of him, that poor and humble in station, I shall incur the scorn of a family so exacting; but he knows all about me—my origin, my history, my character, and he is so noble as to disregard my present occupation and dependence, and to take me just as I am. And then I loved him long before my misfortunes, long before your kindness was the means of bringing me again in his way.”

“Madeline! you never hinted this before!”

“Forgive me, Miss Hazleton—as I said, I knew not that it would end thus, and otherwise it would have been but a vain confidence, besides betraying feelings which I regarded as a weakness, and endeavored to suppress as well as to conceal. And it was connected with my happier days, the remembrance of which only awakened to me unavailing regret, and, still more, with the memory of my beloved father, who, when his prospects failed, and a life of petty toil was before him, scorned the thought of allowing a generous man to degrade himself in the estimation of the world by an alliance with his friendless and unportioned child. My poor, dear father! I think if he could have heard the reasoning which has conquered me—if he could see my present prospects of happiness—” and throwing her arms round Letitia’s neck, she gave vent to her varied feelings in tears.

Miss Hazleton was touched.

“You deserve them all, dear Madeline,” said she, kindly; “and I hope you will be amply repaid for all your former trials. You wish to see Fanny? I must disappoint you now. She has been indisposed, as I told you last night, and it is best not to excite her. But you will soon find her able to see you. Meanwhile, I will tell her all, and say every thing you wish.”

“You cannot tell her, my kind friend, how much I have to thank her for her sweetness, and gentleness, and sympathy. Oh! I have so much reason for gratitude to you both! But farewell, dearest Miss Hazleton—may you be better rewarded than I have language to express.”

Again clasping the hands of Letitia, and kissing her cheek, she drew her white veil over her face, and hastened down stairs, where was heard the voice of Colonel Frankfort, while his carriage stood at the door. Letitia walked to the window, and saw them driven off. Fanny, too, had witnessed their departure, and when her cousin came to break the intelligence to her, she spoke of it with calmness, though her swollen eyes and pallid cheeks attested how much she had suffered.

An hour or two passed, and the friends still sat together, when the equipage again drove up to the house, and a servant rapped at the chamber door to say that Colonel Frankfort wished to speak to Miss Hazleton.

“Shall I go?” she asked, and on Fanny’s signing assent, she left her to comply. She returned, in a few minutes, with a flushed countenance and a quickened step, and said—“He has come, Fanny, move me thus—even were she here! And she is not here!”

His voice trembled and softened, and the last word was scarce audible on his closing lips, for the Freyherr had passed his hands over him while he spoke, and he had fallen into the trance of the spirit-world.

Clay and Von Leisten had retired from the active passions of life together, and had met and mingled at that moment of void and thirst when each supplied the want of the other. The Freyherr was a German noble, of a character passionately poetic, and of singular acquirement in the mystic fields of knowledge. Too wealthy to need labor, and too proud to submit his thoughts or his attainments to the criticism or judgment of the world, he lavished on his own life, and on those linked to him in friendship, the strange powers he had acquired, and the prodigal overflow of his daily thought and feeling. Clay was his superior, perhaps, in genius, and necessity had driven him to develop the type of his inner soul, and leave its impress on the time; but he was inferior to Von Leisten in the power of will, and he lay in his control like a child in its mother’s. Four years they had passed together—much of it in the secluded castle of Von Leisten, busied with the occult studies to which the Freyherr was secretly devoted—but traveling down to Italy to meet the luxurious summer, and dividing their lives between the enjoyment of nature and the ideal world they had unlocked. Von Leisten had lost, by death, the human altar on which his heart could alone burn the incense of love, and Clay had flung aside in an hour of intoxicated passion the one pure affection in which his happiness was sealed—and both were desolate. But in the world of the past, Von Leisten, though more irrevocably lonely, was more tranquilly blest.

The Freyherr released the entranced spirit of his friend, and bade him follow back the rays of the moon to the source of his agitation.

A smile crept slowly over the sleeper’s lips.

In an apartment flooded with the silver lustre of the night, reclined, in an invalid’s chair, propped with pillows, a woman of singular, though most fragile beauty. Books and music lay strewn around, and a lamp, subdued to the tone of the moonlight by an orb of alabaster, burned beside her. She lay bathing her blue eyes in the round chalice of the moon. A profusion of brown ringlets fell over the white dress that enveloped her, and her oval cheek lay supported on the palm of her hand, and her bright red lips were parted. The pure yet passionate spell of that soft night possessed her.

Over her leaned the disembodied spirit of him who had once loved her—praying to God that his soul might be so purified as to mingle unstartlingly, unrepulsively, in hallowed harmony with hers. And presently he felt the coming of angels toward him, breathing into the deepest abysses of his existence a tearful and purifying sadness. And with a trembling aspiration of grateful humility to his Maker, he stooped to her forehead, and with his impalpable lips impressed upon its snowy tablet a kiss.

It seemed to Eve Gore a thought of the past that brought the blood suddenly to her cheek. She started from her reclining position, and, removing the obscuring shade from her lamp, arose and crossed her hands upon her wrists and paced thoughtfully to and fro. Her lips murmured inarticulately. But the thought, painfully though it came, changed unaccountably to a melancholy sweetness, and, subduing her lamp again, she resumed her steadfast gaze upon the moon.

Ernest knelt beside her, and with his invisible brow bowed upon her hand, poured forth, in the voiceless language of the soul, his memories of the past, his hope, his repentance, his pure and passionate adoration at the present hour.

And thinking she had been in a sweet dream, yet wondering at its truthfulness and power, Eve wept, silently and long. As the morning touched the east, slumber weighed upon her moistened eyelids, and kneeling by her bedside she murmured her gratitude to God for a heart relieved of a burthen long borne, and so went peacefully to her sleep.

It was in the following year and in the beginning of May. The gay world of England was concentrated in London, and at the entertainments of noble houses there were many beautiful women and many marked men. The Freyherr Von Leisten, after years of absence, had appeared again, his mysterious and undeniable superiority of mien and influence again yielded to, as before, and again bringing to his feet the homage and deference of the crowd he moved among. To his inscrutable power the game of society was easy, and he walked where he would through its barriers of form.

He stood one night looking on at a dance. A lady of a noble air was near him, and both were watching the movements of the loveliest woman present, a creature in radiant health, apparently about twenty-three, and of matchless fascination of person and manner. Von Leisten turned to the lady near him to inquire her name, but his intention was arrested by the resemblance between her and the object of his admiring curiosity, and he was silent.

The lady had bowed before he withdrew his gaze, however.

“I think we have met before!” she said; but at the next instant a slight flush of displeasure came to her cheek, and she seemed regretting that she had spoken.

“Pardon me!” said Von Leisten, “but—if the question be not rude—do you remember where?”

She hesitated a moment.

“I have recalled it since I have spoken,” she continued, “but as the remembrance of the person who accompanied you always gives me pain, I would willingly have unsaid it. One evening of last year, crossing the bridge of the Lima—you were walking with Mr. Clay. Pardon me—but, though I left Lucca with my daughter on the following morning, and saw you no more, the association, or your appearance, had imprinted the circumstance on my mind.”

“And is that Eve Gore?” said Von Leisten, musingly, gazing on the beautiful creature now gliding with light step to her mother’s side.

But the Freyherr’s heart was gone to his friend.

As the burst of the waltz broke in upon the closing of the quadrille, he offered his hand to the fair girl, and as they moved round with the entrancing music, he murmured in her ear, “He who came to you in the moonlight of Italy will be with you again, if you are alone, at the rising of to-night’s late moon. Believe the voice that then speaks to you!”

It was with implacable determination that Mrs. Gore refused, to the entreaties of Von Leisten, a renewal of Clay’s acquaintance with her daughter. Resentment for the apparent recklessness with which he had once sacrificed her maiden love for an unlawful passion—scornful unbelief of any change in his character—distrust of the future tendency of the powers of his genius—all mingled together in a hostility proof against persuasion. She had expressed this with all the positiveness of language when her daughter suddenly entered the room. It was the morning after the ball, and she had risen late. But though subdued and pensive in her air, Von Leisten saw at a glance that she was happy.

“Can you bring him to me?” said Eve, letting her hand remain in Von Leisten’s and bending her deep blue eyes inquiringly on his.

And with no argument but tears and caresses, and an unexplained assurance of her conviction of the repentant purity and love of him to whom her heart was once given, the confiding and strong-hearted girl bent, at last, the stern will that forbade her happiness. Her mother unclasped the slight arms from her neck, and gave her hand in silent consent to Von Leisten.

The Freyherr stood a moment with his eyes fixed on the ground. The color fled from his cheeks, and his brow moistened.

“I have called him!” he said—“he will be here!”

An hour elapsed, and Clay entered the house. He had risen from a bed of sickness, and came, pale and in terror—for the spirit-summons was powerful. But Von Leisten welcomed him at the door with a smile, and withdrew the mother from the room; and left Ernest alone with his future bride—the first union, save in spirit, after years of separation.

WRITTEN ON THE ARRIVAL OF A TROUPE OF PERSIAN DANCING GIRLS AT PARIS.

BY WILLIAM FALCONER.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “A NEW HOME,” “FOREST LIFE,” ETC.

It happened once that Love—proverbially touchy, we all know—took high offence at the neglect of his whilom sworn friend and brother Hymen, who, he declared, had ceased to invite him to his magnificent parties in town. Finding his temper too warm upon the occasion, he sought the cooling influence of rural shades, and there amused himself and forgot his pettish enmity in sending sportive arrows among groups of simple nymphs and swains as they raked the new-mown hay in company, or pared the luscious peach or the firmer apple to dry, in gay festoons, “for winter, which they knew must come;” or husked the golden corn, or bound the lachrymose onion wreath-wise upon its supporting wisp of straw. But, ere long, wearying of such inglorious sport—not unlike that of the royal ennuyé who shot from his gilded balcony whole hecatombs of game so trapped that it could neither fight nor fly—he left the rustic herd, and took his way along the banks of a bright and rapid stream, which rolled its gleaming waves through foliage of every hue and outline, reflecting at times the sun, the snowy cloud, the lamps of night, the leaden hue of storms, the appalling aspect of the tempest—all distinct at intervals, yet at intervals again fused, as it were, into one enchanting and harmonious whole. Love called the stream Poetry, and he declared that he would always dwell by its side.

As he strayed along delighted, leaning occasionally over the living mirror, that he might see how it enhanced the splendor of his beauty, he beheld, reclining in the shadow of a rock, a heavenly form, whose wings, folded in repose, and a celestial halo round his brow, declared him still unchanged by contact with the things of earth. By the light which shone even through his closed lids, and by the lyre clasped, even in sleep, to his bosom, Love knew the bright visitant to be Genius. He called him with his most persuasive voice—and Love’s tones are almost irresistible—but in vain. The sleeper’s head was pillowed on a bed of poppies, and a drapery of deadly nightshade hung from the rock which shaded him from the sun. “I must see those rainbow pinions unfolded to the light!” said Love; “of all my claims to immortality, none could be so indisputable as the subjugation of this glorious being to my power!”

And, selecting one of his keenest arrows, and new-stringing his bow with a braided tress of golden hair, he wounded the unguarded bosom of the slumberer.

The youth started—opened his eyes, bright and dewy as the first glad smile of morning, and spread wide his radiant wings as if to find safety in flight. But he became conscious of the sweet venom which was spreading through his veins, and, with a glance half-reproachful, half-adoring, he bowed the knee to Love and owned his resistless power, and asked his supreme will.

“Sing!” said the conqueror; and the blended music of voice and lyre filled the whole air, and, borne along by the waves, awakened to thrilling life all the spiritual things that haunted the green recesses of that charmed spot. Love crowned the captive with flowers, showered delicious odors around his ray-crowned brow, brought honey in the comb white as the foam on the billow, and presented to his eager lip a lily-cup of sparkling wine. Wood-nymphs and naiads, hovering round, beheld their own beautiful forms reflected in the crystalline wings of the stranger, but though various and changeful as the light of parting day, one face, and one only, was there seen in every dress, recognized through every disguise. The forms and masks were painted by Fancy—the one face was the work of Truth. “And now,” said victorious Love, “take me to thine own bright sphere!”

Prompt to obey, the pleased subject tried his glittering wings for an upward flight. Alas! overcome by the too sweet banquet, Genius sunk back upon the roses which the victor had spread around him. The halo faded from his head; his lyre reclined against a myrtle—mute, save when a breeze from the languid south awakened a faint echo of its former power.

“Sleep then—stupid thing!” said Love, enraged at the effect of his own spells—and he was about to shake over the lids of the fainting captive the baleful dust of Oblivion, when a fearful form appeared from a rugged wood at no great distance. His hair hung in wild elf-locks about his wasted features, and his squalid garments scarce concealed his meagre limbs. His eyes seemed of stone, and in his hand was an iron sceptre which has often caused even Love to tremble.

“Ha! Poverty!” said the baffled tyrant, as he flew to the safe shelter of a neighboring tulip tree, yielding the field for the moment to his old enemy, that he might watch the effect of his presence upon the glorious being whom his own arts had reduced to utter helplessness. The flowers drooped; the grass withered; and the breezes which a moment before had breathed of summer, became chilly as if wafted from a wandering ice-berg. With a sepulchral voice did the skeleton visiter call on Genius to arise.

“Come! let us see these gaudy wings of thine!” he said, with a sneer. But the youth, shuddering, folded their filmy leaves over his eyes to shut out the hateful apparition. Poverty pushed him rudely with that cold iron sceptre, but the torpedo touch seemed only still further to paralyze his faculties. “Thou dost not feel me yet!” exclaimed the fiend; and even as he spoke he took the form of a hideous dragon, whose folds, surrounding the victim, began to narrow upon his shrinking form, and, continually contracting the spiral circle, threatened to crush him inevitably and irretrievably.

Then rose the noble youth, roused by the too eager malice of his foe; and shaking off alike the poppies and the roses in which Love had enveloped him, he stretched his glittering pinions, spurned the earth with his foot, and, soaring majestically toward heaven, looked down with scorn upon scowling Poverty, while the radiance about his brow resumed its power and dazzled all but Love. That wily god, pursuing the upward flight of Genius, strove again to entrap him by means of certain nets of silk and gold which he had found almost always successful with the sons of earth, but the heaven-born youth shook them off with a smile of contempt, while he sang to his enchanted lyre a hymn so glorious that earth’s inmost heart thrilled to the melody, and Love, for once, owned himself in turn a captive.

Love has been since that time rather shy of attempting to subdue Genius—which we suppose is the reason why so many of our poets are bachelors. Poverty claims to have been of essential service to the susceptible child of Heaven, but we never heard that Genius loved him any the better for it. Hymen still plays his old tricks—forgetting to invite Love to his more splendid feasts, but condescending to admit him when his rich friend Mammon is not expected.

BY MISS ELIZABETH BOGART.

BY J. FENIMORE COOPER, AUTHOR OF “THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY,” ETC.

(Concluded from Volume 22 #5)

Perry appears seriously to have persuaded himself that he captured a materially superior force in the battle of Lake Erie. If any reliance is to be placed on the published report of Capt. Barclay, this is certainly an error; and, we may add, that the better opinion of those naval men who have had proper opportunities for ascertaining the fact, is also against it. In the men of the two squadrons, there was probably no essential disparity; although there are reasons for thinking that the English may have a little outnumbered the Americans. Neither side had many above or under five hundred souls engaged in this action. But the sick lists of the Americans amounted to more than a hundred. As Capt. Barclay came out expressly to fight, expecting to meet his enemy the next day, and he had received aboard his vessels a strong party of troops, it is not probable he brought out any sick with him. It is in confirmation of this opinion, that, while the enemy dwell on their inferiority of force, and the other disadvantages under which they supposed themselves to labor, nothing is said of any sick. This fact would make a material difference as respects the men, even allowing the opposing parties to have been equal, numerically.

In vessels the Americans were to the English as nine are to six. This might have been a disadvantage, however, and in one sense it was, by distributing the force unequally at the commencement of the battle. Still, as the two largest American brigs were about as heavy as the heaviest British vessel, and materially heavier than the Queen Charlotte, and the Ariel was a schooner of some size, this circumstance would have been more than balanced by their weight, could these three vessels have got into close action simultaneously, and soon; or before the enemy had an opportunity to cripple one of them in detail.

The opinion of Perry, and, we may add, that of the country, concerning the superiority of the enemy in this battle, appear to have been founded principally on the circumstance that the English had the most guns. A mere numerical superiority in guns is altogether fallacious. A single long 32 pounder, for most of the purposes of nautical warfare, would be more efficient than thirty-two one pounders; the sizes of the guns being quite as important as the number. There can be little question that a vessel, always supposing her to be of a size suitable to bear the metal, which carried twenty 32 pounders, would be fully a match for two similar ships that carried each twenty 12 pounders; or, perhaps, for two that carried each twenty 18 pounders; the guns being long or short alike. As the latter, however, was not the fact in the battle of Lake Erie, the Detroit carrying long guns, principally, while the two heaviest American brigs carried carronades, the comparative estimates of force become complicated in a way that does not altogether refer to weight of shot. The superiority of the long gun depends, first, on its greater range, and the greater momentum of the shot, pound for pound; second, from the circumstance that the long ship-gun will almost always bear two, and sometimes three shot; whereas the carronade is in danger of dismounting itself by the recoil, if overcharged, and of so far lessening the momentum of its shot as to prevent them from penetrating a vessel’s side;^[1] and, thirdly, because the long gun will sustain a protracted cannonade, while a short gun is seldom of much efficiency after an hour’s service. There can be no question that the Lawrence and Niagara would have been an overmatch for the Detroit and Queen Charlotte in close action, and when we come to see the great disparity of the metal of the remaining vessels, it can leave no doubt that the Americans possessed the strongest force on this occasion, comparing the two squadrons in the aggregate. A very brief analysis will prove the justice of this position.

The American vessels, in the battle of Lake Erie, carried 54 guns, while the English had 63. This makes a numerical superiority of 9 guns, and on this vague fallacy the victory has been assumed to have been one of an inferior over a superior force. In the combat between the Constellation and l’Insurgent, the latter vessel mounted 40 guns, and the former only 38. There was also a difference of a hundred men, in favor of the French ship. But the Constellation’s gun-deck metal was long 24s, while that of l’Insurgent was French 12s; leaving the former an essential superiority of force that no intelligent seaman has ever denied. In the action we are examining, the Hunter mounted 10 guns, and the Caledonia 3. Thus, numerically speaking, the former vessel was of more than treble the force of the latter. But a critical analysis of the metal, and of the armaments, will give a very different result. In the first place, the Caledonia’s guns were on pivots, which gave her 3 guns in broadside, whereas the Hunter could fight but 5 at any one time, and under any circumstances. This fact alone reduces the numerical superiority of the British vessel from more than treble to less than double. Then comes the consideration of the metal. Agreeably to Capt. Barclay’s return of the force of his vessels, which is appended to his official account of the battle, the regular broadside metal of the Hunter was only 30lbs., and this, too, distributed in shot, of which some were so small as 2, 4, and 6lbs. each; while the Caledonia threw 80lbs. of metal at a discharge, in 24 and 32lb. shot. On the other hand, the Hunter had quarters, or bulwarks, which make a protection against small missiles.

There is another circumstance to prove the fallacy of piecing the superiority of force on a naked numerical superiority in guns. Including the pivot guns, and the regular armament of the British on the 10th September, they fought 34 guns at a time, or what may be termed in broadside; while the Americans, owing to their having more traversing pieces mounted, fought precisely the same number, though of much heavier metal. This fact at once reduces the apparent comparative force of the two squadrons in guns, or from that of 54 to 63, to a numerical equality; or, to that of 34 to 34.

But the fortunes of a battle are not to be estimated solely by the physical forces employed by the opposing parties. Circumstances constantly occur to neutralize these advantages, and to render the chances nearer equal. The assailant has frequently more to contend with than the assailed, and it is obvious that the force which cannot be used is, for the purposes of that particular occasion, as if it did not exist. While, therefore, there can be little doubt that the American squadron, in the battle on Lake Erie, was superior to the British squadron as a whole, there were circumstances to aid the enemy which produced far more of a real, than there was of an apparent, equality. As respects Perry, himself, he certainly, in his own brig, contended against a vastly superior force, owing to the dispersed state of his vessels, in part, though quite as much, probably, to the determination of the enemy to concentrate their fire on the American commanding vessel until they had destroyed her. The latter circumstance will account for many of the seeming anomalies of this day. Thus the Ariel and Scorpion, though engaged from the first, suffered comparatively but little; as did the Caledonia and Niagara. All these vessels were under fire from an early period in the action, and it is in direct proof that a shot passed through the walls of both sides of the latter vessel, within a short time after the battle commenced.

The slaughter on board the Lawrence was terrible. Mr. Yarnell, her first lieutenant, testified before a Court of Inquiry, in 1815, that the Lawrence had on board of her “131 men and boys of every description, of which 103 were fit for duty.” Of this number 22 were killed, and 63 were wounded. The loss of the Niagara, also, would have been deemed heavy but for this carnage on board the Lawrence. By the report of Perry, himself, she had 2 killed and 25 wounded. Her own surgeon, however, says that this report was inaccurate, the slightly wounded having been omitted. He also says that there were five men killed. The discrepancy is to be accounted for by the circumstances that after the action, the men were much scattered in the prizes, the Niagara furnishing most of their crews, and that her own medical officers had no agency in drawing up the report. Thus the number of the dangerously and severely wounded the latter states to have been accurately given, while those of the slain and slightly wounded were not. These are facts which it is difficult to authenticate, at this late day, though there are circumstances which go to render the accuracy of this correction of the official report probable, if not certain. In a squadron which now numbered fifteen sail, with broken crews, few officers to report, and some of those few wounded or ill, and with men dying of disease daily, mistakes of this nature might readily occur. The other vessels did not suffer heavily, and the British, as a whole, lost about as many men as the Americans.

While the nation was disposed to overlook every thing connected with this battle, in the result, Perry did not escape criticism for the manner in which he engaged the enemy. It was said that he ought to have waited until his line had become compact, and covered the approach of his two principal brigs, by the fire of the heavy long guns of the smaller vessels. This is probably still the opinion of many distinguished seamen.

It is certain that by placing the schooners of the American squadron in the advance, it would have been possible to open on the enemy with as many long guns as he possessed himself, and guns of much heavier metal; but grave questions of this nature are not to be so lightly determined, as this admission may seem to infer. There was the experience of the warfare on Lake Ontario to induce Perry to suppose that a similar policy might be resorted to on Lake Erie. The English sailed better in squadron than the Americans, on both lakes, and having the same object in view, the commander on Lake Erie had every reason to suppose that they would retire before him, as soon as a general action became probable, and thus postpone, or altogether avoid the desired conflict for the command of those waters. The distances being so small, nothing was easier than to carry out this policy. Even allowing Perry to have sent his heavily armed schooners in advance, and to have approached himself under cover of their fire, there can scarcely be a doubt that Barclay would have wore round, and changed the order of formation, by bringing them, again, into the rear of the American line; an evolution that would have been easy of accomplishment, with his superiority of sailing.

Had the wind stood, or even had not the enemy hit upon the plan of directing most of their fire against the Lawrence, the victory of Lake Eric, now so complete in its results, would have had no drawbacks. But, with the high ends he kept in view, the importance of securing the command of the lake, and the moral certainly of success could he close with his enemy, Perry would scarcely have been justified in delaying the attack, on the plea that the lightness of the wind endangered any particular vessel of his command. Now that the battle is over, it is doubtless easy to perceive in what manner it might have been better fought, but this is a remark that will probably apply to all human actions.

His victory at once raised Perry from comparative obscurity to a high degree of renown before the nation. With the navy he had always stood well, but neither his rank nor his services had given him an opportunity of becoming known to the world. The important results that attended his success, the completeness of that success, the number of vessels captured at the same time, and the novelty of a victory in squadron over the English, all contributed to shed more than an ordinary degree of renown on this event; and, by necessary connection, on the youthful conqueror of that day. His own great personal exertions, too, gave a romantic character to his success, and disposed the public mind to regard it with an unusual degree of interest. The government granted gold medals to Perry and his second in command, and the former was promoted to be a captain, his commission being dated on the 10th September, 1813.

His triumph on the water did not satisfy Perry. After co-operating with the army, by assisting in regaining possession of Detroit, and in transporting the troops, he joined the land forces, under General Harrison, in person, and was present at the Battle of the Moravian Towns. In all this service, he was as active as his peculiar situation would allow, and there can be little doubt that the presence of a gallant young sailor, flushed with victory and ever foremost on the march, was cheering to the army which then pressed on the rear of the enemy. After the surrender of the British troops Perry issued, conjointly with Harrison, a proclamation to the people of the portion of Upper Canada that had fallen into the hands of the republic, pointing out the usual conditions for their government and submission. It is worthy of remark that this was the first instance in which any American naval officer was ever in a situation to perform a similar act.

Shortly after, the end of the season being at hand, Perry gave up his command. As he returned to the older parts of the country his journey was a species of triumph, in which warm, spontaneous feeling, however, rather than studied exhibition, predominated.

Perry’s victory did not prove altogether barren, in another sense, though his pecuniary benefits were certainly out of proportion small, as compared with the political benefits it conferred on the country. There was properly no broad pennant on Lake Erie, in either squadron, Com. Chauncey, in the one case, and Sir James Yeo, in the other, being the commander-in-chief. This circumstance deprived Perry of the usual share of prize-money which legally fell to that rank, but Congress added the sum of $6000 to that of $7,500 which belonged to him as commander of the Lawrence, making a total amount of $12,500; a sum which, while it is insignificant when viewed as the gift of a nation, bestowed on a conqueror for such a service, was not altogether unimportant to the young housekeeper, whose family had now increased in number to four by the birth of two children. It may be added, here, as a proof of the high estimation in which Perry’s success has ever been held by the nation, that his most elaborate biographer states that something like forty counties, towns, villages, etc., have been named after him, in different parts of the Union.

Perry had returned to his command and his family at Newport, on quitting Lake Erie, but here it was not possible for him to remain long, in the height of an active war. In August, 1514, he was transferred to the Java 44, an entirely new ship, then fitting at Baltimore. This vessel, however, was unable to get out, in consequence of the force the enemy kept in the bay, below. Her commander and crew were actively employed in the operations that were carried on to harass the British vessels on their descent of the Potomac from Alexandria, and the defence of their own vessel was confided to them in the fruitless attempt on Baltimore.

About the close of the year preparations were made for equipping two light squadrons with a view to harass the trade of the enemy. One of the squadrons was now given to Perry, it being found that the Java could not get to sea. He immediately caused the keels of three brigs to be laid, intending to have two more constructed to complete the number. Peace, however, put an end to this enterprize.

In May, 1815, Perry was attached anew to the Java, and he remained in this ship, at different ports, until January, 1816, when he sailed from Newport for the Mediterranean. While lying at the port from which he now took his departure, an opportunity offered for this brave man, always active on emergencies of this sort, to rescue the crew of a wreck from drowning, during a gale in the cold weather of an American winter. The season was boisterous, and it is mentioned as an extraordinary fact that the Java, which sailed from Newport with strong northwest gales, passed the Western Islands, the eighth day out. On the fourteenth she was within a few hours’ run of Cape St. Vincent.

On reaching the Mediterranean, the Java joined a squadron commanded by Com. Shaw, and was present before Algiers at a moment when very serious movements were contemplated against that regency. Peace, however, was preserved, and the ship continued to cruise in that beautiful sea, subsequently under the command of Com. Chauncey, until January, 1817, when she was ordered home.

The termination of this cruise was made uncomfortable to Perry, by an exceedingly unpleasant misunderstanding with the commanding marine officer of his own ship. Some disagreeable occurrences had already created a coolness between them, when Perry, in a personal interview, became so far irritated as to strike his subordinate in his own cabin. It may be some little extenuation of this act, that it is understood to have been committed after Perry had returned from a dinner party on shore. There is little to be said in justification of such a violation of propriety beyond the usual plan that no one is always right. Perry appears to have been soon sensible that he had committed himself in a way to require concessions, and these he very handsomely offered to make. They were not accepted, and the affair subsequently led to recriminating charges and trials, by means of which both the offenders were sentenced to be privately reprimanded.

This transaction produced a deeper feeling, perhaps, than any other question of mere discipline that ever agitated the American marine. It was justly said that, in Perry’s case, the punishment was altogether disproportioned to the offence, and that the persons and honor of the subordinates were placed at the mercy of the captains by the decision. There can be no sufficient reason for the commanding officer of a ship using violence toward an inferior, as he has all legal means for compelling legal submission; and beyond this his power does not extend. Thus the punishment of the superior who thus transcends his just authority ought even to exceed that which awaits the subordinate who rebels against it, since it is without a motive in itself, while passion may goad the other to an net of madness; and, of the two, it is ever more dangerous to discipline for the superior than for the inferior to err. In the one case, the crime is that of an individual; while in the other, it is authority itself which is in fault; and power can never offend without bringing discredit on its attributes.

As respects the conduct of Perry in this matter, it partakes equally of what we conceive to be the strong and the weak points of his character. Notwithstanding all that rigorous moralists may be disposed to say, the best excuse for the offence, perhaps, is the fact that he was a little off his guard by the exhilaration of the scene he is understood to have just left. The fault committed, apology was his true course, and this reflection induced him to offer. It was not accepted, and he saw before him the prospect of a trial. Then it was that he preferred the charges against the marine officer. Here he committed, by far, the gravest of his faults, and truth compels us to say it was a fault that he committed more than once in the course of his life, leaving, under the gravity of the cases, reason to infer that it was connected with some controlling trail of character. A commander has little discretion in the preferring of charges. If the party merit punishment, or if the act demand investigation, the public good is the object, in both cases alike. Under no circumstances can a commander, with propriety, compromise or vindicate justice, on grounds that are purely personal to himself. If the marine officer, in this case, merited punishment, the charges should not have been delayed, but have been instituted independently of all questions between him and his commander; and did he not merit it, they should not have been preferred, even though Perry’s commission were the price of his own error. There will be another occasion to advert to a similar confusion between right and wrong, in the official career of this distinguished officer, and in a case affecting himself.

On the other hand, Perry showed a deep sense of the error he had committed in connection with this affair, in his subsequent conduct. After his return home, a meeting took place between him and the marine officer, in which he received the shot of his opponent, declining to fire in return. Nothing could have been better than his conduct throughout the latter part of this affair. In a letter written to his friend Decatur, on this occasion, he uses the following generous and manly language—“I cannot return his fire, as the meeting, on my part, will be entirely an atonement for the violated rules of the service.”

The affair with his marine officer was not quite disposed of, when a new difficulty arose to embitter the close of Perry’s life. Like that of the marine officer, it has already attracted too much notice, and the indiscretions of ill-judging and partial vindicators have dragged into the question principles of far too much importance to the navy, and indeed to the nation at large, to allow of any biographer’s passing it over in silence.

The battle of Lake Erie was attended by two circumstances that were likely to entail dissensions and discussions on the actors in that important event. Though victory crowned the efforts of the Americans, the commanding vessel, the Lawrence, struck her flag to the enemy, while the Niagara, a vessel every way her equal in force, did not get her full share of the combat until near its close. Nothing is more certain than that both these peculiarities might have occurred without blame being properly attached to any one; but nothing was more natural than that such circumstances should lead lo accusations, recriminations, and quarrels. Most of the officers were exceedingly young men, and, while some of the Niagara were indiscreet in accusing those who surrendered the Lawrence of having tarnished the lustre of the day, those of the Lawrence retorted by accusing the Niagara of not having properly supported them. When this business of recrimination commenced, or which party was the aggressor, it would now most probably be in vain to ask; but the result has been one of the most protracted and bitter controversies that has ever darkened the pages of the history of the American marine; and a controversy to which political malignancy has endeavored to add its sting. As full and elaborate discussions of this subject have appeared, or will appear in print, we intend to allude to it here no farther than it is inseparably connected with the acts and character of the subject of our memoir.

In his official account of the battle of Lake Erie, Perry commended the conduct of his second in command, Capt. Elliott, in terms of strong eulogium. But it would seem that the circumstances above mentioned gave rise to some early rumors to the prejudice of both parties; it being contended, on one side, that Capt. Elliott did not do his duty in the engagement, and, on the other, that Capt. Perry came on board the Niagara dispirited, and ready lo abandon the day. The country heard but little of this, though the report to the prejudice of Capt. Elliott was widely circulated in the region of the lakes, particularly among the troops of Gen. Harrison’s army. In 1815, in consequence of a paragraph in an English newspaper, which accompanied the finding of the Court Martial that sat on Capt. Barclay, and which appears to have been mistaken even by Capt. Elliott, as well as by sundry writers of this country, for a part of the finding itself, Capt. Elliott asked for a Court of Inquiry into his conduct on the 10th Sept. The court sat; and the finding was an honorable acquittal. Here the matter rested for three years, or until after the return of Perry from the Mediterranean, when he received a letter from Capt. Elliott, who asked for explanations on the matter of certain certificates enclosed, which alleged that he, Capt. Perry, had spoken disrespectfully of his, Capt. Elliott’s, conduct in the battle of Lake Erie. This letter produced a brief, but envenomed correspondence, in which Perry avowed the imputations charged to him, and which terminated in a challenge from Capt. Elliott. This challenge Perry declined accepting, on the ground that he was about to prefer charges against his late subordinate. Here the matter terminated, in waiting for the future course of the government. It is known that these charges were shortly after sent, but no proceedings were ever ordered by the department.

In order to form a just estimate of Perry’s conduct in this affair, and to discharge our own duties as impartial biographers, it will be necessary to analyze his charges, and to give him the benefit of his own explanations. Perry felt the awkwardness of his present position. In 1813, a few days after the battle, he had written a letter to the secretary, eulogizing the conduct of Capt. Elliott in unequivocal terms. This letter was written three days after the occurrence of the events, when all the circumstances were still quite recent, and yet when sufficient time had been given to become acquainted with any incidents which may have escaped his personal observation. He was now, five years later, bringing accusations which necessarily involved a contradiction of his eulogiums, and he felt the necessity of offering his reasons for this change of course and seemingly of opinion. This he did in a letter that was sent with his charges, and which was dated August 10th, 1818.

In his explanations, Perry took the ground that when he wrote the official letter of 1813, commending the conduct of Capt. Elliott, he was not fully apprized of all the facts of the case; but that he now possessed the evidence necessary to substantiate his charges. This was the only substantial excuse that could be offered, the profession of a reluctance to say any thing which might injure Capt. Elliott, which was also urged, hardly sufficing to explain away a eulogy. The truth, however, compels us to go further, and to add that Perry, in this instance, committed the same fault that he had just before fallen into in the case of the marine officer. He allowed considerations that were purely personal to himself, to control his official conduct. In his explanations, it is distinctly stated that he should still have been willing to pass over the alleged delinquency of Capt. Elliott, had not the latter, by assailing his, Perry’s, character, endeavored to repair his own. While he makes this admission, Perry also confesses that the facts upon which some of his present charges were founded had long been in his possession, thus weakening his best defence for the course he was now taking, or that of previous ignorance. If we add that Perry gave as an additional reason for praising Capt. Elliott in his official report of the battle, that he wished all under his orders to share in the glory of the day, the excuse is not tenable, as he omitted altogether to mention four of his commanders, and this, too, under circumstances that produced deep mortification to the gentlemen whose names were not given to the nation.

A dispassionate examination of this letter, at once exposes its fallacies. In the first place, it was not necessary to eulogize the conduct of Capt. Elliott to screen him from censure. The praise that Perry gave him, in 1813, is prominent, distinct, and much fuller than that which is bestowed on any other officer under his command. It is but justice to Perry to say, however, that admitting Capt. Elliott deserved equally well with others, his rank, and the peculiar circumstance that he alone was Perry’s equal in this respect, might fairly entitle him to more notice than his inferiors; while it is due to Capt. Elliott to add that superiority of notice was by no means necessary if the object had been solely to protect from censure. There is a particularity in Perry’s praise, however, that it is difficult to ascribe to any thing but an honest conviction that Elliott merited it. That the reader may judge for himself, we give parts of the letter itself, in a note, putting the passages that apply especially to Capt. Elliott in italics.^[2]

The next consideration is the circumstance that Perry forbore to prefer his charges, though some of the proofs hod long been in his possession, until an issue had been made up between his own character and that of Capt. Elliott. This, then, is the instance similar to that which occurred in the affair of the marine officer. In both cases, the prosecutor is in possession of the facts; in both he delays to bring his charges while a controversy affecting himself is in suspense; and in both he actually brings them when he finds that his own conduct is to be brought in question. All this is proved by Perry’s own showing, and there is little necessity of dilating on the merits of his course. It is unjustifiable, and the mitigation of its errors is only to be sought in the universal predominance of human infirmity. It must be allowed, perhaps, that a large majority of mankind would have acted under similar influence, and have made the same mistake; but, at the same time, it is certain there are a few who would not. It follows, therefore, that the character of Perry, as respects the qualities connected with this affair, must be classed with those of the men who suffer personal feeling to control their public conduct, instead of with those of the men who, in their public acts, overlook self, and decide solely on the abstract principles of duty. This is said without adverting more particularly to the issue which it is alleged had been made up between Perry end Elliott, since nothing is plainer than the fact, that accusations against the former might easily hove been disproved, if false, without necessarily dragging accusations against the latter into the inquiry. The result of all is to show, that while Perry possessed some of the qualities of true greatness, he wanted others, without which, no man can claim to be placed near the summit of human morals.

It must also be conceded that Perry did not manifest the strong desire he supposes, to allow all to share in the honors of the day, since, as has just been stated, he omitted to mention the names of no less than four of the commanders of his gun-vessels; two of whom were superior in rank to others who were expressly named, and all of whom were as much entitled to be mentioned as the commanders of the other small vessels, under the usual considerations of naval etiquette. We come now to an examination of the charges themselves.

The charges brought by Capt. Perry against Capt. Elliott, in 1818, may be divided into two classes: those which refer to the conduct of the latter on the 10th Sept. 1813, and those which refer to his conduct subsequently to that day. As the last have no connection with any historical event, they may be passed without comment, though it is no more than justice to Perry to say that some of these charges, with their specifications, are of a nature, if true, to require the punishment of the offender; while it is equally justice to Capt. Elliott to say that others, on their face, are frivolous, and, in their nature, not to be legally sustained. Of the latter class, is a specification which charges Capt. Elliott with having “declared, that the officers and men of the Lawrence were not entitled to prize-money on account of the vessels of the enemy captured on Lake Erie, but that the officers and crews of the other vessels of the American fleet were entitled to prize-money for the re-capture of the Lawrence.” To deny an officer the right to make declarations of this nature, would be virtually to deny him the right of maintaining his private interests in the forms prescribed by law. This particular specification appears to have been conceived in a spirit that appeals to the national vanity, rather than to the national justice.^[3]

The charges of ill conduct on the part of Capt. Elliott, in the battle of Lake Erie, are three in number. The first is conceived in the following words, viz:— “That the said Capt. Elliott, on the 10th Sept., 1813, being then a master and commander in the navy of the United States, and commanding the U. S. brig Niagara, one of the American squadron on Lake Erie, did not use his utmost exertions to carry into execution the orders of his commanding officer to join in the battle of that day between the American and British fleets.” There are two other charges, one accusing Capt. Elliott of not doing his utmost to destroy the vessel he had been particularly ordered to engage, and the other that he did not do his utmost to succor the Lawrence. All three of these charges substantially rest on the same specifications, there being but one elaborately prepared, which assumes to give an outline of the movements of the Niagara in the action.

As the purpose of this article is merely to draw a sketch of Perry’s acts and character, it is unnecessary to comment on these charges further than is required to effect that object. We deem it impossible for any impartial person to read these charges, and then to examine the evidence, without coming to the conclusion that the subject of this memoir lost sight of public duty in the pursuit of private resentment. He appears to have even overlooked the effect of his own orders in the desire to criminate, and it is certain that one of the specifications involves so great an ignorance of some of the plainest principles of nautical practice, as to raise a suspicion that the hand of some legal man has been employed to pervert that which depends so palpably on natural laws, as to admit of no serious dispute. There is other evidence, we think, that Perry did not draw up these charges himself; a fact that may, in a measure, relieve him from the responsibility of having brought them in the forms in which they appear.

In the specification of charge fourth, we get the following statement, as coming from Perry himself, touching his own order of bottle, viz:—“1st. An order directing in what manner the line of battle should be formed: the several vessels to keep within half a cable’s length of each other, and enjoining it upon the commanders to preserve their stations in the line, and in all cases to keep as near to the commanding officer’s vessel (the Lawrence) as possible. 2d. An order of attack: in which order the Lawrence was designated to attack the enemy’s new ship (afterward ascertained to be named the Detroit,) and the Niagara, commanded by the said Capt. Elliott, designated to attack the enemy’s ship Queen Charlotte,” &c., &c. This, then, was the general order of battle, as respects the Niagara, with the addition that her station in the line was half a cable’s length astern of the Caledonia. Perry also gave a repetition of Nelson’s well known order—“That if his officers laid their vessels close alongside of their enemies, they could not be out of the way.” Under these orders, not only Perry himself, in 1818, but several of his witnesses, appear to think it was the duty of a commander to close with the particular adversary he was ordered to engage, if in his power, without regard to any other consideration. This opinion is such an unmilitary construction of the orders, and might have led to consequences so injurious, as to be easily shown to be untenable.

If the construction of the orders just mentioned can be sustained, the line, the distance from each other at which the vessels were to form, and every other provision for the battle, the one alluded to excepted, became worse than useless. The true course would have been, with such an intention before a commander, to have directed the several officers to their respective antagonists, and left them to find their way alongside in the best manner they could. If such were intended to be the primary order, in the orders for battle, it should have been so worded as to let the subordinates understand it, and not fetter them with other orders, of which the execution must materially interfere with the execution of this particular mandate.

But it is impossible to understand the order of battle in this restricted sense; else would it reflect sorely on Perry’s judgment as an officer, and do utter discredit to his powers of explanation. The order of battle clearly meant—first, to prescribe a line of battle, in which each ship had her assigned station, with an additional direction, “enjoining it on her to keep her station in the line;” second, to point out at what vessel of the enemy each American should direct his efforts, from that station in the line; and, lastly, if circumstances deranged the original plan, to keep near the Lawrence, though you may place yourself alongside of your enemy as a last resort; there you cannot be much out of your way. Without this construction of them, the orders would be a contradictory mass of confusion.

Now it is in proof that the Niagara was in her station astern of the Caledonia, until Capt. Elliott, after waiting for orders to shift his berth in vain, did it on his own responsibility; breaking that line of battle which he was enjoined to keep, and from the responsibility of doing which it was certainly the peculiar duty of Perry to relieve him, either by a signal, or by an order sent by a boat, did it appear to him to be necessary. It is also in proof, that, when Capt. Elliott took on himself, in the immediate presence of his commander, without a signal, to break an order of battle he was enjoined to keep, he endeavored to close with the Lawrence, and that when the latter dropped, he passed ahead, and came abeam of the only heavy vessels the enemy possessed, engaging them within musket shot. If these facts are not true, human testimony is worthless; for they are substantially shown even by the best of Capt. Perry’s own witnesses. This confusion in the reading of the orders prevails among most of the witnesses, who evidently mistake the accessory for the principal.

Another of Perry’s specifications accuses Capt. Elliott of keeping his brig “nearly a mile’s distance from the Lawrence,” &c., at the period of the engagement before he passed the Caledonia. It is beyond dispute that the Caledonia was close to the Niagara all this time, and, let the distance be what it might, it is not easy to find the principle which censures one commander, under these circumstances, and does not censure the other; unless the explanation is to be found in the admitted superiority of the Niagara over the Caledonia in sailing. This we believe to be the solution of Perry’s impression on this particular point, as well as of those of the witnesses whose affidavits accompany his charges. In other words, they appear to have persuaded themselves that it was the duty of Capt. Elliott to have disregarded the line of battle, and the injunction to keep it, and to have broken it immediately, or as soon as the Lawrence drew ahead of the Caledonia. This is what is meant by their statement that the wind which carried the Lawrence ahead, would have done the same thing with the Niagara. No one can dispute this fact; but the question, who ought to take the responsibility of altering a line of battle before any material damage had been done on either side, he who issued the order originally, and who had the power to change his own arrangements, or he whose duty it was to obey, is a question which can admit of no dispute in the minds of the clear-thinking and impartial.

Having adverted to this particular specification, it is proper to add that all the witnesses of the Niagara who speak to the point, differ from the charges as to this alleged distance of their vessel when astern; and even the two lieutenants of the Lawrence, who were examined before the court of 1815, put it, the one at three quarters of a mile from the enemy, and the other at from half to three quarters of a mile; thus lessening the distance averred in the charges, by nearly, if not quite, one half.

In another specification Perry uses these words, viz: “instead of preventing which, or affording any assistance to said brig Lawrence, the said Capt. Elliott left that vessel, her officers and crew (eighty-three of whom were killed or wounded) a sacrifice to the enemy, although his, the said Capt. Elliott’s, vessel remained perfectly uninjured, with not more than one or two of his men (if any,) while Capt. Elliot continued on board of her, wounded.”

Since the death of Perry the clearest evidence has been produced to show that the Niagara had met with at least half of her whole loss before Perry reached her, and several witnesses have testified they do not think more than five or six of the casualties occurred while he was on board. Previously to his bringing the charges, however, the error of this allegation about the wounded and that of the injuries to the vessel had been publicly shown. Mr. Webster, the sailing-master of the Niagara, before the court of 1815, testified that he was hurt and carried below previously to Capt. Perry’s coming on board, and, in reply to a question as to the injuries received by the Niagara, he answered as follows, viz: “there were two men killed from my division before I went below, and several men wounded on board.” This testimony forms part of the records of the department, though Perry may never have seen it. To suppose him capable of bringing an allegation that only two men were wounded in the Niagara, when it was established that two had been killed, would be to attribute to him a subterfuge that could scarcely be palliated by the blindness of resentment. There is now no doubt, whatever, that the specification, so far as it relates to the hurt of the Niagara, rests solely on vague rumors, which, so far from strengthening the accusations against Capt. Elliot, have a direct tendency to weaken them, by proving the active feeling under which they have been brought. The specification, worthless as it would be if true, is unquestionably untrue.

There is another specification which it is impossible to suppose Terry deliberately offered, and not to imagine him totally blinded by resentment, since it involves a physical contradiction. This specification is in these words: “and was, (meaning Capt. Elliott) when his said commanding officer went on board that vessel (the Niagara,) keeping her on a course by the wind, which would in a few minutes have carried said vessel entirely out of action; to prevent which, and in order to bring said vessel into close action with the enemy, the said commanding officer was under the necessity of heaving-to and immediately waring said vessel, and altering her course at least eight points.”

The first objection to this charge is a feature of disingenuousness, that has greatly misled the public mind, on the subject of the situation the Niagara actually occupied when Capt. Perry reached her. It is unanswerably in proof that this brig was about as near to the enemy as the Lawrence ever got during the engagement, and though Perry certainly carried her much nearer, the phrase he uses, in this charge, of “in order to bring the said vessel into close action,” has a tendency to mislead. If the Lawrence was ever in close action, then was the Niagara in close action when Perry reached her; and it would have been fairer to have used some expression which would have left a clearer idea of the real facts of the case. But this is the least objection to the specification. A reference to Capt. Perry’s own official report of the action will show that he himself admits, in that document, that Capt. Elliott took the Niagara into close action.

If Capt. Perry found the Niagara “on a course by the wind,” he found her steering on a line parallel to that on which the enemy was sailing; and if it required “a few minutes” to carry her out of action, under such circumstances, it is a proof she was still coming up abreast of her antagonist; and to insinuate that that was an equivocal position, would be like insinuating the same of Hull, when he ran alongside of the Guerriere, or of Lawrence when he did the same to the Shannon, as each of these officers was steering on courses off the wind, which in a few minutes would have carried them ahead of their foes, and out of the action, had they not devised means to prevent it. To accuse a man of what might happen, while he is still doing what is right, is to bring a charge which falls of its own weight. It is an accusation which may be brought against the most virtuous while employed in the performance of any act of merit.

Feeble as is the imputation contained in the foregoing feature of this specification, that which follows is still more so, since it contradicts the possibilities. Passing over the singularity of a ship’s first heaving-to, to prevent her running out of action, and of then “immediately waring,” a conjunction of evolutions that is entirely novel to seamanship, we come to the charge that Capt. Perry was obliged to “ware” or alter his course “eight points,” in order to cut the English line. The term “ware” is never used by a seaman unless he brings the wind from one quarter to the other. To “ware” is to come round before the wind; as to “tack” is to come round against the wind. With the wind at north, a ship on the larboard tack that was steering “a course by the wind” would head at least as high as east-north-east. Now keeping her off “eight points” would cause her to head south-south-east; a course which would not only still leave the wind on her larboard quarter, but which would want two full points of keeping dead away; the last being a step preliminary to waring, or coming up on the other tack. If Capt. Perry used the term “waring” inadvertently, and merely meant to say that he kept away eight points to cut the line, it follows that the Niagara must have been exactly abeam of the enemy when he took command of her, and proves that Capt. Elliott had himself fairly come up alongside of his enemy. If, however, he is to be understood as saying literally that he did “ware,” or bring the wind on his starboard quarter, as is most probably true, both because the fact is believed to be so, and because a seaman would not be apt to use the word “ware” without meaning the thing, it gives a death blow to the only serious imputation connected with the charge, by showing that Capt. Elliott must have been bearing down on the enemy when Capt. Perry reached the Niagara. The very minimum of waring would be to bring the wind one point on the quarter opposite to that on which it had been before the evolution was performed. Less than that would be keeping away. No seaman would think of using the term for a change less than this. Now, if Capt. Perry “wore,” and altered his course only eight points, he must have had the wind one point abaft the beam when he commenced the evolution, and the charge that Capt. Elliott was hugging the wind cannot be true.^[4]

It is impossible to refute this reasoning, which depends on the simplest mathematical demonstration. The weakness of the specification is so apparent, indeed, as to give reason to distrust the agency of any seaman in its immediate production. There are some incidental facts that may possibly strengthen such a supposition. The answer of Perry to Capt. Elliott’s last letter, is dated August 3d, 1818. In this answer, he says—“I have prepared the charges I am about to prefer against you; and, by the mail to-morrow, shall transmit them to the Secretary of the Navy,” &c. The date of the charges actually sent to the department, however, is August 8th, or five days later, and, from the phraseology of the charges, as well as from that of the accompanying affidavits, it gives some reason to suppose that an outline of the facts has been laid before some member of the bar, who has himself supplied the phraseology, and with it, quite likely, most of the defective reasoning.

It is nevertheless impossible to read this page in the life of Perry without regret. The self-contradiction between the language of his official report and that of his charges is of a character that every right-thinking man must condemn, and when we take his own explanations of the discrepancy, and look into the charges themselves, we find little to persuade us that the last were brought under that high sense of the convictions of public duty, which alone could justify his course. We have no pleasure in laying this matter before the world, but the circulation which has lately been given to the subject, under ex parte views and mutilated testimony, imposes the obligation on a biographer to dwell longer on this theme than he might wish. There is ever a temptation in a democracy to flatter even the prejudices of the community; but he is, indeed, a short-sighted judge of human nature who fancies that the world will fail to punish those who have been the instruments of even its own delusions, and a miserable moralist who sees truth through the medium of popular clamor, at the expense equally of his reason and of the right.

The government never ordered any proceedings on the charges thus preferred by Perry against Capt. Elliott. It appears to have viewed them, as they must be viewed by all impartial men who examine the subject, as the result of personal resentment, confessedly offered to its consideration under the influence of personal interests; and as something very like the assumption of a right in a public servant to mould the history of the country to suit the passions or policy of the hour. Still, Perry remained a favorite, for his services were unequivocal, and there was a desire to overlook the capital mistake into which he had fallen. We have no evidence of his pressing the matter, and it is fair to presume from this circumstance, that the advice of cool-headed friends prevailed on him to acquiesce in the course taken by the functionaries at Washington.

It was March, 1819, before Perry was again called into service. He had caused a small residence to be constructed on a part of the property that had been in his family since the settlement of the country, and here he passed the autumn of the year of his controversies; certainly well clear of one of them, whatever may be the judgment of posterity concerning his course in the other. The following winter he purchased a house in Newport, and took possession of his new abode. Here he was found by orders from the department directing him to join the Secretary in New York. The result of the interview was his being ordered to the command of a small force that was to be employed in protecting the trade with the countries near the equator, his functions being semi-diplomatic as well as nautical.

It was intended that Perry, who now in truth first became a commodore by orders, though the courtesy of the nation had bestowed on him the title ever since his success on Lake Erie, should hoist his broad pennant on board the Constellation 38; but that ship not being ready, he sailed from Annapolis in the John Adams 21, on the 7th June. He did not get to sea, however, until the 11th. Early in July the John Adams reached Barbadoes. After communicating with the shore, she proceeded on to the mouth of the Orinoco, where Perry shifted his pennant to the Nonsuch schooner, which vessel had sailed in his company, and sent the ship to Trinidad. He then began to ascend the river toward Angostura, the capital of Venezuela; off which town the Nonsuch anchored on the evening of the 26th July.

The American party remained at Angostura until the 15th August; twenty days, at nearly the worst season of the year. The yellow fever prevailed, and Perry remarks in his journal, a few days after his arrival, that his crew was getting to be sickly, and that two Englishmen had already been buried from the house in which he resided. After transacting his business, it now became necessary to depart, and, on the day above mentioned, he took his leave of the authorities, and immediately got under way.

The situation of the Nonsuch was already critical, her commander, the late commodore, then Lieut. Claxton, the present Capt. Salter, who was a passenger, and Doctor Morgan, the surgeon, together with some fifteen or twenty of the crew, being already down with the fever. The whole service had been one of danger, though it was a danger that does not address itself to the imagination of men with the influence and brilliancy of that of war. The officers and crew of this vessel had entered the Orinoco, only thirty-four days after they sailed from Lynn Haven, and were probably as much exposed to the dreadful disease of the equator as men well could be. As yet, however, the deaths in the schooner had not been numerous, about one fourth of the ill only having died.

On the morning of the 17th Perry entered his gig, and, as the Nonsuch continued to drop down with the current, he pulled ahead, amusing himself with a fowling-piece along the margin of the river. This may seem to have been running an unnecessary risk, but the seeds of disease were doubtless already in his system. That evening the vessel reached the mouth of the stream, but meeting with a fresh and foul wind she was anchored on the bar. There was a good deal of sea in the course of the night, which was driven in before the breeze, and the schooner riding to the current, the spray washed over her quarter, from time to time, water descending into the cabin and wetting Perry in his sleep. When he awoke, which was quite early, he found himself in a cold chill. In about an hour the chill left him, and was succeeded by pains in the head and bones, a hot skin and other symptoms of yellow fever. Perry was of a full habit of body, and to appearances as unpromising a subject for this disease as might be. He had foreseen the risk he ran, and had foretold his own fate in the event of being seized. Notwithstanding his appearance, it seems he would not bear the lancet, the loss of blood causing him to sink, and his attendants were compelled to relinquish a treatment that had been quite successful in most of the other cases. There were intervals of hope, however, his skin cooling, and his breathing becoming easier, but new accesses of the disorder as constantly succeeded to destroy their cheering influence.

From the first Perry himself had but little expectation of recovery. His fortitude was not the less apparent, though he frequently betrayed the strength of the domestic ties which bound him to life. By the 23d of August, the Nonsuch had got within two leagues of her haven, being bound to Port Spain, in Trinidad, where his own ship, the John Adams, was waiting his return. Perry was now so far gone as to have attacks of the hiccough, though his mind still remained calm and his deportment placid. He was lying on the floor of a trunk-cabin, in a small schooner, under a burning sun, and in light winds; a situation that scarcely admitted of even the transient comfort of cooling breezes, and complete ventilation. At noon of this day he desired the surgeon to let him know if any fatal symptoms occurred, and shortly after he was actually seized with the vomiting, which in this disorder is the unerring precursor of death. This was a sign he could understand as well as another, and he summoned to his side several of his senior officers, and made a verbal disposition of his property in favor of his wife. He appears to have waited to perform this act until quite assured that his fate was certain. This duly discharged, he asked to be left alone.

A boat from the John Adams now arrived, and there was a moment of reviving interest in the world as he inquired of her first lieutenant as to the situation of his ship and crew. He then had an interview with the gentleman whom he wished to draw his will, but his mind wandered, and about half-past three he breathed his last. As his death occurred on the 23d of August, 1819, he was just thirty-four years and two days old when he expired. When this event occurred, the Nonsuch was only a mile from the anchorage, and it would have been a great mitigation of such a blow, could the dying man have passed the last few hours of his existence in the comfortable and airy cabin of a larger vessel. The death of the commodore was first announced to the officers and crew of the John Adams by seeing the broad pennant, the symbol of authority, lowered from the mast-head of the schooner. The body was interred, with military honors, in Trinidad, but, a few years later, it was transferred in a ship of war to Newport, where it now lies, in its native soil, and in the bosom of the community in which it first had an existence.

In person, Com. Perry was singularly favored, being, in early manhood, of an unusually agreeable and prepossessing appearance. The expression of his countenance was open, frank and cheerful, indicating more of the qualities of the heart, perhaps, than of the mind. His capacity was good, notwithstanding, if not brilliant or profound, and he had bestowed sufficient pains on himself to render his conversation and correspondence suited to the high rank and trust that were confided to him. He was warm-hearted, affectionate in disposition, gentle in his ordinary deportment, but quick in temper, and, as usually happens with men of vivid feelings, as apt to dislike as strongly as he was cordial in his attachments. He was inclined to a clannish feeling, as is apt to be the case with the members of small communities, and more or less of its effects are to be traced in several incidents of his life. Thus, in the controversy that occurred between himself and Capt. Elliott, of the nine witnesses who take a view of the latter officer’s conduct similar to his own six were gentlemen who followed him from Rhode Island,^[5] and belonged to his own gallant little stale. He was fond of surrounding himself with friends from his native place, and ever retired to it when not on service afloat. Perry was probably the only officer of his rank who never served an hour, unattached to a vessel, in any state but his own. Whether this were accidental, or the result of choice, we cannot say; but it is in singular conformity with his predilections, which go far toward explaining some of the more painful passages of his life.

In stature Commodore Perry was slightly above the middle height.^[6] His frame was compact, muscular and well formed, and his activity in due proportion. His voice was peculiarly clear and agreeable, and, aided by its power, he was a brilliant deck officer. His reputation as a seaman, also, was good, while his steadiness in emergencies was often proved.

By his marriage with Miss Mason, who still lives his widow, Perry left four children; three sons and a daughter. The government made a larger provision than usual for their education and support, though it could scarcely be deemed adequate to its object, or to the claims of the deceased husband and father. Of the sons, the eldest was educated a physician; the second is now a lieutenant in the navy; the third has devoted himself to the profession of arms, as a student at West Point. The daughter is married to a clergyman of the name of Vinton. Perry appears to have been happy in his domestic relations, having been an attached husband and a careful father, though he did not permit the ties of the fireside to interfere with the discharge of his public duties, the severest of all trials perhaps on a man of an affectionate disposition and domestic habits.

In reviewing the life of Com. Perry one cannot but regret that the ill-directed zeal of mistaken friends has not left his memory peacefully to repose on the laurels he obtained in battle. Advancing under the cover of political vituperation, they have endeavored to sustain a vindictive controversy, by exaggerated pictures of the character of his victory, and by ex parte representations of testimony. It is a misfortune that men who have not been capable of appreciating how much more powerful truth really is than even the illusions of national vanity, have had too much to do with what has been termed the vindication of his character, and have thus dragged before the world evidence to prove that Perry was far from being superior to human failings. His professional career was short, and, though it was distinguished by a victory that led to important results, and which was attended by great success, it was not the victory of unrivaled skill and unsurpassed merit that ill-judged commentators have so strenuously asserted. Compared with the Battle of Plattsburgh Bay, as a nautical achievement, the victory of Lake Erie must always rank second in the eyes of American seamen, and, in the eyes of statesmen, as filling the same place in importance. A mere ad captandum enumeration of guns can never mislead the intelligent and experienced, and these, when acquainted with the facts, will see that the action of the 10th September was one in which defeat would have been disgrace. Still it was a glorious victory, and gallantly achieved. Circumstances were adverse, and the disadvantages were nobly met by Perry. His greatest merit on this day was in his personal exertions, and the indomitable resolution he manifested not to be conquered. The manner in which he changed his vessel, taken in connection with the motive, stands almost alone in the annals of naval exploits, and evinces a professional game that of itself would confer lustre on a sea captain. His recent and severe illness, too, adds to the merit of his conduct, for it is seldom that the mind is enabled to look down the infirmities of the body. But the personal intrepidity of Perry, always of a high order, as was often manifested, was not the principal feature of this act, though it led him from the deck of one ship, already a slaughter house, that was dropping out of the battle, to the deck of another then in the heat of the combat; but it was that lofty determination to redeem his previous losses, and still to wrest victory from the grasp of his enemy, that truly ennobles the deed, and, so far as he himself was personally concerned, throws the mere calculations of force into the shade.

The death of Perry, too, has a claim on the public gratitude, that is quite equal to what would have been so readily conceded had he fallen in battle. In his case the fatal danger was not even concealed; for he went into the Orinoco, as he went into the fight, conscious of the presence of an enemy, and with unerring warnings of his own fate should he happen to come within the reach of his ruthless arm. To our minds Perry calmly dying on the cabin-floor of the little Nonsuch, surrounded by mourning friends, beneath a burning sky, and without even a breath of the scirocco-like atmosphere to fan his cheek, is a spectacle as sublime as if he lay weltering in his gore on the quarter deck of the Pennsylvania, with the shouts of victory still ringing in his ears.

The name of Perry will long remain associated with American naval annals. His victory was the first obtained, in squadron, by the regular and permanent marine of the country, and its reputation precedes all others in the order of time. The peculiar character of his personal exertions associates him more closely with his success, too, than is usual even for the commanding officers, securing to his renown a perpetuity of lustre that no one can envy who justly views his exertions. All attempts to rob Perry of a commander’s credit for the Battle of Lake Erie, must fail; for to this he is fairly entitled, and this the good sense and natural justice of men must award him; but too much is exacted when his admirers ask the world to disregard the known laws that regulate physical force; to forget the points of the compass; to overlook testimony when it is direct, unimpeached, and the best a case will admit of in favor of rumors that can be traced to no responsible source; to believe all that even Perry says to-day, and to forget all that he said yesterday; in short, to place judgment, knowledge, evidence, the truth and even the laws of nature at the mercy of embittered disputants, who have fancied that the ephemeral influence of political clamor is to outlast the eternal principles of right, and even to supplant the mandates of God.

[4]

The following diagrams will exhibit the contradiction more clearly to the ordinary reader— 1, 2, 3, 4, represent the four leading English vessels, at this stage of the action; all on a wind, or heading S. S. W. with the wind at S. E. Now the charges any that Perry was obliged to ware eight points, in order to pass between Nos. 2 and 3. A ship heading like A, or the Niagara, would have to change her course to a line parallel to B, or that of the wind, before she could keep dead away, or ten points; or one point more, to have executed the very minimum of waring. A change of eight points always makes a variation of course to one at right angles to a vessel’s keel, and this would be placing the Niagara fairly abreast of her enemies, or just where all Capt. Elliott’s witnesses, who speak to the point at all, say she was, or precisely where she ought at that moment to have been. The next diagram admits the charge, and shows the contradiction. N. B. All the vessels should be drawn heading up a trifle higher; and A should be in a line parallel to 1, 2, 3, 4. Here A, or the Niagara, has wore only one point, or the minimum of change to which that term will apply. At a she is represented as heading at the eight points, and any eye can see that instead of being on a wind she is off the wind, having it, in fact, one point abaft the beam. The evidence shows that this was about the course the Niagara was actually steering when Capt. Perry reached her. There can be little doubt that this specification was not drawn up by Perry himself. A seaman would not be apt to make such a blunder. But the serious part of the mistake is in the motive. Perry cut the line in the Niagara, and Elliott did not. The former did alter the course of this brig, quite probably eight points, or even more; and the intention is evidently to make a specification out of this fact, although Perry admits that Elliott had previously left his own vessel to do precisely what he, Perry, wished him to do; although no man can say what Capt. Elliott might have done with the brig had he remained on board of her; and although Capt. Perry, in the Lawrence, had lain abreast of the same enemies two hours, at about the same distance, without making any attempt to do that which he subsequently did in the other brig. This is literally making “one man’s meat another man’s poison.” There can be no doubt that the more recent accusers of Capt. Elliott have presumed on the popularity of Perry, in bringing their charges, and one of their principal grounds of accusation is that Capt. Elliott did not do that which Perry had not yet done when Elliott left his brig; though he, Perry, had, according to their own account of the matter, been already two hours closely engaged! In this diagram the English do not look quite high enough, and the two positions of the Niagara should represent her a little more off, to be rigidly accurate. The diagram was drawn by the eye, but the text will explain the writer’s meaning.

BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

The venerable tree at Hartford, Connecticut, known by the name of the “Charter-Oak,” has for more than a century and a half enjoyed the honor of having protected the endangered instrument of liberty and of law. When the despotic principles of James II. revealed themselves in the mother-country, and extended their influence to her colonies, Sir Edmund Andress, the governor of Massachussetts, determined to comprehend within his own jurisdiction the whole of New England and New York. One step in this ambitious career was to gain possession of the charter of Connecticut, which had been granted by Charles II, soon after the restoration. To enforce his tyrannical measures he made his appearance in Hartford, with his suite and sixty men at arms, on the 31st of October, 1687. The assembly of the state were then in session, and evinced extreme reluctance to comply with his demands, notwithstanding he sternly referred to the authority of the king. Governor Treat spoke earnestly and eloquently of the perils which the colony had sustained during its infancy—of the hardships which he had himself endured—and that it would be to them, and to him, like the yielding up of life, to surrender privileges so dearly bought, and so fondly valued. The discussion was prolonged until evening, when the charter was brought. Then, the lights being suddenly extinguished, it was conveyed away by Captain Wadsworth, and secretly lodged in the cavity of that ancient oak, which still bears its name.

Though Sir Edmund Andress was foiled in possessing himself of this instrument, he proceeded to assume the government of Connecticut. He commenced his sway with protestations of regard for the welfare of the people, but his arbitrary policy so soon unfolded itself that a historian of that period was induced to remark that “Nero concealed his tyrannical disposition more years than Sir Edmund did months.” The charges of public officers during his administration were exorbitant; the widow and fatherless, however distant or destitute, were compelled to make a journey to Boston, on all business connected with the settlement of estates; the titles of the colonists to the lands they had purchased were annulled; and he declared all deeds derived from the Indians as “no better than the scratch of a bear’s paw.” At length the spirit of the “Old Bay State” roused itself, resolving no longer to submit to such oppression; and on the 18th of April, 1689, the Bostonians, aided by the inhabitants of their vicinity, made themselves masters of the castle, and threw Sir Edmund and his council into prison, whence they were remanded to England for trial.

When the abdication of James, and the establishment of William and Mary on the throne removed the cloud from Great Britain and her dependencies, the oracular oak opened its bosom and restored the entrusted charter to the rejoicing people. This venerated tree stands on the domain originally belonging to the Hon. Samuel Wyllys, one of the earliest magistrates and distinguished founders of the State of Connecticut. His mansion, which was noted for its elegance during the simplicity of colonial times, was the wonder of the roaming red man; and its surrounding grounds were laid out, somewhat in imitation of the fair estate he had left in his own native Warwickshire. Its site is now occupied by a handsome modern structure, and still in the garden, anciently laid out by him, are found apple-trees, bearing fruit, which 150 years since he imported from Normandy. By his virtues and dignified deportment, he acquired great influence over the Indians, whose wigwams were thickly plumed in the great meadows toward the southeast, and along the margin of the river. When their midnight carousals arose to such a pitch of excitement that a quarrel might be apprehended, he often quelled their uproar, and sent them affrighted to their homes, by a few words uttered from his open window, through a speaking-trumpet, apparently in the voice of the Great Spirit. Such was the security and confidence in the honesty of the people among whom that honorable and wealthy family dwelt, that till within sixty years a large silver cup was left unguarded by a well, for the accommodation of all who, passing through the premises, might wish to taste its waters.

The Charter-Oak still flourishes, though strongly marked by time, yet is far inferior, both in antiquity and magnificence, to the Great Western Tree, which in the foregoing letter it addresses. This is a white-oak, of umbrageous and massy foliage, 70 feet in height and 30 in circumference; so that seven persons are scarcely able to clasp it with arms extended to their utmost length. It stands on the bank of the Geneseo, whose gently flowing waters wind their way through broad valleys, studded with fine trees, and forming the very perfection of park scenery. In the old maps of New York, the surrounding region bears the appellation of “Big-Tree,” and a chieftain of the same name formerly ruled over a tribe inhabiting its vicinity. In Winter, he resided on the uplands, and in Summer came with his people to cultivate some lands in the neigborhood of the mighty oak. Beneath its dense canopy the chiefs and aged men of the adjacent tribes frequently assembled to hold council, to see their youths contend in athletic sports, to incite them to good conduct by their instructions and advice, and to invoke on them the blessing of their Great Spirit.

This majestic tree is supposed to have attained the age of at least 1000, and possibly 1500 years. Of its date there is neither history nor tradition, but an oak of similar species, and of less than a third part of its diameter, having been cut down, displayed three hundred annual circles. It stands on the estate of the Hon. James Wadsworth, so widely known and respected for his princely liberality in the cause of education. With his brother, the late General William Wadsworth, he removed in early life from Connecticut to Western New York, endured the toils and privations of an emigrant, and by persevering industry and correct judgment laid the foundation of that ample fortune and extensive influence which he has long enjoyed. His memory embraces many facts of interest and importance, both with regard to the astonishing changes in that section of the Empire State, and to the character and habits of those aborigines who, like shadows, have vanished before the step of the white man.

Among the tribes who, some half a century since, inhabited the valley of the Geneseo, was a small one which had made such progress in civilizations to be able to speak a little English, to read imperfectly, and to sing psalms very well. They often convened for their simple worship under the spreading boughs of the “Big-Tree.” In the Summer of 1790, Mr. William Wadsworth (afterward the general) received the appointment of captain, and paraded his company of 50 or 60 men, collected from a space now equal to two or three counties, in front of the log house then tenanted by his brother and himself. The chief of the before-mentioned tribe, who was a man of mild temper and reflecting mind, attended to witness the spectacle. His countenance was observed to be marked with sadness. Mr. James Wadsworth inquired the cause of his dejection. Pointing to the company of soldiers, he said, “You are the rising sun;” then turning to the remnant of his own people, he added mournfully, “but we are the setting sun;” and covering his head with his mantle, wept bitterly.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

(Concluded from Volume 22 #5)

CHAPTER II.

Catherine de Medicis was still awake, but lying on her couch, with a dim light flickering through the crimson curtains upon a face betraying more anxiety than she usually allowed it to wear. She rose upon her pillow when Margaret entered, and looked earnestly at the passionate and strange girl. She had flung her mantle aside at the door, and the dress of silvery gauze which she had worn to represent the statue, hung about her person soiled and damp from the greensward where she had crouched to conceal herself. Her tresses fell in a tangled and wavy mass over her neck, and as she sat down upon the bed and flung them, with a passionate gesture, back from her brow and shoulders, the crushed and drooping rose-buds tangled there fell upon Catherine’s pillow. The queen brushed them quietly away, and burying her elbow in the rich down, remained in a position of luxurious ease, waiting for the strange girl to speak. But for the rosy light which streamed through the curtains she might have been startled by the unnatural pallor which lay upon the full and voluptuous features of her child, for never until that night had the strong and bad passions of Margaret been fully aroused.

“Well,” said the queen, at length becoming impatient with the long silence and singular appearance of her daughter, “well, but remember my women rest in the anteroom, speak low.”

Margaret bent her head till its disordered ringlets fell over the night coif of delicate lace shading the beautiful features of her mother; she breathed heavily as she spoke, but related word for word the conversation which she had just heard in the garden, not withholding even the scornful words coupled with her own name; but these words came in broken syllables through her clenched teeth, and Catherine de Medicis, with all her self-control, started almost to a sitting posture in the bed as they fell on her ear; but she sunk gently to the pillow again, and when Margaret ceased speaking, lay with one delicate hand pressed listlessly over her eyes, as if they were oppressed by the dim light.

“Go to your chamber now,” she said, still shading her eyes, “nothing could have been better managed than all you have done. Rise early, and be the first to visit Mary Stuart in her own apartments, put rouge on your cheeks, if they remain pallid as now, and if the fire of those eyes cannot be subdued, at least allow the lashes to droop more gently over them.”

“But, mother,” interrupted the princess, starting up, “am I to endure this am—”

“With regard to the Scottish ambassador,” continued Catherine, without in the least noticing the interruption, “let your conduct in his presence be unaltered; guard every tone and feature—”

“And is this all—am I to be neglected, mocked, and reviled in my father’s palace, and yet have no redress, no revenge on the artful creature who thwarts me at every turn? I thought that you would counsel revenge, not caution, mother!”

“I would caution only that revenge may be certain,” replied the queen; “go to your pillow, girl, and leave the rest to one who has a better control of her passions.”

“Mother,” said Margaret, returning to the bed and stooping over the queen, “will you separate these two persons?”

“Certainly,” was the calm reply.

“But how? Not by—how will it be brought about, mother? I love this man, devotedly, wildly, notwithstanding his scorn. How can you separate them without injury to him?”

A faint smile which stole over Catherine’s face was all the reply she made; even that was unseen by her daughter, for the subtle woman turned her head listlessly away, murmured that she was becoming drowsy and wished to be alone. But the moment Margaret left the room all appearance of languor vanished. Catherine started up, flung back the damask counterpane, and stepped to the floor. Regardless of the ermined slippers that rested on an embroidered stool close by, or of the silken dressing-gown that fell from the bed as her movements agitated the drapery, she took up the lamp and proceeded to unlock a little ebony cabinet which occupied a corner of the room. She touched the spring of a secret drawer, and her hand trembled very slightly as she drew forth some small object enfolded in silver and tissue paper. She removed these glittering wrappers from a tiny crystal flask, which she held before the lamp and shook, either purposely or from the unconquerable tremor of her hand, till the glittering beads flashed like diamond sparks against the flame.

“It is still powerful—more so than my own nerves!” she murmured, with a faint, self-mocking smile; “I thought this weakness had left me forever; we shall learn!”

As she uttered these words, Catherine grasped the vial firmly between her fingers, her lips were pressed closely together, and the trembling of that outstretched hand gradually subsided till the clear and colorless fluid settled like water in the vial again.

“What a fool is that being who allows his physical nature to overcome the strong mental will!” she muttered in a tone of calm philosophy, replacing the vial in its private repository and softly locking the cabinet. “The body is but a weak instrument of the mind at best, and beauty a pleasant tool with man or woman.” As she uttered these words, Catherine replaced her lamp in the golden bracket attached to her mirror, and glanced composedly at the beautiful face reflected there, while she fastened a key, just taken from the locked cabinet, to a chain of light Venetian workmanship concealed beneath the muslin of her night robe, and which, sleeping or waking, never left her neck. She then went back to her bed, drew the rich covering over her person, and slept luxuriously till late in the morning.

What woman is there, loving of heart, tasteful, and accomplished, who has not learned how precious her feminine powers may become when devoted to the affections? How many pleasant sensations have been woven with the embroidery of a slipper, the crest wrought on a handkerchief, the netted purse, the shadowing forth of a flower, or some one of those thousand pleasant devices by which a sensitive and tasteful nature loves to win upon the thoughts of its earthly idol. Genius is comprehensive in its attributes, and genius in woman generally exhibits itself in all those minor accomplishments which distinguish the sex with quite as much originality and beauty as it may exercise in the highest walks of literature.

Mary of Scotland, even in her first girlhood, was distinguished for a degree of genius more comprehensive and strictly feminine than is awarded to any female of her age. She awoke the morning after her birthnight festival with a smile on her lips. She had been dreaming of him, had seen him in deep slumber on a couch of withered garlands torn from the festal rooms of the palace, and heaped beneath that tulip tree in the centre of the garden; the very flowers and leaves which he had derided for their short-lived bloom were pressed against his cheek, and lay broken amid the dark curls of his hair. It was a pleasant dream, fantastically woven from her own thoughts as she sunk to sleep, but when she awoke it was still upon her mind, and she pondered upon it in that drowsy state which was even yet half a voluptuous dream.

“It shall be so,” she murmured, drawing her hand across the soft eyes still half closed beneath the shadow of their drooping lashes. “This very night he shall rest as I saw him in my sleep.”

Mary started up as these words passed her lips, and rang the tiny bell that stood on a table close by her bed. The wailing-women entered to assist her in dressing, but with that eager and girlish grace which arose from the poetical idea that had just entered her mind, she called for a dressing-gown of pure muslin, that lay across a chair close by, girded it to her slender waist by a fragment of ribband which had fallen to the carpet, and sat down to her embroidery frame with her ringlets still confined beneath the lace of her night coif, and her small feet thrust hastily into slippers that she had worn the previous night.

“Go,” she said, without lifting her eyes from the lily bud over which her hand was fluttering like a bird, “go to the reception rooms before the people have time to dismantle them; all of you take baskets and set to work at once. Bring me enough of the roses you will find to fill this cushion when it is finished. Set my pages to work also, and lose no time.”

As the attendants left the chamber to obey this fanciful command, they were met by Margaret de Valois, who inquired the cause of their unusual haste. A scornful flash came to her eyes as she received the answer, and turning back from the door, which she had almost reached, she entered the sleeping-chamber of her mother. In about half an hour she came forth again and retraced her steps toward the apartment of Mary Stuart.

The Queen of Scots half arose when she saw Margaret, and her face was suffused with a deep blush as the princess leaned over her chair and seemed entirely occupied in admiring the rich embroidery glowing beneath her fingers. Mary drew the skeins of floss which she had been using hastily over the centre of her work, and as she hoped, effectually concealed the initials and crest enwoven there with her own. But the jealous eye of Margaret de Valois had detected them, and while Mary sat trembling and blushing like a culprit over her work, the unprincipled girl hastily withdrew from the room and sought that of Catherine de Medicis again.

Before Mary had quite recovered from the agitation which this visit occasioned, her women returned from the festal rooms, bearing the rose-leaves which she had desired them to gather. She bade them set down their fragrant burthen and withdraw. Then she proceeded to cut the snowy satin from its frame, to shake off the shreds of glittering silk that clung to the flowers which her genius had created, and to prepare it for receiving the mass of leaves that filled the whole chamber with their perfume. This was a work of considerable time, and just as she had crowded the last handful of leaves into the rich cushion, and was about to sew up the aperture which had been left for their reception, a page announced Catherine de Medicis.

Mary started to her feet, flung the cushion upon her bed, and breathlessly pulled down the heavy curtains.

As Catherine entered the chamber, she detected the confusion which her visit had brought on the young queen. Casting a quick glance around, till her eyes settled on the bed, disordered and muffled in its drapery, she moved quietly forward, pressed her smiling lips to Mary’s cheek, and inquired kindly after her health.

Mary had kept her attendants from the room all the morning, and beside the disorder consequent on this, rose-leaves lay scattered over the carpet, and the chairs were encumbered with the garments she had worn the night before. It seemed but a natural act, therefore, when Catherine pushed back the volumes of heavy velvet with her hand and sat down upon the bed with the purple folds falling all around her.

Mary blushed crimson and started forward with an impulse to prevent the act, but when she saw that her royal visiter had only secured a seat without exposing the bed or the cushion concealed on it, she became more composed, for it was no uncommon thing for Catherine to visit the chamber of her ward, whom she ever treated with that familiarity and kindness due to a favorite child. Catherine did not seem to observe the embarrassment or vague answers with which her gentle inquiries were received, but she continued to converse gently and with that easy flow of words which she could command at will, for the duration of half an hour. But occasionally one less embarrassed than the young queen might have observed that she moved her hands restlessly among the folds of velvet that almost enveloped her, till at last an opening was obtained which commanded a glimpse of the embroidered pillow lying behind them, with the rose-leaves bursting through the aperture through which they had been pressed. The moment this was accomplished Catherine complained of a slight headache, and asked for a drop of the flower-water that stood on Mary’s toilet.

Mary rose to obtain the vase of perfumed water pointed out. That instant Catherine’s hand was thrust through the curtains and buried deep in the cushion. When she withdrew it a tiny flask of crystal was in its grasp, empty and with fragments of dead rose-leaves clinging to its damp mouth. An open casement was close at hand, the empty vial flashed through it, and when Mary turned from her toilet, bearing the flower-water, she only observed that the face of Catherine de Medicis was paler than she had ever seen it before, and that her hand shook as she received the vase and dashed some of its contents over her forehead, hastily and as one eager to be relieved from pain.

“It was a sudden spasm, and will soon go off,” said the Queen of France, rising from the bed with a slight shudder and replacing the vase of flower-water on the toilet. “Good morning, my fair Rose of Scotland. Adieu! but this room seems close, let your women open another casement, ma belle.” And with these lightsome words she departed to her own chamber.

The moment she was alone Mary once more resumed the task so pleasant and so often interrupted, but as she united the cushion where it had been left open, it seemed to her that a perfume stronger and more subtle than she had ever noticed before was emitted from the rose-leaves. The labor which she had to perform occupied scarcely five minutes, but a sickly sensation crept over her even then, and she flung open the casement for more air.

It was finished at last. For three entire weeks Mary had been occupied on that single pillow, thinking of her lover all the time, and yet half persuading herself that it was not for him she worked, weaving a thought of him with every bud that glowed upon it, but never till that morning allowing herself to think that his crest could be embroidered there by her own willing fingers. It was over now—the doubt and toil of menial conflict—she had resolved at all risks and every hazard to follow the sweet impulses of her heart, to renounce the royal alliance proposed by France, and seek in her own rude kingdom, and with a subject, regal by nature, the happiness which can only be secured to woman through the affections.

And now that the task was done, those crests woven together, and the tassels of threaded amethyst, emeralds and seed pearls fastened to each corner, she was almost sad—not that she hesitated to send it—no, no! but it was an “occupation gone,” something that her new and sweet thoughts had brooded over till every leaf and bud seemed a kindred spirit, whispering of him. She was almost sorrowful that her sweet task was finished.

Mary sat down with the cushion on her lap, and placing her paper upon it wrote a few melodious and touching lines of verse; she fastened her note amid the rich embroidery with a ruby pin, and carefully enveloping the whole, sent it by her page to the Scottish Ambassador.

Catherine de Medicis saw the boy as he passed beneath her dressing-room window, carefully guarding his precious burthen. She smiled not as she did when surrounded by the courtiers of Henry II., but her face took one of those cold, sneering smiles that sometimes haunted it in solitude, but only in solitude.

“He will sleep on it to-night, or my Rose of Scotland has less influence than I suspect,” she said inly. “Well, let us hope that his rest may be long and pleasant.”

If Mary Stuart was rendered sad by the completion of her task, how much deeper was the gloom that fell on that young heart when she remembered the interview which she had promised to the dauphin; the pain she would indict, the ingratitude which he might suspect her of, all thronged upon her mind, and she allowed herself to be robed for the interview, apprehensively and in tears.

Mary was in her dressing-room when the dauphin came. He was very pale and walked unsteadily, as if a severe illness had just enfeebled his energies. When Mary arose and stepped forward to greet him he took her hand in both his and gazed in her face till the eyes which read her downcast look grew more intensely mournful and filled with tears.

“I require no explanation,” he said gently, “nothing more than that sweet troubled look to convince my heart of its entire desolation.”

“Forgive me,” said Mary Stuart with touching humility, and the tears broke through those long, thick lashes as she bent and kissed the trembling hands that clasped hers, “oh forgive me!”

“What have I to forgive?” replied Francis in a tone which he vainly tried to render firm—kind and gentle it always was. “What should I forgive? That you love another devotedly, almost—no—no—that were impossible, no one ever did, ever can love as I have. God grant that none may suffer as I have since last night! What shall I forgive? Nothing, nothing. If the human heart created its own impulses then would you be blamable. But is this so? Can I with the utmost effort wrest the deep feelings which are killing me from my soul? And if I, a man, cannot do this, how should it be expected of one so gentle and loving, so—alas! Mary, this is a severe blow, bear with me, but remember I have nothing to forgive. Forgive me rather that I have so long tortured you with feelings that must disgust, pretensions for which you have hated me!”

“Oh do not any that—torture, disgust with you—indeed I have never felt either; never known a feeling that was not kind and affectionate as—as—”

“A sister, you would say,” replied Francis in a low, broken voice. “Alas! hatred were better than that.”

“No, not as a sister, but better, better a thousand times,” said Mary, carried away by the warmth of her feelings and eager to prevent pain.

The dauphin’s eye kindled and a slight color broke into his cheek, but both indications of disturbed feeling vanished almost as soon as they appeared.

“But not as you love him,” he said, clasping her hand till it pained her, and speaking almost in a whisper. “Not as you love him.”

Mary turned away her head and wept bitterly.

“I will not deceive you,” she murmured in a voice low and broken as his own, “I dare not.” Mary could not go on, she felt the hand which held hers begin to shiver, and saw, even through the tears that blinded her, how deadly pale he was.

The dauphin was obliged to draw her toward a seat, for his limbs trembled and he felt that his strength was giving way.

“Go on,” he said kindly, but still in a broken voice, “any that in words which I have hardly yet found courage to admit to my own heart; feeling in every nerve that you love another, I yet tremble to hear it said. Oh God! until this day I never guessed what poisoned arrows words and looks may become.”

“Do not talk so wildly, so unkindly,” pleaded the weeping girl.

“Unkindly! did I speak unkindly?” he said in a voice that was almost reproachful.

“No, it was myself, the reproaches of my own heart, so wayward, so miserable.”

“Tell me,” said the dauphin, making a strong effort to subdue the emotion that shook his whole frame, “what are your plans? How can I aid them? How prove the earnest and most powerful desire of any soul, that of promoting your happiness. Though it be to see you no more, to give away this hand myself, I will not flinch in the duty.”

“It is our wish,” said Mary, turning very pale and speaking with difficulty. “It is our wish to leave France.”

“To leave France!” repeated the dauphin in a voice of utter dismay.

“We could not be happy here. My people are clamorous for their queen. Every way it would be best.”

Francis covered his face and remained silent, but evidently much agitated.

“We fear opposition from your mother, from the king, and would depart privately; but how to escape observation, how to elude the keen eye of Catherine de Medicis. I tremble to think of our position!”

“Have no fear,” said the dauphin, in a firmer voice and uncovering her pale face, “I will be your companion to the coast. They will never suspect that your betrothed husband, one who loved you as his own life, would aid you to remove from his presence forever.”

Mary looked in his face, then covering her own she wept passionately and in silence. His generous self-devotion seemed a reproach to the selfishness of her love for another. The dauphin arose and paced the floor, firmly and as one who had gained a command over some great weakness. At length he approached the weeping queen, sat down, and drawing her to his bosom, kissed her forehead. His lips were cold and quivering notwithstanding the strong power of will that he had called forth. She gave way to a burst of mingled affection, regret and self-reproach, and flinging her arms about his neck wept bitterly.

“I could yet almost deceive myself into a thought that you love me,” said the prince, once more giving way to the emotions that threatened to overwhelm his frail strength, for he was in feeble health.

“Better than the whole world—next to him?”

The last words were uttered almost in a whisper, but they fell distinctly on the heart that listened. Once more those cold lips were pressed to her forehead, and Mary Stuart was alone—alone and miserable, for what feeling heart ever gave pain to another without suffering the curse seven-fold in its own being?

A week went by, a week of sorrow and gloom to the royal family of France. The dauphin and heir was seriously ill, and of a disease which baffled the court physicians. He had no fever, no malady to which a name might be given, yet his usually infirm health seemed to have received a severe shock; he was feeble, sad, and so spiritless that even his placid mother was alarmed. During all this time Mary Stuart was nervous, wretched, and anxious; she had received a note of thanks for her beautiful gift, with the assurance that her lover’s cheek should press no other pillow till they were both safe in Scotland. After this it was rumored that the Scottish ambassador was taken ill at his hotel, strangely and at night. That every morning he awoke more languid and feverish, till at length he was confined entirely to his couch, raving and delirious.

When this intelligence was brought to the young Queen of Scots, she was sitting with Margaret de Valois and Catherine de Medicis. She remembered not, she cared not that they were gazing on her colorless face. She did not observe that Margaret was weeping and wringing her hands in a fit of sudden grief, or that Catherine turned pale and sat motionless in her gorgeous chair. Mary was too full of sorrow for such observation. He was ill, dying perhaps. The physicians had pronounced his case hopeless. She cared not for concealment, she was no longer a queen, but the passionate, affectionate and troubled woman. She did not for a moment think of asking sympathy from Catherine or her daughter; the depth of their iniquity could not be guessed by a heart warm and guileless as hers, but an intuitive feeling led her from them to the dauphin.

It was nightfall, and Francis was sitting in his splendid chamber solitary and heart sick; the door opened and Mary Stuart, pale as marble, and with tearless eyes, stood before him. She came close to his side, and, kneeling down, pressed her lips upon his hand, humbly and as a grieved child might sue for notice.

“Francis,” she said, “I have wronged you and am punished; he is ill—he is dying!”

“Ill—dying!” exclaimed the prince.

“You promised once, I remember, to befriend us, to shield me, your betrothed wife, from the anger of Catherine; notwithstanding my treachery, my faithlessness, I come to throw myself on your mercy.”

“What can I do—the power of life and death is not mine,” said the dauphin, bewildered by her words.

“I only ask one thing—a trifle for you to grant, but life, every thing to me—take me to his side; if you are with me no one will dare say it is wrong. I know that you are suffering, that it is cruel to ask it, but this terrible anxiety must kill me.”

“Be comforted, compose yourself,” said the dauphin, compassionately; “wait here a few moments and I will return.”

Francis left the room as he spoke, and proceeded to the apartments occupied by his mother. He found Margaret de Valois wringing her hands, sobbing aloud, and heaping reproaches on the queen—wild, incoherent words, which had no true knowledge to ground themselves on; for it was Catherine’s policy to make no confidants, and Margaret could only guess that the Scottish ambassador was ill from any but the natural causes of disease. When the princess saw her brother she became mute, and drew back to a remote corner of the room while he approached the queen.

“Mother,” he said, very gently, “the Scottish ambassador is taken ill, at his hotel, and his young sovereign is anxious to visit his sick bed. Will it please your majesty to accompany her?”

“What, me! me!” exclaimed Catherine, pale and aghast almost for the first time in her life.

The dauphin turned his clear eyes searchingly upon her, he had no suspicion of the truth, but such unusual agitation in his polished and tranquil mother surprised him. She was warned by his look how near had been the betrayal of those anxieties that lay gnawing like concealed vultures at her heart.

“Surely it is natural that a lady so young as Queen Mary should desire the protection of your majesty’s presence in the performance of so painful a duty,” said the dauphin, with quiet dignity; “but, if the request be displeasing, she may deem my escort sufficient.”

“You did not give me time to reply,” said Catherine, in her usual bland voice, though her face was turned away, “there can be nothing displeasing in a request so natural; order chairs, and we will depart at once.”

“I will go also, I who have—;” Margaret de Valois paused abruptly, for a quick glance from Catherine cut the imprudent sentence short on her lips.

“That would scarcely seem befitting an unmarried daughter of France,” said the dauphin, evidently to the great relief of his mother.

“And is not Queen Mary unmarried also?” said the princess, with a passionate gesture.

“She goes under the protection of her betrothed husband to visit a subject,” replied Francis firmly.

“To visit a lover!” was the angry rejoinder.

Francis turned a calm, reproving glance on the froward girl, and quietly asking his mother when it would please her to start, received the answer and left the room. In a few minutes he returned with Mary Stuart, muffled in her cloak and leaning heavily on his arm. She was very pale, and trembled violently, but scarcely more so than the agitated being that supported her.

The streets of Paris were dimly lighted in those days, and as Catherine was anxious to keep her visit to the ambassador’s hotel a secret, the men who attended her chair carried no flambeaux. So the mournful cavalcade threaded the streets in darkness and silence till it paused in a court yard of the ambassador’s hotel. They passed forward—the dauphin, his mother, and Mary of Scotland—up the stairs and through many a sumptuous but deserted apartment; still no attendant was there to receive them, and it was only by the faint murmur of voices from a distance that the party were guided toward the chamber where the suffering nobleman lay.

“Lean on me,” whispered the dauphin to the half fainting young creature at his side; “try and control yourself; that must be his chamber door where the light streams through into the corridor.”

They moved forward; the light gleaming steadily across the corridor was their only guide, for no sound, not a murmur now disturbed the gloomy silence of that vast building. The door was gained at length. The light had gleamed from four tall wax lights that stood at the head and foot of a heavy bed occupying a corner of the room. Ostrich plumes hung motionless over the four huge posts, and masses of dark velvet swept gloomily downward in the cold light.

Catherine de Medicis paused at the door, for even her proud soul was awed with the solemn hush of that spacious chamber. She leaned heavily against a pillar in the corridor, and motioned with her hand that the dauphin and his companion should advance without her. They did advance, awe-stricken by the gloom and silence that reigned around them. They approached the bed, and there, through an opening of the dark curtains, Mary saw the outline of a human form rising beneath a dark counterpane, it might be, or perhaps a pall, for it was a gloomy covering, and she shuddered to look upon it. A figure was bending over the bed, and now the sobs of a human being broke through the room. The figure lifted its head, and a cry that seemed to rend her heart in twain burst from the Queen of Scots. It was the face of Margaret de Valois, ashy pale and convulsed with grief. Her eyes were fixed wildly on the still form which lay beneath the mingled shadow and glare, contrasted by the wax lights and sombre hangings. That face—Mary bent forward breathlessly and white as marble to attain a single glance at the face. In the frenzy of her grief Margaret flung back the drapery with a wild sweep of her hand, and, with a single gasp, Mary Stuart sunk to the floor. She had seen the face of her lover, cold and rigid like marble, resting on her “pillow of roses.” It passed before her eyes like a shadow, that cold, dead face—the black and glossy hair scattered over that snowy satin, the gemmed tassels that gleamed mockingly in the funereal light, and the black plumes nodding mournfully overhead, and then she became insensible. At this moment some friars that had been summoned from a neighboring monastery came slowly along the corridor, prepared to shrive the soul that had just gone into eternity. They passed by the shrouded figure of Catherine de Medicis, and, entering the chamber of death, where all spiritual aid was of no farther avail, they assisted the dauphin to lift the young Queen of Scots from the floor, where she lay supported by the arm of her scarcely less helpless companion. There was no couch in the chamber save that funereal bed, already so mournfully occupied, but when one of the monks recognized the dauphin, and the rank of his suffering companion, he reverently lifted that marble head, and, removing the embroidered pillow, brought it forward and laid it beneath the pallid cheek of Queen Mary. That instant Catherine de Medicis uttered a stilled cry, and, coming hastily forward, snatched the pillow away, and sternly commanded the friar to take it hence and see that it was instantly burned.

The friars recognized their queen, and, bowing with abject humility, took the pillow and were about to obey her command, but that moment an old servant of the ambassador, who had entered with the religious men, stepped respectfully forward and pleaded for its return—

“His master had slept on that pillow ever since his illness,” he said; “no one was suffered to take it from his sight an instant, but as he grew feeble and nearer death, his last wish had been that it might be placed beneath his head in the coffin, that even in the grave he might rest upon it.”

Catherine felt the dauphin’s gaze fixed earnestly upon her; she looked toward Margaret de Valois, and knew by the flash of her dark eyes that another word might arouse suspicions never to be hushed again; so, with a power of self control that never was equaled by woman, she quietly relinquished the pillow, and recommended that it should not again be removed from the dead, as a disease so sudden and fatal might be contagious.

Once more the glowing buds and flowers which Mary had woven with so many happy thoughts were kissed by the cold check of the dead; again the threaded pearls, and the glossy satin, and the buds that seemed bursting into flower all over it gleamed mournfully in the cold wax light, a painful contrast to the paraphernalia of death that enveloped and overhung it like a cloud.

Mary of Scotland was carried from the hotel insensible, followed by the awe-stricken, but still impenitent Queen of France, and Margaret de Valois, who had left the palace on foot, and in the night, stubborn in her purpose to look once more on the only face that ever aroused a true or deep emotion in her passionate and fickle heart. Subdued and softened by the scene which had presented itself, she watched with something of true kindness over the Queen of Scots while she lay ill and suffering for many weeks after that melancholy night.

In loss than two years from the date of this story Mary Stuart became the wife of Francis. The quarterings of England, France and Scotland were her proud assumption. She was beloved by the people of two great kingdoms, almost adored by the good prince whom she had learned to love with all the subdued affection of her nature; but even at this proud and happy period, a shadow would fall on her sweet face, and tears would start to her eyes, when she thought of “the pillow of roses,” and that pale head which found rest upon it in the tomb.

ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE.

OR THE “RUSE DE GUERRE.”

BY MRS. FRANCES S. OSGOOD.

CHAPTER I.

“Hear me, but for one moment, Imogen,” exclaimed the youthful sculptor, as the lady of his love turned coldly away from his impassioned gaze.

“Nay, Mr. Stanley, hear me and answer me! What have I ever done to authorize this presumption? Let me tell you, sir, Imogen Howard would sooner die than stoop to be the bride of an obscure and unknown artist like yourself. Release my hand!”

And it was released, ere the words had passed her lips, and George Stanley stood before her with folded arms and a face pale with suppressed emotion.

She was a queenly creature. Her brow, with its regal beauty, would have graced the fairest coronet of England’s court; but her proud lip blanched and her dark eye quailed beneath the stern and reproachful gaze of him whose love her coquetry had so cruelly betrayed.

At length, a smile of quiet and lofty scorn broke gradually over his fine face, and, turning calmly away, he left her without a word; he left her, in her luxurious and elegant home, to seek, with an aching heart, the lowly lodgings of poverty; but he left her to a grief more deep and more enduring than his own.

As the door closed, the haughty girl threw herself, in wild abandonment to the most passionate sorrow, on the rich velvet cushions of the sofa, from which she had risen to address him; and there, to that wo which her own pride—the petty pride of wealth and station—has caused, we too will leave her, as he left, and give the reader a slight sketch of our hero, his character, his situation and his prospects.

He was poor and proud; of humble origin, but noble in person and in mind. High-spirited, witty, with, at times, a dashing, daring recklessness, which involved him in many an embarrassment; he had still a lofty sense of honor, which no difficulty had yet impaired.

His face, though not beautiful, was strikingly interesting. His hair, intensely black, was flung, in wild glossy masses, from his broad and spiritual forehead, and a pair of flashing eyes, of the same singularly deep hue, expressed every passing emotion of his soul. His mouth was almost femininely sweet, his form tall and finely proportioned.

A sculptor, by profession, he had displayed remarkable genius in the few graceful groups which adorned his studio; but though visiters, impelled some by taste and some by curiosity, crowded his room, his sitters were few and far between; for it generally happened that those who best appreciated the beauty of his works were, like himself, poor and dependent upon their own talents for a livelihood.

That a prophet has seldom honor in his own country is a proverb too generally true, and George Stanley began to despair of realizing the glorious dreams of fame and fortune which boyish ambition had formed.

At the time my story commences, he had just completed, in marble, a full length of Imogen Howard—the only daughter of one of the wealthiest merchant princes of Boston, the city in which the scene of my story is laid. She was represented as the fabled Atalanla, at the commencement of the chase, just springing forward in flight, her lips slightly parted, her hair and garments fluttering in the air, her dart in her hand, and her graceful head half turned for a parting glance at her lover. The design had all the spirit and beauty with which the original was so singularly gifted; and Stanley hardly knew with which he was most in love, his own exquisite creation or the lovely model which nature had moulded so perfectly before him.

Charmed by her beauty, her wit, and playful blandishment of manner, the youthful sculptor, at every meeting with his fair subject, had become more and more passionately attached to her; and, at length, forgetting the difference of station, had rashly, and perhaps prematurely, declared his love, during the interview with which my story commences.

CHAPTER II.

George Stanley entered his humble studio, threw his hat and cloak desperately upon a chair, and, seating himself by a table, buried his face in his hands. He had not noticed, as he entered, a young girl sitting, with a book in her hand, in a retired corner of the room, who seemed to be awaiting his approach. She rose, as he came in, but, seeing his evident emotion, hesitated to address him. We will not lose so favorable an opportunity to describe her, as she stands there with her little hands clasped in sympathizing sorrow, and her blue eyes fast filling with tears. She is apparently about fourteen years of age, small, slight, but exquisitely formed, with a delicate, child-like face, whose chief beauty is its expression of angelic innocence and purity, enhanced perhaps by the soft spiritual-looking hair of palest brown, which falls not in curls, but in graceful waves upon her neck. Her dress is a simple robe of white, lightly confined at the waist with a ribbon of the same hue. Beside her is a nearly finished statue of little Nell seated upon the church-yard stone. The child is doubtless the original of the beautiful design; for the dress, the form, the face are hers; but see! with a light though faltering step she crosses the room and lays, with timid tenderness, her soft pure hand upon the flushed forehead of the sculptor. He feels—he knows—he loves the touch; but, though inexpressibly soothed and comforted, as by a fairy spell, he does not at once look up, the influence is too sweet to be thus disturbed, and so he remains perfectly still, while she smooths his hair with her caressing fingers, and presses her innocent cheek upon his brow. At last, weary of the silence, she insinuates her tiny hand into his, and then he starts and presses it fondly to his lips, unable longer to resist her childish tenderness. Blushing, with a new and strange emotion, she hastily withdraws it.

“I came to sit, Mr. Stanley.”

“Dora! you are a blessed child!”

“But—I came to sit.”

“Why do you tremble so? You are fatigued! Take this chair, dear Dora, and I will be ready for you in a moment. There! now clasp your hands before you, and droop your head a little. That’s right! don’t move—it is perfect! Dear, sweet, lovely little Dora!—Nell I mean!”

“Oh! why did you change the name? It makes me so happy to have you praise me, and yet I know not why, but the tears always come into my eyes when you speak so, and I cannot help sighing as if I were sad, but I am not—only too happy to smile.”

“Darling, precious little Nell!—Dora, I mean!”

The child’s low and musical laugh rang out like the warble of a bird, or peal of fairy bells.

“There, Dora, you may rest now, and I will read you those verses I spoke of, written for little Nell’s statue, by a friend of mine.

And now, dear Dora, I must bid you good-bye. I am going away for a long time.”

“Oh! how long?” asked the child, looking up sorrowfully, imploringly in his face, “for a whole week?”

“For years, perhaps!”

Dora did not speak; she moved hastily away, tied on her little coarse straw bonnet, pinned her faded shawl over a heart heaving with unspeakable anguish—turned again toward him a face white almost as the marble one of the Ariadne beside her, pressed his hand lightly, almost coldly, to her lips, and was gone!

The paragraph containing the news of George Stanley’s departure for England was read at the same hour, the next evening, by both Imogen Howard and Dora Sullivan; the one in her gorgeous saloon, dazzlingly arrayed for a ball, and awaiting her carriage; the other in her little bed-room, preparing for the night’s repose. The haughty heiress, bravely repressing a shriek of surprise and despair, threw down the Transcript, exclaiming, “How stupid these papers are growing!—there never is any thing worth reading in them!” The innocent and loving child, after bathing it with tears, knelt in her night robe by her humble bed, and prayed meekly and fervently to her Father in Heaven, that he would protect and bless her friend, and keep her good till his return.

CHAPTER III.

A year passed by. Nothing was heard of young Stanley, and few had cared to hear; for all the world—that is all the fashionable world of Boston—was crowding to the richly furnished rooms of a dashing, whiskered, moustached, fierce-looking corsair of a sculptor—fresh from his native Italy—a miracle of genius—a young, elegant, interesting, distingue being, whom all the ladies petted, and all the gentlemen patronized.

“He is so saucy and so accomplished! His hair curls divinely, and he plays the guitar ‘a raviment;’ and he sings ‘Eccoridente!’ with such impassioned feeling! His broken English, too, is perfectly bewitching. Oh! Imogen! you must go and see him!” exclaimed Miss Angelina Seraphina Elliot to her friend, as they sat one evening in the elegant boudoir of the latter.

“But you know I hate artists!” replied Imogen, languidly.

“Yes—common artists; but this is a rara avis! Every one is sitting to him, though his charges are enormous. They say his fortune was immense before he came, and that all he makes here is bestowed in charity. Come! tie on your new ‘François premier,’ and that little white plush hat, and go with me directly.”

“Yes,” said Imogen, bitterly, and half aloud, “they grant to this impudent foreigner’s moustache and broken English, what they denied to poor Stanley’s lofty genius and purity of character. Him they allowed to linger on in neglect and poverty, for the very reason that he was poor, and really needed their assistance! Well, Angy, I want a walk, and we might as well go there as any where; so just touch that bell at your side and I will tell Florine to bring my hat, &c., here.”

A slight flush crossed the dark brow of Signor Julio di Cajolerini, as Imogen Howard entered his saloon; but he bowed low, and with Italian grace, to her courteous address, and then rivetted his black eyes, with a gaze of mysterious meaning, upon her beautiful face, till she was fain to turn away from them, blushing and embarrassed. What was there in those eyes that so moved the haughty girl? There were few who could daunt her from her graceful and high-bred self-possession; yet this bold Italian had, with a single look, abashed her.

She fell annoyed, provoked, yet charmed, she knew not why; and again and again her brilliant hazel eyes met those of the handsome stranger, and again and again they fell beneath his gaze.

At length he spoke. Imogen had moved away to examine on exquisite statue of Psyche; but, at the sound of that voice, deep and sweet, lingering on the rich musical syllables of his own native Italian, she turned hastily round! Once more she caught his eye. “Let us go!” the said to her companion, and with a cold, proud bow, met by the sculptor with one equally haughty, she turned to leave the room.

“But, Imogen!” said her friend aloud, “you know your father wishes you to sit to the signor, and you have made no arrangements about it.”

Again the young lady turned toward him. He was looking provokingly nonchalant, leaning, in a careless and graceful attitude, against a superb Apollo, with his splendid purple robe orientale embroidered in silver folded around his stately form. He bent his head slightly, as Imogen addressed him.

“At what hour, sir, can you attend me at my father’s house, to make arrangements for a sitting?”

“Pardon me, mia bella signora! my time is so occupied that I shall unfortunately be obliged to forego the honor you design me.”

Imogen’s dark eyes flashed an unutterable reply, but she did not speak; and, with another cold and slight bow, they parted.

CHAPTER IV.

In a low room, at the north end of the city, was seated a girl of sixteen. She held in her hand a small embroidery frame, in which she had half finished, for a screen, a wreath of delicate roses, and forget-me-nots. Upon this work depended her livelihood. She had promised it should be completed the next day.

Her young head was bent, and her light and beautiful hair, as it fell over the frame, half veiled her drooping eyes. Her cheek was slightly flushed with the love-dream at her heart, and she sang, in a low, sweet, sighing voice, as follows:

A light, quick knock at the door is unheard by the dreaming girl. It opens, and a stately stranger approaches. It is the Italian sculptor! What does he here with those mysterious eyes of his, and that bright, beguiling smile?

Beware, little dreamer! Shut up, in that pure and loving heart, the image of the absent one, and let not his displace it!

“Pardon me, Miss Sullivan, for intruding thus abruptly upon you. I should not have presumed to do so without this letter of introduction from our mutual friend, Mr. Stanley.”

The dainty color burned and faded in the delicate cheek of the girl, as she reached her hand eagerly out for the letter, and as quickly withdrew it, abashed beneath the earnest and admiring gaze of the stranger.

“Will you not take the letter?” said he, smiling.

She did take it, but held it unconsciously in her hand, with her head bent earnestly forward, her eyes downcast, her very heart waiting to hear that voice again.

Signor Julio di Cajolerini! are you a serpent, that you thus strangely charm each bird that flutters in your path?

“Will you not read the letter, Miss Sullivan?”

“Oh, yes! certainly! I beg your pardon. What did you say?”

And she gazed upon him, with a bewildered look in her child-like eyes, till he repeated the question.

She opened the letter, it ran as follows:

Utterly unconscious of the Italian’s presence, Dora had perused this simple letter half-a-dozen times ere he ventured, or indeed wished to interrupt her. It was sufficient happiness for him to watch her changing face as she read. “The flitting blush,” the playful smile, the half-stifled sigh, the touching eloquence and grace of her whole expression and attitude were a study worthy of Praxiteles; and the signor, entranced and almost breathless with delight, at length closed his eyes over the sweet picture, as if to shut it up forever in his soul.

“May I hope for the honor of a sitting from you at your earliest convenience?” said he, after a long pause.

Dora started, and remained for a few moments in silent thought. She hesitated, because she felt a natural reluctance to sit to a stranger. Stanley had been her friend from childhood, and with him the case was different; but she could hardly reconcile herself to the idea of going, alone and unprotected, to the studio of the signor. Then she thought of her poor and invalid mother, for whom she could thus earn many little delicacies necessary to her recovery.

“Yes, sir,” she said at last, “at any hour you will name, I shall be happy to attend you.”

“At ten o’clock to-morrow, then, if you please, Miss Sullivan. Good morning,” and, bowing with an impressive and respectful air, he took his leave.

CHAPTER V.

The heiress stood that evening longer than usual at her mirror. She was dressed for a ball, at which she expected to meet the lion of the day, Signor Julio di Cajolerini.

Her dress—a delicate rose-colored crape, looped with azalius over white satin—was cut low at the bosom, too low for taste and maiden delicacy, though the fair neck, which rose above, was soft and beautiful as that of the fabled Cytherea. Her dark hair, parted in front in luxuriant masses, was braided at the back of her head, and confined by a net of the rarest pearls. Her zone and bracelets were composed of the same precious ornaments. In her hand she held a rare bouquet, and a superb Indian fan, glittering with gems, hung upon her round and snowy arm.

She was looking very lovely. There was a brilliant glow upon her cheek, and the sportive dimples played round her beautiful mouth, like sunshine round a rose! But the servant announces her carriage; and, with one parting gaze at the mirror, she allows Florine to tie on her little white satin cloak, and vanishes.

Poor Florine! and you are to sit up for her! What will you do with yourself? She has left you some work, but you will delay that until to-morrow; I know you will by the expression of that willful little mouth of yours. Can you read, Florine? Oh yes! for you have already a splendid annual in your hand, and have opened into the middle of a love story. Poor child! How you wish you were the heroine, do you not? with all her trials and sufferings, rather than the slave of an heiress’ caprice!

The hours roll on. Twelve o’clock! Florine has finished the story, and read all the poetry in the book, and now she sings. Hark! it is a love-song! Ah! Florine! you have a lover, then! No wonder you like poetry.

The hours roll on. One o’clock! Florine yawns. “Oh dear!” she sighs to herself, “I am so tired of singing and reading! What shall I do? I know, I’ll try on all her caps and capes!” And forthwith she goes to a bureau and decks herself out—parading before the full length mirror and mimicking, or rather caricaturing her young mistress’ airs and graces with ludicrous fidelity. “She won’t be home these two hours yet! I might just as well see how I look in the new French pelisse and hat.”

She had hardly arranged these to her satisfaction, ere a carriage stopped at the door. “It is she!—so early!—how provoking!” The cloak and hat were restored to their respective boxes, and the little artful French maid, to all appearance sound asleep upon the sofa, when Imogen entered the room.

“Florine, take my cloak!—unclasp these pearls! and leave me!” The girl started, rubbed her eyes, and did as she was bidden. Imogen was alone.

The belle—the heiress—“the evening star,” as her attendant beaux had entitled her! How different now from the gay and brilliant girl who had stood there three hours before, exulting in her beauty and her pride! Her hands were locked languidly before her—her dark disordered locks streaming loosely over her pale face and beautiful form—her drooping lashes wet with tears that mocked the curl of her haughty lip! The glow of joy was gone, and her flowers had lost their freshness and their bloom!

“Oh! Stanley!” she murmured, “I have deserved this—the cool indifference with which this princely stranger meets me is but a just retribution for my disdain of your love, and yet it is only his strange resemblance to you that causes this foolish infatuation!—I will never see him again! The coxcomb!—he would not even accept my flowers!” and she flung her bouquet, with passionate violence, on the floor. As it fell, a little folded paper which had been lying perdu amid its leaves, dropped from it at her feet. With a beating heart and blushing cheek, she snatched it up and read the following lines:

“Saucy and presuming! like all he says and does,” exclaimed the disappointed girl; and, tearing it into shreds, she flung herself, without undressing, on the bed and wept herself to sleep.

CHAPTER VI.

“Dear Dora, say, at least, that you will try to love me!” exclaimed the young signor, and he sought, with respectful tenderness, to take her hand in his; but Dora gravely withdrew it, and replied, with a faltering voice and tearful eyes,

“Sir! you have been generous to me thus far; be so now, or I can never come to you again! I love you—as a friend—as a brother, if you will; but not as I love—another! Oh! what am I saying? I did not mean to tell you this; but you are so kind, so gentle, that I feel as if I must confide in you. Do not betray me! You will not?”

She covered her blushing face with her hands, and stood trembling before him.

“Nay! dearest, I love you too well to betray you; but let me claim a brother’s privilege, since you have yourself bestowed that precious name, and tell me—is it my friend you love? Stanley told me, long ago, that he had cherished your image as the dearest treasure of his soul.”

The color spread to her very temples, and her slight, girlish frame quivered like an aspen-leaf, but she could not speak.

“You need not answer me, Dora, I see it all; but he was poor and humble, and had little hope of ever being able to marry, while I have wealth and station! Dora, think of your poor mother!”

The young girl withdrew her hands and looked up calmly, almost proudly in his face. “My mother loves me, sir. She would sooner die than see her child degrade herself by marrying for mere wealth and station, unsanctified by love.”

She turned coldly away.

“Dora, my precious, noble Dora! Look at me, dear, and love me!”

That voice! it was surely his! She glanced timidly round. Yes! George Stanley himself was there! The moustache, the whiskers, the artificial color, the curls, all, all had vanished; and there he stood, his dark face lighted up with exulting joy, his arms outstretched to receive her! Dora sprung, with a faint cry, to his heart.

CHAPTER VII.

“Two scraps of news this morning, ma belle, one of which, I am sure, will interest you! What will you give to hear them?”

“Nothing, Angy, for nothing interests me now.”

“Well, since you will give nothing, will you promise to accompany me wherever I may choose to go this morning, if I will tell you the most important one?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, your friend, Signor Julio di Cajolerini—the genius, the marvel, the lion, the meteor—has vanished!—no one knows why, when, where or how!”

“Thank Heaven! if it be true; but I can hardly believe it. Angy, there is something unaccountable, almost supernatural, in that man’s influence over me.”

“So I thought, for I could never comprehend it, though all the girls were bewitched with him. But come! you have promised to go with me.”

“Well, just let me finish this touching letter of Willis’; it is his last from under a bridge, and is exquisitely beautiful. Come here and read it with me! There! is not that an appeal that none but he could write!—oh! dear, your hand is just where I am reading, there, now I can see—beautiful! beautiful! oh Angy!—no wonder the tears are in your eyes. Well, we will go now.”

The elegant walking-dress was donned with care, and the two lovely girls met many an admiring gaze, as they tripped from Beacon into Tremont street.

At one of the handsome marble buildings in the latter, they paused and ascended the stairs.

“Where are you taking me, Angy? Another poor artist to be patronized?”

Angy made no reply, but smilingly ushered her friend into a splendid suite of rooms, furnished with Eastern luxuriousness, and adorned with exquisite specimens of art in painting and sculpture. Vases of various graceful shapes were crowned with the rarest exotics of the season; books, magnificently bound, lay scattered on tables of the richest mosaic. Crimson drapery, superb in texture end in hue, shaded the windows, and musical instruments of different kinds completed the “tout ensemble.” But the gem of this charming assemblage was a newly finished statue in marble of the daughter of Virginius, as described in Macauley’s noble “lays of ancient Rome.”

A young man came forward to receive them, exclaiming, as he did so, “Miss Howard, Miss Elliott! I am most happy to see you. Pray be seated.” It was George Stanley. Imogen’s early dream of love stole warmly back to her heart. He was a far different being now from the poor, obscure, desponding youth she had known two years before. She bent her dark eyes tenderly upon him. He returned her gaze with a smile of peculiar meaning, which struck like an icicle to her heart. Where had she met that smile before? Confused by his look, she took up a guitar which lay by her side and struck a few notes to cover her embarrassment.

“Though you do not understand Italian, Mr. Stanley, perhaps you would like to hear a little song I have just composed. The words and the music are both mine, and Angy thinks them pretty.”

He smiled again. “I shall be most happy to hear it, Miss Howard.”

And Imogen sang, with a faltering but impassioned voice, the following simple song:

“You have improved, Miss Howard; you sing with much more feeling than you once did. Will you allow me to give you an impromptu English translation of your graceful song!

“I thought you did not read Italian!” she said, in a tone of surprise and dismay. He look the guitar from her hands and sang in a low but rich voice, and with much expression,

The agitated girl looked hurriedly round. Her friend was absorbed in admiration of the statue of Virginia. Imogen approached the sculptor. “George! dear George!” she murmured, “do you indeed still care for me?” Before she could reply, a sweet, eager voice, as of echo, repeated afar off, “George, dear George!” The next instant the rich folds of a curtain at the farther end of the room were parted, and a fair, young and happy face glanced out for a moment and vanished!

Stanley sprung up, disappeared behind the drapery, and instantly returned, leading in his blushing and beautiful Dora, in a rich but modest bridal dress.

“My wife, Miss Howard!”

Imogen bore it bravely. She saluted the bride with a calm but courteous kindness; held out her hand to Stanley and congratulated him, though the tears were in her eyes as she did so, gave them a card for her next soiree, and turned to leave the room, with a cheek somewhat paler and a statelier step than usual.

Stanley was touched; he hurried forward to detain her. “Imogen—Miss Howard! I have something to show you.”

He drew her into an adjoining room. “I have wronged you, dear Imogen; I did not give you credit for the feeling, the spirit, the strength of character which you displayed but now; I can only expiate my fault by making to you a confession which but one other has drawn from me. Betray me if you will, but forgive me for the sake of my early devotion and disappointment!”

He passed into a recess, and re-appeared in a few moments in the gaudy robe, whiskers, rouge and moustache of Signor Julio di Cajolerini!

Imogen gazed at him for a moment in mute amazement, and then burst into a fit of uncontrolable laughter, in which she was soon joined by Dora and Angeline, who were drawn thither by the sound.

“Yes, Miss Elliott, your fashionable friends gladly, nay eagerly, accorded to the rich and dashing foreigner what the poor native artist, with the same genius and less pretension, needed so much more and looked for in vain—patronage, sympathy, attention. Impelled, partly by my natural inclination for a frolic, partly by pride and perhaps revenge for the undeserved neglect which I had experienced, at the instigation of a young and wealthy Englishman, whom I met on board the ship and who lent me money for the purpose, I adopted the disguise and the plan of which you have seen the result. That I sincerely repent the imposition, you will be convinced from this voluntary confession. My end is answered, and I will no longer owe to imposture what ought to have been freely accorded to genius alone. All the money, all the property, which I have gained in this unworthy manner, shall be disposed of as I intended from the first, in charity. I have saved, from my former honorable earnings, more than sufficient to enable us to reach England, and, when there, my friend has promised me sufficient employment for a livelihood. Rich or poor, my Dora will love me; will you not, dear one?”

“Oh! a thousand times better poor, my husband, than with riches thus falsely obtained.”

He laid his hand affectionately on her head, and Dora placed her own upon it to retain it there.

“And now let me repeat to both of you, betray me if you will, but forgive me!”

“My dear Mr. Stanley!” exclaimed Imogen, smiling through her tears, “I will keep your secret and so shall Angy, upon one condition.”

“Name it, mia cara signora?”

“It is that you shall let me sit for a bust, which I have promised Angeline for a birth-day gift, and that you will allow me to become the purchaser of that lovely little Nell which I see in the corner there.”

“I cannot sell my little Nell, for my little Dora is the original of it; but I shall be most happy to fulfill your first condition. Have you any other to make?”

“Yes, one more; teach your sweet wife to love me, as I already love her, and I am content.”

She had hardly finished speaking ere Dora’s dainty little hand was in hers, and Dora’s soft and plaintive voice murmuring in her ear. Reader! we must guess what she said, for she spoke so low that none but Imogen could hear.

BY MRS. SERA SMITH, AUTHOR OF “THE SINLESS CHILD,” ETC.

A STORY OF THE AFFECTIONS.

BY ROBERT NORRIS, AUTHOR OF “THE ANGEL AND THE DEMON,” “THE HASTY MARRIAGE,” ETC.

Who that has attended the death-bed of the loved and cherished, can ever forget its touching and painful scenes? The sands of life passing rapidly away—the pulse becoming feebler and fainter—the voice lower and weaker—the light fading from the glassy and spiritual eyes—the mingled expression of love, hope and agony resting upon the thin, pale features. And, when at last the lamp goes out—the hands fall cold upon the motionless bosom—the limbs become rigid, and the spirit wings its flight to another world, who can forget the heart-screams of the doating mourners—the grief long suppressed, but now bursting forth as a torrent—the tears, the cries and the exclamations, half in love and half in madness!

I once was present at the death-bed of a mother—a true and martyr-like woman—who had hurried herself to a premature grave, in an effort to provide for the comforts of two young and lovely daughters; and were I to live a thousand years, the memory of that hour would still linger vividly in my mind. She died, too, in the full faith of a blessed hereafter—conscious of the purity of her life, and cherishing, as the jewels of the soul, the sublime truths of the Christian religion. But her daughters—her young and unprotected daughters! She left them to the tender mercies of a hollow world, and thus, with the undying fondness of a mother’s heart, fixed her straining eyes upon their sad but beauteous features, even as the soul parted from the body, and the faith of a blessed religion brightened the pathway to a clime of bliss.

Sobs and tears and loud lamentations came from those lovely orphans. They were now indeed alone in the world; and though they had been taught in some measure to prepare themselves for so frightful a bereavement, they could not realize all its gloom and desolation. They had never known a father’s care, for he had been taken from them in their early childhood, before they were capable of appreciating his value. Their mother had been the whole world to them—she had watched them in their hours of illness—had prayed for them, and with them—had pointed out the paths of danger in the ways of life—had indulged them beyond her means—had deprived herself of many a luxury, ay, many a necessary in order to administer to their comfort and improvement, and now, as they looked upon her cherished form, cold and still in the icy embrace of death, oh! God, how wretched and lonely seemed their condition. In vain their few friends endeavored to soothe their sorrow—to soften the anguish of their grief. Tears, and tears alone seemed to afford them relief; and they wept in very bitterness for hours!

Mrs. La Roche was a French lady by birth, and, with her husband and her young daughters, came to this country during the troubles of the last French revolution.

Compelled to abandon his native land at but a few hours’ notice, the father was able to collect but a small sum of money to assist his family in the country of their exile. He survived his arrival in the United States only two years—merely long enough to acquire a knowledge of the English language, and, with his lady, to attempt the establishment of a school of instruction in the French. The daughters were, at this time, too young to assist, but the mother, though utterly unused to a life of toil, saw and appreciated her position, and roused all her energies to the undertaking. She continued the school, and with partial success, after the decease of her husband. Compelled to economize in every possible way, she looked forward to the period when her children would be able to assist her, and thus her task would be greatly lightened. Increasing, as they hourly did, in beauty and intelligence, and manifesting, in every possible way, their appreciation of her love, and her untiring exertions spent in their behalf, her heart warmed toward them with every breath which they drew, and she would freely have laid down her life to ensure their welfare. But what will not a mother do for the beings of her affection! What will she not sacrifice—what trials and sufferings will she not submit to! Well and touchingly was it remarked by a Venetian lady, with regard to Abraham and Isaac, that “God would never have commanded such a sacrifice of a mother.”

Mrs. La Roche had thus with difficulty, but still in a spirit of great cheerfulness, conducted her little school for four years after the decease of her husband. But, her health now began to fail. She had overtasked her powers; her constitution, which was naturally feeble, gave way. Still, she struggled on in the most heroic manner. “A few years longer,” she flattered herself, “and I may abate my labors. Then my children will be able greatly to assist me, if not wholly to take my place.” She saw them ripening in beauty—and the natural dream of a mother’s heart raised up suitors in abundance. So lovely—so correct—so imbued with the pure principles of religion—so accomplished! The heart of the widow rejoiced in the anticipated triumph of her offspring. Alas! even then the seeds of death were doing their work, stealthily and in silence. A little longer and the body refused to administer to the wishes of the mind. Mrs. La Roche was prostrated on her death-bed, and her children, as already described, were orphans in the fullest and most painful sense of the term.

Amy La Roche, the younger sister, at the period of which we write, was thirteen; Clotilde, the elder, was sixteen years of age. A lovelier pair never mingled their tears together by the cold corpse of a parent. Taught to regard her as the soul and centre of their social world—as the being to whom they must look for counsel and advice next to the Almighty—they clung to each other in their desolation, each striving to soothe the other, and each unconsciously adding to the poignancy of the other’s grief. Clotilde wept wildly, but the sorrow of the younger seemed more heart-felt. The one was all feeling and impulse, and her agony of grief was relieved, in some measure, by the violence of the paroxysms—the fury of her despair. The younger was naturally of a thoughtful and melancholy nature, and her mild, blue eyes seemed to mirror, in their gentle lustre, the very depths of her soul. She was too young, moreover, to have a thought of fondness for another being on the earth beyond her mother. No other passion of her nature had been called even into fancied existence, and thus the poor girl pined day by day until she became thin and pale, and the elder found it necessary to conceal her own sorrow, in order to bring back the spirit of girlhood and joy to the fair features of her dearest Amy.

Throughout the crisis of their bereavement they were visited assiduously and constantly by but one individual. Pierre Martien, or neighbor Pierre, as they called him, was intimate with their father in the more prosperous portion of his life, and had, like him, sought this country as a place of refuge during the perils of the revolution—perils which destroyed his family and left him lone end wretched. He had, nevertheless, accumulated a considerable fortune in the United States, and, at the period of the widow’s decease, was on the eve of returning to France. Touched, however, by the sad condition of the sisters, he delayed his departure, and called day after day in the noble duty of watching over two fair beings, so entirely helpless and unprotected, and of administering every comfort and assistance in his power. This faithful friend was now is his sixtieth year—still, manly and gentlemanly in his appearance, and exhibiting but little of the weakness or infirmity of age. Week after week he postponed the day of his leave-taking, and yet he steadily persisted in his determination to return, at the same time condoling with the orphans, assisting them as delicately as possible, and hinting a fear that his departure would expose them to annoyance and misfortune. Clotilde saw and admitted all this, but what could she do? She still continued to keep up the little school, which her mother had bequeathed to her as an inheritance, but her inexperience and youth unfitted her, in a great measure, to exercise sufficient authority over the pupils, and thus, while she found them constantly diminishing in number, she discovered, with horror, that the health of her young sister was rapidly sinking. The color was fading from her cheeks—the bright light from her eyes. Her existence seemed to have lost its spring and fountain on the decease of Mrs. La Roche, and, although the sweet girl struggled earnestly to assume a degree of cheerfulness and an air of satisfaction, she could not conceal from the penetrating eyes of Clotilde that there was a canker within.

Neighbor Pierre, also, noticed the change and his heart melted within him at this new source of anxiety and distress. He sent for and consulted one of the ablest physicians of the city—for his nature warmed strangely and unconsciously toward the orphans, since he had visited them so frequently—and he was told that a change of air would alone save the life of the fading beauty. He pondered long upon this painful intelligence; at first unwilling to communicate it to the elder sister, for he knew that it would strike like an arrow through her soul. What could be done?—what was his duty under the circumstances? He pressed his hand upon his forehead and mused painfully for hours. A thought darted to his brain. But no—he repelled it as unworthy—as unmanly—as treacherous to the friendship he had felt and professed for the dead father of the sisters. And yet it returned again, and grew stronger and stronger, until he had no power to resist its influence.

Accuse him not harshly, gentle reader—pronounce not against him rashly. He was alone in the world, and they were without friends and protectors. He was compelled by circumstances to revisit France, and yet he felt a voice within him assert that he had a duty to perform to the children of his deceased countryman. How could he best perform that duty? To subject two young, inexperienced and beautiful girls to the snares of the vicious and the reckless—to desert them in the hour of greatest need—to abandon them to the charities of a cold world—or worse, to the accursed arts of the profligate and libertine—the thought was full of anguish. Again he paused. He ascended to his chamber, and there, kneeling in prayer, he sought advice and counsel from the Searcher of all hearts. He rose from his knees refreshed in spirit, and comparatively calm and resolved. The next hour found him at the dwelling of the sisters. The younger was evidently weaker than on the day before, while the countenance of Clotilde wore a still more melancholy aspect. For a long time the visiter hesitated. He looked steadily into the beautiful features of Clotilde, where all was yet life and hope and youthful splendor, only mellowed and spiritualized by the tender anxiety of a sacred love, and his heart again misgave him. But he rallied his courage and drew her aside. He announced to her, in as kindly terms as possible, the opinion of the physician; and, as he saw the big tear start to her eyes at the consciousness of her inability to accompany Amy to a milder climate—softer and sunnier skies—he took her hand, and offered to become her husband. “Thus,” he added, “dear Clotilde, I will obtain a right to protect you. Thus may we immediately sail for France, and, with the blessing of Heaven, a hope may be indulged of the restoration of our lovely Amy.” He alluded to his disparity of years, and his reluctance to venture such a proposition, but he implored her, no matter what her determination, to judge his motives generously. As he lived and had faith in the Divinity, he believed that he was influenced purely, justly and virtuously.

Clotilde covered her face with her hands. She had unbounded confidence in the principles of her father’s friend—for he had ever conducted himself with the most scrupulous delicacy. She saw, too, the position of her sister, and she felt that the life of that sweet and affectionate girl was as dear to her as her own; and yet she knew not what to do or say. One only thought—one only dream interfered with the course she believed to be dictated by duty. The path of her young life, chequered and darkened as it had been, had not been all shadow. A momentary rainbow had flashed its glories above. A youthful form sometimes mingled with her dreams. A voice deeper and sweeter than those of the every-day world sometimes rose to her memory, and whispered to the listening spirit of her soul. She was now nineteen years of age—a full and perfect woman—and how seldom is it in our land that the fair and the beautiful, the enthusiastic and the warm-hearted pass through so many summers without discovering some being in the crowd purer and holier than the rest—some kindred spirit—some sympathetic soul! A look—a word—a pressure of the hand will sometimes give tone to the story of a life.

Clotilde La Roche and Arthur Morville had met when

She was but seventeen, and he twenty-two. But a few months passed, and the ocean divided them. He was the son of a bankrupt merchant, utterly penniless and prospectless, and thus when an opportunity presented of a voyage to China, as the agent of an extensive commercial house, he was compelled by the force of circumstances to embrace it, even at the risk of an absence of five years. Thus they parted. “He never told his love” in words, but the heart must be cold and insensible that requires such formal interpretation. The spirit of Clotilde wandered with and lingered around him. Her name was mingled with his prayers, and her image haunted his sleep—the brightest, sunniest angel of his dreams. And he was not forgotten. She did not strive to forget, and if the effort had been made it would have been a vain one.

Two years had now gone by, and Arthur was yet abroad. Foolish and timid as they were, no correspondence had been agreed upon, and he, unconscious of the interest he had excited, was afraid to write. He was poor—little better than a beggar—when he left his kindred and his home. He had no claim upon one so beautiful and lovely, and the pen was dashed to the earth in despair whenever he ventured a letter.

But the offer of Pierre Martien! It revived the early dream in the bosom of Clotilde fully and vividly. Yet her sister was dying! She saw her fading every hour. The delay of a single week might prove fatal. God of the orphan, advise and counsel her in this her hour of trial!

She sent for the friend of her father and told him all. If he would take her for his wife under these circumstances, she would freely accord her consent. Nay, she believed his motives to be generous and noble, and she honored him therefor.

More touched than ever—seeing the evident sacrifice she was about to make as a tribute to duty and her love for her sister—the old man hesitated. Again he meditated upon the subject, questioned his own heart closely, and endeavored to penetrate his motives.

It was finally agreed that they should immediately sail for France—that the engagement should be announced before their departure—and the marriage should take place immediately after their arrival.

But why prolong the story? The God of the orphan watched over and protected the sweet sisters. The voyage was pleasant beyond their most sanguine expectations. Amy gained health and strength with every favoring breeze, and when they landed at Havre her eyes again sparkled with the fire of youth and joy, and her cheeks glowed with the hues of beauty. Clotilde, too, seemed more lovely than ever, the sea-air had greatly improved her. Her spirits mounted—her soul again rejoiced—and even the apprehension which occasionally crept into her breast, in connection with the coming marriage, gave her less anxiety than she could have believed a few weeks before.

They landed on a bright Spring morning. The arrival of a foreign ship had collected a group around the place of debarkation. Among them were several Americans—they could have been singled out in a world of foreigners. And see! whose form is that pressing forward so eagerly? It is—it is—much changed—but not enough to escape the quick eyes of youth and the mind of love-fraught memory. Yes, Arthur Morville rushes forward—the wanderer from the far East! What a meeting! How joyous—how unexpected! Even the presence of strangers is forgotten. Eyes sparkle—cheeks glow—breasts heave—and hearts respond. The old man looks on, first in surprise, and then with a quiet and benevolent smile mellowing his features, advancing to Clotilde he whispers, “Be not abashed—your joy is my joy—and all will yet be well.”

A few weeks thereafter and Clotilde La Roche became the wife of Arthur Morville. Pierre Martien gave the bride away, at the same time publicly recognizing the young couple and their beautiful Amy as his adopted children!

Heaven, say we, soften the pillow and hallow the dreams of the friend of the fatherless!

ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE.

The accomplished lady to whom the public is indebted for these beautiful productions is familiar to our readers through her many able contributions to this magazine. We are happy that she has appeared at length to claim the proud seat to which she is entitled on the American Parnassus. The rare purity and grace of Mrs. Smith’s mind, the peculiar circumstances which induced her to resort to the pen, and her many personal excellences, have contributed to render her one of the most interesting of our female writers. It appears from the spirited preface to the volume before us, that, like all persons of real merit, she is distinguished by the womanly virtue of modesty. To the good taste and enterprize of Mr. Keese we owe the present collection. His reasons for bringing out the work are suited with great cogency. We congratulate the bards of our country upon the strong hold they have upon the sympathies of one, at least, of the bookselling fraternity. Every one remembers the splendid volumes of American poetry compiled by Mr. Keese, and his delightful Memoir of Lucy Hooper, appended to a selection from her poetical writings, which gained for him the warm approbation of all admirers of early genius. In the present instance he has conferred no slight favor upon the lovers of poetry. In publishing a complete and revised edition of “The Sinless Child,” he has supplied a demand long felt and expressed. The additional poems appear to us to be very judiciously chosen. It is long since we have met with any thing in this department of literature so worthy of studious regard. The hopefulness and purity of childhood, the high ministry of Nature to the soul, the exalting agency of ideal love, and the spiritual philosophy of human life, are illustrated in the “Sinless Child” by exquisite imagery and flowing numbers. No one can read and feel it without having his faith in the beautiful and holy quickened and renewed. It abounds in ennobling truth. It is addressed to the most elevated perceptions, and like a strain of heavenly music touchingly reminds us of our nature’s origin, wants, powers, and destiny. “The Acorn” is a charming effort of fancy. The germ is traced through all the vicissitudes of its development, until it towers a giant of the forest. The sapling escapes the schoolboy’s knife and the storm’s devastation, to lodge the eagle on its topmost bough, and to quiver, at last, the mast of a noble vessel, on many seas. Sweetly, with a life-like ingenuity, and a cordial emphasis, does the poetess follow the acorn from its cradle of mould to its ocean-grave. With a singular truth to nature, and many a touch of graphic beauty, is its history unfolded; and, of its kind, we know of no poem more successful. The remainder of the volume consists of sonnets, which breathe lofty sentiments and noble language. We have felt no disposition to cavil at any literary defects, so much have we been charmed by the spirit and beauty of these poems. We commend them to our readers, as worthy not only of perusal, but of that earnest and familiar study which the fruits of genius should ever receive from grateful and appreciating minds.

THE SISTERS

Illustrated editions are now all the vogue. Great improvement has of late days been made in the art of wood-engraving, which is no longer degraded to rough, coarse black and white caricatures, but elevated to rivalry with steel and copper, by the efforts of Raffet, Gigoux, Hebert and others, employed on the designs of Horace Vernet, Grandville, and their compeers, in France; of Branston and Harvey, in London; and of Adams, in New York, scarcely if any thing inferior to the Europeans, when working upon Chapman’s blocks. The work before us—the first and second numbers—is of this order, and the literary portion of it is very well and agreeably executed, pithy and well compiled, and, at the same time, clothed in a flowing and lively style, well adapted to the tastes and intelligence of young and general renders. It lays, indeed, no great claim to profoundness or depth of research, though, in a few instances, we perceive, the author has shown a laudable ambition to appear “original.” The vogue romances of the Scandinavians are not to be regarded as history, yet he chooses to have an much faith in the Copenhagen antiquaries as in the Spanish chroniclers. As we have said, however, the history is very well executed in the main, and we would that we could say as much for the illustrative department. The object of these illustrations is doubtless—or at least should be—not to catch the eye, merely, and please the fancy of the reader, but to convey to the imagination clear and more distinct pictures of men, costumes, manners and things, than any words, however graphic, can portray. This can be done only by skill, thorough acquaintance with the subject, deep study, and careful truth in the illustrator. To falsify the truth of history in pointing is no less a crime, if wilful, no less a proof of total incapacity, if accidental, in an artist, than the same defects would be in a writer; and, to say honest truth, there is hardly one illustration of the first numbers in the costumes of which historical truth is not palpably and ludicrously violated. First, we have the Norsemen—the wild warriors of Scandinavia—whose real armature consisted in casques, with visors, covering the whole head, shirts made of rings, not linked into each other, but screwed edgewise upon leathern jerkins, with sleeves and hose and gauntlets, all to match; whose weapons were two-handed broadswords four feet long, bills or gisarmes, and mighty battle-axes; dressed point device—save the mark!—as Roman warriors! Again, we have Columbus discovering the land of America from a ship’s stern, thirty feet, at least measure, out of the water!—the Santissimo Trinidad! more likely than the Nina or Pinta, half-decked barques of ninety and a hundred twenty tons, or thereabout. Next we find the French Huguenots and the Spanish Catholics, the early colonists of Florida, dressed in the full costume of no-collared coats with mighty cuffs, immense jack-boots, plumed hats and periwigs, of George the First or Queen Anne! And last we see—oh, most absurd of anti-climaxes!—Hernando Soto and his chivalric host, who rode armed cap-a-pie in Milan steel,

from Florida to Natchez—who made the hammocks and the everglades ring to the Norman kettle-drum and trumpet, and introduced the plumes and burgonets, blazoned shields and gonfalons, of European knighthood, in that most desperate, most romantic of forays, to the solitudes of the American forest—we see Hernando Soto, dressed and armed just as might have been King William the Third when he crossed the Boyne, or fought at Steenkirke.

Carelessness such as this is culpable—unpardonable. And yet our daily press lauds these illustrations as equal to the best English and French pictorial histories. Oh, most unwise and improvident patriotism! It is not talent, nor skill in designing only, nor force of shadowing, nor power of grouping, that will constitute the historical painter. Research is necessary, labor, attention, study. Without these, all the rest is waste of time—useless nay, harmful, and destructive to the rising hopes of the fine arts in America.

On rending the title page of this very handsome volume, we suspected that some ambitions young American had added to “the national stock of bad poetry” an imitation of the ponderous Epic of Barlow; but the preface imparts the gratifying information that Mr. Archibald Tucker Ritchie is an Englishman. He tells us that parts of the “poem” were written twenty years ago. He should have grown too merciful, in so long a time, to inflict such poor fustian on the book-buying world. The only idea in the work which Mr. Ritchie can call his own, is, that the world for a long period revolved around the unillumined sun, and not upon its own axis! a theory which he, in bad verse, maintains to be the only one by which the discoveries of geologists can be reconciled with the sacred history!

No novel has appeared in many years which we can more earnestly and cheerfully commend than this. It is a story of every-day life, simple and natural in its incidents and reflections, yet in a remarkable degree interesting. Its tone is pure and healthful; it teaches the superiority of moral and intellectual pleasures, and the dignity and happiness of a serene and virtuous life. The edition of Messrs. Campbell & Co. is very neatly printed, and the work is to be followed by “The House,” “The President’s Daughters,” and “Nina,” by the same authoress, as soon as the English versions of them, by Mary Howitt, reach this country.

This is a story of great ability and interest, by the cleverest religious writer of her sex now living. The foundation of the narrative is the conversion of a Hebrew to the Christian religion. It abounds with incidents of a most touching and striking character.

A book for the mob of gentlemen whose patriotism consists in hatred of every thing which does not pertain to their own country and their own faction. It has much of the easy and enthusiastic impudence of the French partisan about it. Yet Monsieur Regnault tells a good deal of truth of the British government, ever guided by a selfish and unscrupulous policy, and more intent on sustaining a powerful aristocracy than on preserving the liberties or advancing the interests of the masses.

View From West Point—An Engraving by Diek.—West Point—the seat of the United States Military Academy—is one of the most delightful places of resort on the Hudson, or was so when Cozzens was “mine host,” a dozen years ago. It is classic ground, too, to the American—famous in our history for treasons, stratagems, and heroic deeds. It has for a long time been much frequented by the New Yorkers, in the summer months, when the hot sun made an oven of the city, and its shady nooks and pleasant terraces—its monuments and “venerable” ruins—and all the magnificent scenery around—of which some idea may be formed from the accompanying engraving—are often, in this period, thronged with pedestrians, reading inscriptions, gazing upon the fleets of sloops and steamers passing up and down the river, or, perhaps, admiring the evolutions of the cadets of the Academy. We cut the following spirited lines—new doubtless to our readers—from an old newspaper—the New York American for 1828—for which they were written by our popular contributor, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Esq., when he was “in his teens.” We know of few things better in their way than these.

RHYMES ON WEST POINT.

Literary Intelligence.—Since the publication of our last number, Mr. Cooper has given to the press a new border story entitled “The Hutted Knoll,” which will probably be published by Lea & Blanchard in August or September. The scene, we believe, is in western New York, during the revolution. The work will in some respects resemble the author’s celebrated novel, “The Pioneers,” in its action and characters.

Dr. Harris, U. S. N., author of “The Life and Services of Commodore Bainbridge,” is preparing a Memoir of the late Commodore Hull. We presume it will soon be ready for the press. Dr. Harris was one of the “brave old commodore’s” most intimate personal friends, and is doubtless in possession of all the necessary materiel for the work, which cannot fail to be one of much interest and value.

Several new volumes of poems are announced, of which the most important will be “Lays of Home, and other Poems,” by John Greenleaf Whittier, and “Mount Auburn, and other Poems,” by Isaac C. McLellan, Jr., both to be published by W. D. Ticknor, of Boston; who has likewise in press a new and much enlarged edition of Motherwell’s Poems, and a Collection of Harry Cornwall’s English Songs and other short Poems.

Dr. Stevens, Secretary of the Historical Society of Georgia, has just completed an elaborate history of that state, which will appear during the summer. Our knowledge of the author leads us to expect a very judicious and able work in this history, which has engaged his attention fur several years.

Among the “serials” now in course of publication, we notice “The Collected Writings of Cornelius Mathews,” to be completed in ten monthly parts, making one large and closely printed octavo volume. It will embrace “The Motley Book,” “The Career of Puffer Hopkins,” “The Politicians, a comedy,” “Behemoth,” etc.

VIEW FROM WEST POINT.

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. 6 June 1843 edited by George Rex Graham]