Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 6, June 1850
Date: 2018-08-23T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature; Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 6, June 1850

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Title: Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 6, June 1850

Author: Various

Editor: George R. Graham

Release date: August 23, 2018 [eBook #57754]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE, VOL. XXXVI, NO. 6, JUNE 1850 ***

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVI.      June, 1850.      No. 6.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Dante’s Divina Commedia |
Clifdon |
The Dawn of the Hundred Days |
The First Love of Ada Somers |
Traveling a Touchstone |
The Poet Cowper |
The Lady of the Rock |
Shakspeare. Anaylysis of Romeo and Juliet |
Bass and Bass Fishing |
The Fine Arts |
Early English Poets. Poems of Thomas Carew |
Review of New Books |
Editor’s Table |

Poetry and Music

The Gold-Seeker |
Bird-Notes |
Symbols |
Sonnet. To Shirley |
Narcissos |
To Arcturus |
Mary |
Evening |
The Queen of the Woods |
Scene on the Ohio |
The Jolly Ride |
Ballads of the Campaign in Mexico. No. V. |
Jacob’s Ladder |
The Smoker |
The Maiden’s Complaint Against Love |
The Melodies of Many Lands |

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVI.     PHILADELPHIA, June, 1850.     No. 6.

DANTE’S DIVINA COMMEDIA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHELLING.

———

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

———

[In the following elaborate specimen of literary criticism there are many passages which will be very obscure, not to say unintelligible, to those who are not familiar with the philosophic phraseology of the Germans. The student of Dante, however, will find in it many hints and suggestions worthy his consideration. It cannot be otherwise than interesting to see two such minds as those of Schelling and Dante brought into contact; and to hear what the German philosopher has to say of the Italian poet.]

In the sanctuary where Religion

“is married to immortal Verse,”

stands Dante as high-priest, and consecrates all modern Art for its vocation. Not as a solitary poem, but representing the whole class of the New Poetry, and itself a separate class, stands the “Divine Comedy,” so entirely unique, that any theory drawn from peculiar forms is quite inadequate to it;—a world by itself, it demands its own peculiar theory. The predicate of Divine was given it by its author, because it treats of theology and things divine; Comedy he called it, after the simplest notion of this and its opposite kind,—on account of its fearful beginning and its happy ending, and because the mixed nature of the poem, whose material is now lofty and now lowly, rendered a mixed kind of style necessary.

One readily perceives, however, that according to the common notion it cannot be called Dramatic, because it represents no circumscribed action. So far as Dante himself may be looked upon as the hero, who serves only as a thread for the measureless series of visions and pictures, and remains rather passive than active,—the poem seems to approach nearer to a Romance; yet this definition does not completely exhaust it; nor can we call it Epic, in the usual acceptation of the word, since there is no regular sequence in the events represented. To look upon it as a Didactic poem is likewise impossible, because it is written in a far less restricted form and aim, than those of teaching. It belongs therefore to none of these classes in particular, nor is it merely a compound of them; but an entirely unique, and as it were organic mixture of all their elements, not to be reproduced by any arbitrary rules of art,—an absolute individuality, comparable with itself alone and with naught else.

The material of the poem, is, in general terms, the express identity of the Poet’s age;—the interpenetration of the events thereof with the ideas of Religion, Science and Poetry in the loftiest genius of that century. Our intention is not to consider it in its immediate reference to its age; but rather in its universal application and as the archetype of all modern Poetry.

The necessary law of this poetry, down to the still indefinitely distant point where the great Epic of modern times, which hitherto has announced itself only rhapsodically and in broken glimpses, shall present itself as a perfect whole, is this:—that the individual gives shape and unity to that portion of the world which is revealed to him, and out of the materials of his time, its History and its Science, creates his own Mythology. For as the ancient world is, in general, the world of classes, so the modern is that of Individuals. In the former the Universal is in truth the particular, the race acts as an individual; in the latter, the Individual is the point of departure, and becomes the Universal. For this reason, in the former all things are permanent and imperishable: Number likewise is of no account, since the Universal idea coincides with that of the Individual;—in the latter, constant mutation is the fixed law; no narrow circle limits its ends, but one which through Individuality widens itself to infinitude. And since Universality belongs to the essence of Poetry, it is a necessary condition that the Individual through the highest peculiarity should again become universal, and by his complete speciality become again absolute. Thus through the perfect individuality and uniqueness of his Poem, Dante is the Creator of modern art, which without this arbitrary necessity, and necessary arbitrariness, cannot be imagined.

From the very beginning of Greek Poetry, we see it clearly separated from Science and Philosophy, as in Homer, and this process of separation continued until the Poets and the Philosophers became the antipodes of each other. They in vain by allegorical interpretations of the Homeric Poems sought artificially to create a harmony between the two. In modern times Science has preceded Poetry and Mythology, which cannot be Mythology, without being universal and drawing into its circle all the elements of the then existing culture, Science, Religion and even Art, and joining in a perfect unity the material not only of the present but of the past. Into this struggle, (since Art demands something definite and limited, while the spirit of the world rushes towards the unlimited, and with ceaseless power sweeps down all barriers,) must the Individual enter, but with absolute freedom, seek to rescue permanent shapes from the fluctuations of time, and within arbitrarily assumed forms to give to the structure of his poem, by its absolute peculiarity, internal necessity and external universality.

This Dante has done. He had before him, as material, the history of the present as well as of the Past. He could not elaborate this into a pure Epos, partly on account of its nature, partly because, in doing this, he would have excluded other elements of the culture of his time. To its completeness belonged also the Astronomy, the Theology and Philosophy of the time. To these he could not give expression in a Didactic poem, for by so doing he would again have limited himself. Consequently, in order to make his Poem universal, he was obliged to make it historical. An invention, entirely uncontrolled, and proceeding from his own individuality, was necessary, to unite these materials and form them into an organic whole. To represent the ideas of Philosophy and Theology in symbols was impossible, for there then existed no symbolic Mythology. He could quite as little make his Poem purely allegorical, for then again it could not be historical. It was necessary therefore to make it an entirely unique mixture of Allegory and History. In the emblematic poetry of the ancients no clue of this kind was possible. The Individual only could lay hold of it, and only an uncontrolled invention follow it.

The poem of Dante is not allegorical in the sense that its figures only signified something else, without having any separate existence independent of the thing signified. On the other hand, none of them is independent of the thing signified in such a way as to be at once the Idea itself and more than an allegory of it. There is therefore in his Poem an entirely unique mean between Allegory and symbolic-objective Form. There is no doubt, and the Poet has himself elsewhere declared it, that Beatrice, for example, is an Allegory, namely, of Theology. So her companions; so many other characters. But at the same time they count for themselves, and appear on the scene as historic personages, without on that account being symbols.

In this respect Dante is archetypal, since he has proclaimed what the modern poet has to do, in order to embody into a poetic whole, the entire history and culture of his age—the only mythological material which lies before him. He must from absolute arbitrariness join together the allegorical and historical: he must be allegorical, (and he is so, too, against his will,) because he cannot be symbolical; and he must be historical because he wishes to be poetical. In this respect his invention is always peculiar, a world by itself, and altogether characteristic.

The only German poem of universal plan, unites together in a similar manner the outermost extremes in the aspirations of the times, by a very peculiar invention of a subordinate mythology, in the character of Faust: although in the Aristophanic meaning of the word it may far better be called a Comedy, and is another and more poetic sense Divine, than the Poem of Dante.

The energy with which the individual embodies the singular mixture of the materials which lie before him in his age and his life determines the measure in which he possesses mythological power. Dante’s personages possess a kind of eternity from the position in which he places them, and which is eternal: but not only the actual which he draws from his own time, as the story of Ugolino and the like, but also what is pure invention, as the death of Ulysses and his companions, has in the connection of his poem a real mythological truth.

It would be of but subordinate interest to represent by itself, the Philosophy, Physics and Astronomy of Dante, since his true peculiarity lies only in his manner of fusing them with his poetry. The Ptolemaic system, which to a certain degree is the foundation of his poetic structure, has already in itself a mythological coloring. If however his philosophy is to be characterized in general as Aristotelian, we must not understand by this the pure Peripatetic philosophy, but a peculiar union of the same with the ideas of the Platonic, then entertained, as may be proved by many passages of his poem.

We will not dwell upon the power and solidity of separate passages, the simplicity and endless naiveté of separate pictures, in which he expresses his philosophical views, as the well known description of the soul which comes from the hand of God as a little girl “weeping and laughing in its childish sport,” a guileless soul, which knows nothing, save that, moved by its joyful Creator, “willingly it turns to that which gives it pleasure:”—we speak only of the general symbolic form of the whole, in whose absoluteness, more than in any thing else, the universal value and immortality of this Poem is recognized.

If the union of Philosophy and Poetry even in their most subordinate synthesis is understood as making a didactic poem, it becomes necessary, since the poem must be without any external end and aim, that the intention (of instructing) should lose itself in it and be changed into an absoluteness (in eine Absolutheit verwandelt), so that the poem may seem to exist for its own sake. And this is only conceivable, when Science (considered as a picture of the Universe, and in perfect harmony therewith, as the most original and beautiful Poetry) is in itself already poetical. Dante’s Poem is a much higher interpenetration of Science and Poetry, and so much the more must its form, even in its freer self-existence, be adapted to the universal type of the world’s aspect (Weltanschauung).

The division of the Universe and the arrangement of the materials according to the three kingdoms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, independently of the peculiar meaning of these ideas in Christian theology, are also a general symbolic form, so that one does not see why under the same form every remarkable age should not have its own Divine Comedy. As in the Modern Drama the form of five acts is assumed as the usual one, because every event may be regarded in its Beginning, its Progress, its Culmination, its Dénouement, and its final Consummation, so this Trichotomy, or threefold division of Dante in the higher prophetic poetry, which is to be the expression of a whole age, is conceivable as a general form, which in its filling-up may be infinitely varied, as by the power of original invention it can always be quickened into new life. Not alone however as an external form, but as an emblematical expression of the internal type of all Science and Poetry is that form eternal and capable of embracing in itself the three great objects of Science and culture,—Nature, History and Art. Nature, as the birth of all things, is the eternal Night; and as that unity through which these are in themselves, it is the aphelion of the universe, the point of farthest removal from God, the true centre. Life and History, whose nature is gradual progress, are only a process of clarification, a transition to an absolute condition. This can nowhere be found save in Art, which anticipates eternity, is the Paradise of life, and is truly in the centre.

Dante’s Poem, therefore, viewed from all sides, is not an isolated work of a particular age, a particular stage of culture; but it is archetypal, by the universal interest which it unites with the most absolute Individuality,—by its universality, in virtue of which it excludes no side of life and culture,—and finally by its form, which is not a peculiar type, but the type of the theory of the Universe, in general.

The peculiar internal arrangement of the Poem certainly cannot possess this universal interest, since it is formed upon the ideas of the time, and the peculiar views of the poet. On the other hand, as is to be expected from a work so artistic and full of purpose, the general inner type is again externally imaged forth, through the form, color, sound of the three great Divisions of the Poem.

From the extraordinary nature of his material, Dante needed for the form of his creations in detail, some kind of credentials which only the Science of his time could give, and which for him are, so to speak, the Mythology and the general basis, which supports the daring edifice of his inventions. But even in the details he remains trite to his design of being allegorical, without ceasing to be historical and poetical. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise are, as it were, only his system of Theology in its concrete and architectural development. The proportion, number and relations which he observes in their internal structure were prescribed by this science, and herein he renounced intentionally the freedom of invention, in order to give, by means of form, necessity and limitation to his poem, which in its materials was unlimited. The universal sanctity and significancy of numbers is another external form upon which his poetry rests. So in general the entire logical and syllogistic lore of that age, is for him only form, which must be granted to him, in order to attain to that region in which his poetry moves.

And yet in this adherence to religious and philosophical notions, as the most universally interesting thing which his age offered, Dante never seeks an ordinary kind of poetic probability; but rather renounces all intention of flattering the baser senses. His first entrance into Hell takes place, as it should take place, without any unpoetical attempt to assign a motive for it or to make it intelligible, in a condition like that of a Vision, without however any intention of making it appear such. His being drawn up by Beatrice’s eyes, through which the divine power is communicated to him, he expresses in a single line: what is wonderful in his own adventures he immediately changes to a likeness of the mysteries of religion, and gives it credibility by a yet higher mystery, as when he makes his entrance into the moon, which he compares to that of light into the unbroken surface of water, an image of God’s incarnation.

To show the perfection of art, and the depth of purpose which was carried even into the minor details of the inner structure of the three worlds, would be a science in itself. This was recognized shortly after the poet’s death by his nation, in their appointing a distinct Lectureship upon Dante, which was first filled by Boccaccio.

But not only do the several incidents in each of the three parts of the Poem allow the universal character of the first form to shine through them, but the law thereof expresses itself yet more definitely in the inner and spiritual rhythm, by which they are contradistinguished from each other. The Inferno, as it is the most fearful in its objects, is likewise the strongest in expression, the severest in diction, and in its very words dark and awful. In one portion of the Purgatorio deep silence reigns, for the lamentations of the lower world grow mute: upon its summits, the forecourts of Heaven, all becomes Color: the Paradiso is the true music of the spheres.

The variety and difference of the punishments in the Inferno are conceived with almost unexampled invention. Between the crime and the punishment there is never any other than a poetic relation. Dante’s spirit is not daunted by what is terrible; nay, he goes to its extreme limits. But it could be shown in every case, that he never ceases to be sublime and in consequence truly beautiful. For that which men, who are not capable of comprehending the whole, have sometimes pointed out as low, is not so in their sense of the term, but is a necessary element of the mixed nature of the Poem, on account of which Dante himself called it a Comedy. The hatred of evil, the scorn of a godlike spirit, which are expressed in Dante’s fearful composition, are not the inheritance of common souls. It is indeed very doubtful still, though quite generally believed, whether his banishment from Florence, after he had previously dedicated his Poetry to Love, first spurred on his spirit, naturally inclined to whatever was earnest and extraordinary, to the highest Invention, in which he breathed forth the whole of his life, of the destiny of his heart and of his country, together with his indignation thereat. But the vengeance which he takes in the Inferno, he takes in the name of the Day of Judgment, as the elected Judge with prophetic power, not from personal hate, but with a pious soul roused by the abominations of the times, and a love of his native land long dead in others, as he has himself represented in a passage in the Paradiso where he says

“If e’er it happen that the Poem sacred

To which both Earth and Heaven have lent their hand,

Till it hath made me meagre many a year,

Conquer the cruelty that shuts me out

Of the fair sheep-fold, where a lamb I slumbered,

An enemy to the wolves that war upon it,

With other voice forthwith, with other fleece

The Poet shall return, and at the font

Baptismal, shall he take the crown of laurel.”

He tempers the horror of the torments of the damned, by his own feeling for them, which at the end of so much suffering so overwhelms him that he is ready to weep, and Virgil says to him “Wherefore then art thou troubled?”

It has already been remarked that the greater part of the punishments of the Inferno are symbolical of the crimes for which they are inflicted, but many of them are so in a far more general relation. Of this kind is, in particular, the representation of a metamorphosis, in which two natures are mutually interchanged and their substance transmuted. No metamorphosis of Antiquity can compare with this for invention, and if a naturalist or a didactic poet were able to sketch with such power, emblems of the eternal metamorphoses of nature, he might congratulate himself upon it.

As we have already remarked, the Inferno is not only distinguished from the other parts by the external form of its representation, but also by the circumstance that it is peculiarly the realm of forms and consequently the plastic part of the Poem. The Purgatorio must be recognized as the picturesque part. Not only are the penances here imposed upon sinners at times pictorially treated even to brightness of coloring; but the journey up the holy mountain of Purgatory presents in detail a rapid succession of shifting landscapes, scenes and manifold play of light; until upon its outermost boundary, when the Poet has reached the waters of Lethe, the highest pomp of Painting and Color displays itself;—in the picturing of the divine primeval forest of this region, of the celestial clearness of the water, overcast with its eternal shadow, of the maiden whom he meets upon its banks and the descent of Beatrice in a cloud of flowers, beneath a white veil, crowned with olive, wrapped in a green mantle, and “vested in colors of the living flame.”

The Poet has urged his way to light through the very heart of the earth: in the darkness of the lower world forms alone could be distinguished: in Purgatory light is kindled, but still in connection with earthly matter and becomes color. In Paradise there remains nothing but the pure music of the light; reflection ceases, and the Poet rises gradually to behold the colorless pure essence of Deity itself.

The astronomical system which the age of the poet invested with a mythological value; the nature of the stars and of the measure of their motion, are the ground upon which his inventions, in this part of the poem, rest. And if he in this sphere of the unconditioned, still suffers degrees and differences to exist, he again removes them by the glorious word which he puts into the mouth of one of the sister-souls whom he meets in the moon, that “every Where in heaven is Paradise.”

The plan of the Poem renders it natural that on the very ascent through Paradise the loftiest speculations of Theology should be discussed. His deep reverence for this science is symbolized by his love of Beatrice. In proportion as the field of vision enlarges itself into the purely Universal, it is necessary that Poetry should become Music, form vanish, and that, in this point of view, the Inferno should appear the most poetic part of the work. But in this work it is absolutely impossible to take things separately; and the peculiar excellence of each separate part is authenticated and recognized only through its harmony with the whole. If the relation of the three parts to the whole is perceived, we shall necessarily recognize the Paradiso as the purely musical and lyrical portion, even in the design of the poet, who expresses this in the external form, by the frequent use of the Latin words of Church Hymns.

The marvelous grandeur of the Poem, which gleams forth in the mingling of all the elements of poetry and art, reaches in this way a perfect manifestation. This divine work is not plastic, not picturesque, not musical, but all of these at once and in accordant harmony. It is not dramatic, not epic, not lyric, but a peculiar, unique, and unexampled mingling of all these.

I think I have shown, at the same time, that it is prophetic, and typical of all the Modern Poetry. It embraces all its characteristics, and springs out of the intricately mingled materials of the same, as the first growth, stretching itself above the earth and toward the heavens—the first fruit of transfiguration. Those who would become acquainted with the poetry of modern times, not superficially, but at its fountain head, may train themselves by this great and mighty spirit, in order to know by what means the whole of the modern time may be embraced in its entireness, and that it is not held together by a loosely woven band. They who have no vocation for this, can apply to themselves the words at the beginning of the first part:

“Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’ entrate.”

THE GOLD-SEEKER.

———

BY GRACE GREENWOOD.

———

’Twas upon a southern desert, and beneath a burning sky,

That a pilgrim to the gold-clime sunk, o’erwearied, down to die!

He was young, and fair, and slender, but he bore a gallant heart —

Through the march so long and toilsome he had bravely held his part.

His companions round him gathered, with kind word and pitying look,

As in fever-thirst he panted, like “the hart for the water brook;”

While their last cool drops outpouring on his brow and parched lips,

Sorrowed they to mark his glances growing dim with death’s eclipse.

Turning then, and onward passing, left they there the dying man,

For a weary way to westward still the promised river ran.

One there was, a comrade faithful, who the longest lingered there,

While he wrung his hand in parting, bidding him not yet despair;

For they would return at morning, from the river banks, he said —

And a silken scarf unfolding, laid it o’er the sufferer’s head —

Then full often backward glancing, took the weary march again,

Onward pressing toward the waters, gleaming far across the plain.

Silent lies the one forsaken, in this hour of pain and fear,

While their farewells and their footsteps die upon his failing ear;

With the withered turf his death-couch, ’neath the burning heat of day,

All unhearing and unheeding, for his soul is far away!

In the dear home of his childhood, in a pleasant northern land,

He beholds about him smiling the familiar household band;

Sees, perchance, his father coming homeward, through the twilight gray —

Listens to his merry brothers, laughing in their childish play —

Feels the fond arms of his mother, as of old, about him thrown,

And the fair cheek of his sister pressing soft against his own!

Or he strays amid the moonlight, in a cool and shadowy grove,

Looking down with earnest glances into eyes that look back love!

All beloved tones are calling sweetly through his heart again,

And its dying pulse is quickened by the phantoms of his brain!

And belovéd names he murmurs, while his bosom heaves and swells,

For in dreams again he liveth through his partings and farewells!

Slowly sinks the sun—night’s shadows round the lonely pilgrim spread —

While the rising night-winds gently lift the light scarf from his head,

And the soft and pitying moonbeams glance upon his forehead fair,

And the dews of night descending damp the dark locks of his hair;

Cool upon his brow they’re falling—but its fever-throbs are o’er —

And his parched lips they moisten, but those lips shall thirst no more!

His companions come at morning—come to look on his dead face,

Come to lay him to his grave-rest, in that dreary desert place;

Where the tropic sun glares fiercely on the wide, unsheltered plain,

And where pour, from darkest heavens, rushing floods of winter rain!

Where shall come the wild-bird’s screaming, and the whirlwind’s sounding sweep,

And the tramp of herded bisons shall go thundering o’er his sleep.

There are piteous sounds of mourning in a far off northern home,

Where o’er childhood’s kindling dawn-light sudden clouds of darkness come —

There are heard a father’s groanings, and a mother’s broken sighs —

There a voiceless sorrow troubleth the clear deeps of maiden eyes.

In their fearful dreams, at midnight, they behold him left to die,

With the hard, hot ground beneath him, and above a brazen sky —

In his fainting, in his thirsting, in his pain and wild despair,

Vainly calling on his dear ones, through the heavy desert-air!

Oh, the bitter self-reproaches mingled in the cup they drain!

Oh, their poor hearts, pierced and tortured by a sharp, remorseful pain —

That they sent their best and dearest from his home-love’s sheltering fold,

In the madness of adventure, on that pilgrimage of gold.

CLIFDON.

———

BY ANNE DRINKER.

———

CHAPTER I.

“Father! my father! in mercy!”

“Curse you!”

“My God!”

“Ay, curse you. For have you not turned to poison the life whose blessing you were? Have you not dragged down my pride to the depths of shame? Have you not made your father’s name a by-word for the lips of the idle? Then curse you, Mabel Clifdon.”

And Philip Mordaunt paused, exhausted by his own violence; paused, with lips trembling, with the hot blood mounting even to the white hairs brushed from his massive forehead, with his strong form shattered as a reed by the tempest of passion.

“Has not my agony washed out the blot of my transgression? Do I not grovel at your feet, not for the aid I dare not hope, but for the pardon God gives the vilest? Have I not suffered till my life has been to me a torture and a curse, and a long remorse? Is it not enough, my father?”

“May your lips wither when you speak the word, ‘Father.’ Out upon you!”

“Merciful God!”

“Away! away! Out of the home you have forsaken! Away from the threshold you pollute! May the memory of the mother murdered by your ingratitude, of the childless and wifeless old man whose love you have turned to hate, ever cling around your heart; ever poison, like a million of curses, the well-spring of your life! away!”

But she lay there, buried in the long folds of her hair, the raven masses that he had so often smoothed and played with, lay there like a thing without sense or motion, save for the prolonged and bitter sobs that burst forth at intervals, as though the very heart was cleft asunder and breathing out its life.

And before her stood the stern old man, with his arms crossed upon his broad chest, his pale lip compressed, and rigid as though cast in iron, and his eye turned immovably on that prostrate form.

Around him were the evidences of his wealth. The marble fountain that tossed its white spray, and rang forth its silver peel amid the rare and tropical plants, whose perfume stole through the open blinds of the conservatory; the rich drapery of the massive windows; the crimson of the gilded and carved coaches; the deep and glowing dyes of the thick carpets; the soft light of the crystal lamp that swung to and fro from the frescoed ceiling, and the only child of the rich man crouched amid the luxuries that had once been hers, in her mean and faded garb, dusty and toil-worn, unmantled, save for the dark glory of those redundant tresses.

Philip Mordaunt gazed, and for a moment his brow relaxed, and his voice softened as he spoke again,

“Mabel.”

Eagerly she looked up; eagerly upon his stern care-worn face those wild eyes turned, with a half hopeful, half doubting expression, that might have softened a harder heart; but his was steeled against her.

“When you left my home and heart for a villain, I cursed you, Mabel Clifdon. But I will unsay my curse; I will drag you from the shame into which you have fallen. See, my arms are opened to receive you.”

“But Clifdon,” she murmured gaspingly, still crouching to the earth.

“Perdition seize him!”

She shuddered but spoke not.

“See,” murmured the old man, raising her slight form from the ground and speaking kindly, but with a strange gleam in his eye, that mocked the softness of his tones, “See how I woo you back again. I press you to my heart; I smooth back these bright waves that I may kiss your cheek and forehead as I did of old. Come back to the lone old man, who is dying in the midst of his luxury, and all for lack of one dear heart to lean upon. Sweet Mabel! darling! my own, my only child! hark how your mother from her grave implores you. Return, forsake the villain who has wrought us all this anguish.”

“Ah! no! no!”

“Then perish!” he said fiercely, dashing her violently to the earth, “Go perish, fool, with all that you would cling to!”

Again she lay prostrate and half insensible, but with her breath coming in short quick gasps, and the large tears working their way slowly and painfully from beneath the broad white lids that closed above them.

For some minutes Mordaunt paced the room with rapid and impatient steps; now, with a glance turned upon that shaken form, now, lost in thought. Suddenly he paused, and that same cruel smile played within his cold blue eye, though the lines about his mouth softened and his voice was calm.

“You refuse to give me the surest evidence of your repentance,” he said. “Prayers, tears, promises—empty air! I sicken of them. Yet, another proof of your truth remains. You have a child, a son—,” he paused.

With a low cry she sprung to her feet, and stood gazing at him, with lips slightly parted, and head bent forward in silent eagerness.

“I will rescue him from yon den of vice and pollution. I will take him to my bosom as I would have taken the mother who bore him. But that mother he must never know. Swear that his name shall never pass your lips; swear that he shall be to you as the child of a stranger; that your eyes shall never rest again upon his face. Swear this, and even he, even the fruit of your transgression shall be forgiven.” He paused, and bent his gaze upon her, as the torturer may look upon the victim whose agonies his malice would prolong.

But she sprung to his feet, and, kneeling there, pressed her eager and passionate kisses rapidly upon his garment, his hands, nay, even upon the hem of his furred and silken robe.

“Said I in my heart that you were cruel? Take him, my beautiful, my bright boy! Take him now in his purity! Wo! that guilt should reach him even on his mother’s bosom! Take him, and I will bless you though you trample me to the earth! I will pray for you as never lip prayed, though your every word be a scorning and a curse. Speak those dear words again! Say, ere my brain fails, that they deceived me not.”

He stood looking down upon her with a surprised and troubled expression.

“Do you yield him so readily?”

“Ay, and thank Heaven that I may.”

“Remember! never to reclaim him. Never to hear him call you mother; never to look upon his baby face or to feel the clinging of his arms, and the pressure of his lips upon yours.”

“In mercy—in mercy—ah! spare me!”

He was touched, even he, the cruel and unforgiving, by the helpless agony of that clinging form, those faint and gasping words, but he was silent, and an expression of doubt and irresolution crossed his face.

His offer, cold and cruel as it was, had been made in scorn, and he was unprepared for acceptance. At last he spoke.

“Send the boy to me,” he said, pointing at the same time to the door. “Send him, but look that you cross no more his path or mine. Go!” and as he motioned her imperiously away, the suppliant arose and gathering up again her long tresses, and shrouding her face beneath her hood, departed, with the red spot burning on her cheek, and the smile of the martyred within her eye and upon her lip.

“It is Mrs. Clifdon, pretty Mrs. Clifdon,” said one of a group of gentlemen gathered near, as she passed down the marble steps and left forever the door now closed upon her.

“What takes her to Mordaunt’s?” inquired another, staring after her with a rude curiosity, that quickened her steps and made her heart beat with apprehension.

“Don’t you remember? It is an old story. The disinherited child of Philip Mordaunt, who ran off with a circus-rider some four or five years ago. Clifdon, you know, handsome Ned Clifdon.”

“And has never been forgiven?”

“By yon piece of breathing marble? Never. And she was but a giddy spoiled child, too, at the time; only sixteen, more to be pitied than blamed, poor thing.”

On she hurried, with faltering steps; avoiding the bright and crowded thoroughfares, to seek the more gloomy and deserted streets; thus, until she paused before a large and gayly ornamented building and opening a side-door, entered, and closed it behind her. Passing up the dark and winding stair-case with a hasty tread, she paused, breathless, before a small room, and through its half open door stood for a few minutes gazing silently.

It was a strange scene that she looked upon. The apartment, with its dusky walls and discolored floor, the rude form made to serve the purpose of a chair, the rough table, upon which flared the dim and misshapen lamp—all seemed to speak the abode of neglect and poverty. But tossed upon the floor, the table, and upon the form beside the cracked mirror, lay white and crimson plumes, mock jewels, that flashed with a false glitter beneath the lamp-light, gaudy and bespangled dresses, and lastly, the figure of the actor arrayed in his fanciful yet not unbecoming attire.

He was tall, yet somewhat lightly built, and the close jacket of blue and silver, with its fringed and spangled tunic, the buck-skin fitted tightly around his lower limbs, the sandals donned in lieu of the heavy boot, and laced around the slender and well-turned ankle, exhibited to the utmost advantage a wonderful union of strength and beauty. A light-blue cap, with its waving plumes and sparkling ornaments, lay upon the table beside him, but his head was uncovered, and over the hands, upon which his face was bowed, fell the raven and glossy curls, in almost feminine profusion.

“Ned!”

He started to his feet, and clasped in his own the little hand that had fallen so tremulously upon his shoulder.

“Dear Mabel!”

She smiled in his face and strove to speak, but in vain, and bowing her face upon the hand she held, she wept, long and bitterly.

He looked upon her with a changing countenance, now with an expression of strange, half-womanish tenderness within his deep-blue eye, now, with the deadly white of agony settling around his lips, and the sharp glance of fear wandering to the door and out, as though it would penetrate the dark, still, passage, and when he spoke it was in a voice tremulous with emotion.

“Speak Mabel. Did you succeed? Is there hope left? For God’s sake speak!” and clinging to his arm for support, she did speak, briefly, rapidly, as though every word were a pang she sought to spare him.

He listened to the whole in silence, with his eyes fixed upon her colorless face.

“I looked for nothing more,” he said at last. “Hope did not delay me.”

“Delay you, Edward.”

“I mean that I never built upon it,” he said hurriedly, and averting his eyes, “I meant but that.”

She looked upon him with a troubled face, as he paced the floor of the little apartment, and spoke again, but hesitatingly.

“You will give up the boy, Edward?”

“I have no right to give him a prison roof when a better offers,” said Clifdon bitterly. “He has the Mordaunt face, and more of the Mordaunt blood than mine. Ay, send him, he might curse me for the love that would keep him.”

“Hush! hush! dearest: never talk so wildly. I will go to Brendon, I will kneel again and pray for mercy, for delay. I will walk the very streets a beggar till the debt is paid. Only speak not so. Is there not hope?”

He tossed back the bright dark hair as though an insufferable weight were pressing upon his temples, and flinging open a window, leaned out and gasped for breath. When he again drew back his face was calm, but his voice sounded with unnatural hollowness.

“If Mark Brendon sees to-morrow’s light, Mabel, your husband lies in a debtor’s prison, without the means to work for his freedom. And he will be there forever.”

“Not so, Clifdon, I shall be alone—” her voice faltered despite her efforts, “unburthened, and I can work.”

“You,” he said, abruptly pausing before her; and taking in his own her white, small hands, he gazed upon them with a smile of bitter mockery. “You would have starved—you would starve, Mabel, without a friend or a hope in this wide world. You would die unheeded at the threshold of him you have forsaken for—your husband.”

She shuddered; not at his words, but at the strange expression within his eye and upon his lip.

“When I took you from your palace-home, Mabel, it was with the love of a man young in the world, and young in sorrow. Now would I give my right hand to place you there again. To part from you Mabel, never more to look upon your face, or to rest upon your bosom and listen to your sweet voice, when my head is throbbing with the weariness and tumult of yon accursed buffoonery. Will you leave me? I bid you go.”

“Leave you?”

“Hark, Mabel, hark! Suppose the hand you clasp and wet with your tears, were double dyed in guilt; that it were red even with the blood of murder, (ay, shudder and grow pale and blench away!) If I told you this, that I was a demon walking hand in hand through earth with an angel, that I had sinned too deeply even to meet your eye or to hear your voice, would I drive you from me?”

“If I could believe.”

“You would cling to me in sorrow, but not in guilt, Mabel,” he said, regarding her with a look of jealous suspicion.

“Through the darkest deeps of shame and misery. I will forsake thee only with death! Yet, oh! my husband, wherefore torture me thus?”

“Because I would drive you from me,” he said, with violence the more exaggerated because unreal; “Go, woman, I love you not! Go! back to your home! Away from one you burthen and weary!”

She looked at him for an instant doubtingly, but his brows were gathered into a heavy frown, and his eyes from beneath their long lashes flashed fire upon her. With a low moan she sunk fainting at his feet.

“I have done my duty,” he murmured, as he raised her tenderly in his arms and kissed, again and again, her damp cheek and forehead, “she would not leave me—God is my witness there. Dear Mabel! my own sweet wife! hark how I unsay those cruel words.”

She replied not, but raised her eyes to his, and in that one look of unutterable affection he read how futile had been his effort, how mighty a thing is love.

A bell rang below, and at the same moment a footstep was heard in the passage, and a child sprung into the room, and to Mabel’s side.

“I must go,” said Clifdon, starting. “Lock the door, and remain here until I return to take you home. Phil, stay with your mother.”

“Let me go,” said the boy, pressing to his side, and playing with the silver fringe of his tunic. “Let me see you ride White Fleeta once more around the ring—only once. Ah, mamma, it is so beautiful!”

“No, no!” said Clifdon, impatiently. “It is no place for you. Come, come, I must go.”

“Bring me down, then, where Mark is on the swing,” persisted the little one, coaxingly. “Let me see Mark swing.”

A dark cloud swept over his father’s face, and extricating his dress with a smothered imprecation, he turned toward the door.

“Lend me your knife, then,” said Philip, springing forward and again grasping his dress; and throwing it hastily to the petitioner, Clifdon hurried down stairs.

He flung open the door of an apartment in the lower passage, and striding through without a glance at the gayly-bedizened throng there assembled, led forward a powerful white mare that stood saddled and bridled, and appeared to busy himself with its glittering trappings.

“How now, Captain Ned, gallant Captain Ned,” said one, advancing from the group with a jeering smile and a grotesque bow. “I looked to White Fleeta myself, and you are pulling to pieces my work without mercy.”

“Her throat-latch is too tight,” said Clifdon, bending over the animal till the long plumes of his cap swept its glossy mane.

But the clown, for such was the post the first speaker held in the company, pressed yet closer, and attempted to touch the small ears that were now laid angrily back.

“You fret her,” said Clifdon, impatiently; “stand aside.”

The man winced in affected terror, and springing back, crouched, panting and fanning himself with his large hat, twisting his features meanwhile into a grimace that elicited shouts of laughter from his companions.

Placed above the mass of his profession by education, and somewhat by birth, Clifdon was, of course, to many, an object of jealousy; and although none dared to come forward singly, all willingly encouraged and sided with their comrade.

“We look sad to-night, gallant Captain Ned,” he said, advancing again with an affected shuffle and a sidelong movement. “Are we in love, or in debt; or has the pretty bird that we lock up so carefully flown off to a golden cage?”

“Peace,” said Clifdon, turning toward his tormentor with so black a frown that he started and changed countenance. “Peace, fool!”

“You have given me my title,” said the other, with a mock bow and a smile where rage and malice badly counterfeited mirth. “I am not ashamed of my profession, handsome Captain Ned.”

“Come, come,” said a third, advancing slowly, “stand back Tom,” to the clown, “the captain and I have some business matters to arrange.”

“Ay, ay,” said the person addressed, with a significant wink; and crossing the room by a succession of somersets, he disappeared through the opposite door.

The last comer was a short and slightly-built man, clad from head to foot in buck-skin, save for the scarlet and gold garment that girded around his waist, was fastened at each knee by a garter and clasp of some brilliant material. His hair, instead of flowing in the long, loose curls affected by most of his companions, had been shorn close to the head, leaving exposed the low and sensual formation of the forehead, and the large ears, that, flapping and shapeless, hung forward like those of an animal. The flat nose, the high cheek-bones; the thick and habitually up-curved lips, the small, gray eye lurking beneath its over-hanging brow, and, above all, the extraordinary length of the arms, gave to this remarkable person more the appearance of a species of the monkey tribe than of a human being.

“The money, Ned; I swear I will wait no longer.”

“To-morrow,” said Clifdon, hoarsely, and bending as if to tighten the saddle-girth.

“On your word?” repeated Brendon, for it was he, with a glance of incredulity.

“Ay—begone!”

The other turned upon his heel with a prolonged whistle, and Clifdon, vaulting into the saddle, awaited the signal for his appearance.

——

CHAPTER II.

Once, twice, thrice around the ring on the flying steed, with foot scarce resting on the gilded saddle, and hand from which the silken rein hung slack and unguiding. And with clapping and shouts of admiration the people hailed their favorite, who bowed, and raised his plumed cap, and smiled as though no breath of care or passion had ever dimmed the lustre of his sparkling beauty.

Again, again around the ring, and with a bound over the light barrier, White Fleeta and her rider disappeared amid the vociferous plaudits of the crowd; and springing from the saddle, Clifdon flung himself upon a chair, panting and exhausted, with his lips working, and his hands clasped upon his closed eyes.

A laugh at some gay witticism, and a roar of applause from the multitude as Mark Brendon entered. Clifdon started from his seat, and partially drawing the red curtain, stood and looked out quivering, and yet gazing as if fixed by some horrid fascination.

At some distance from the ground, and secured by strong iron hooks to the ceiling hung a thick rope-swing, into which, mounting on his companion’s shoulders, Brendon was about to vault. When, supported by the herculean strength of the clown, he shook it, as if to prove the fidelity of that to which his life was to be intrusted, the form of that unseen watcher swayed like a reed, and the moisture gathered and rolled in thick drops from his brow and lip.

A vault, a shout from the crowd, and Brendon was fixed securely in the swing, that already moved slowly to and fro. And with eyes of horrible eagerness, with grinding teeth, and hands so madly clinched that the nails, unheeded, were driven into the flesh, Clifdon bent forward his head and gazed.

It was as though a species of insanity possessed him.

Lazily the rope swung to and fro.

Suddenly its motion quickened. Then faster and faster, until with frightful velocity the swinger dashed from the opposite extremities of the room with a force that brought him almost in contact with the lofty ceiling. Stimulated alternately by the deafening plaudits, the silent terror of the gazers, his efforts became each moment more tremendous.

Now he swung, supported only by one clinging hand; now suddenly suspended by his feet, while a shriek of horror mimicked by the grinning clown, rang from some quarter of the wide apartment.

“Frightful!” exclaimed a bystander.

And as she spoke, with the hideous speed of a ball dashed from the cannon’s mouth, the body of the actor was hurled, once against the gilded chandelier, once against the painted walls of the saloon, and then, with a dull rebound to the earth, where it lay still and breathless, while the rope to which it yet hung fell, severed, beside it.

No one spoke, no one moved. Each seemed transfixed with unutterable horror. Then from the awful silence, as if to break its spell, arose a shriek, shrill and piercing.

And leaping hurriedly from the boxes, and over the surrounding barriers, with exclamations and bursts of smothered horror, the multitude pressed around the prostrate form.

They raised it and looked upon it. A ghastly sight! From the glaring and upturned eye; from the distorted form, life seemed to have departed; but through the blue lips oozed slowly a purple foam, and across the brow a single vein grew black and knotted, and worked like a reptile in its death-agony.

“It is all over,” whispered a bystander, as even this lothesome motion ceased; and his words were passed from mouth to mouth in murmurs that scarcely broke the silence into which the crowd again had hushed.

There, from his lurking place, still gazed the husband of Mabel Clifdon; but his form no longer swayed and quivered, and his face was like marble. Only from beneath his bent brows shot a strange and terrible fire.

It was as though a demon had entered the sculptured form of an angel, and concealed beneath its beauty, betrayed only through the insensible eyes, the baleful hideousness of his presence.

The crowd began to disperse, at first singly, and then in whispering groups, but he stirred not; some one even shouted his name, but he stood without the power to move.

Something brushed against his shoulder, and a low neigh sounded thrillingly in his ear. He turned, and with her large, dark, half human eyes fixed upon him, White Fleeta stood beside her master.

It seemed as if that gentle and tender gaze had suddenly broken the fearful spell that bound him, for flinging himself to the earth with a burst of passion, Clifdon lay there, convulsed and agonized, while the animal that his hands had ever fed, and that loved him as it is in the nature of its generous kind to love, knelt by his side, and with a soft moan, rubbed her glossy head against his shoulder.

Again his name was shouted, and springing to his feet, he stood for a few minutes struggling with mighty efforts to regain his composure; and then, deadly pale, but calm, drew back the curtain, and once more entered the saloon.

The crowd had utterly dispersed, but the body of the dead man had been stretched upon a form which several of the company were bearing to the door.

“Lend us a hand, Clifdon,” said the voice that had before summoned him, “you are the strongest of us.”

“Not I,” said Clifdon, turning away to conceal the spasm that distorted his features. “I saw the whole—I am shaken with horror.”

There was something in his voice that silenced them, for, without further remonstrance, they passed on, leaving him standing alone with the clown.

“It is horrible!” said Clifdon, in a low tone, and with a shudder.

“Horrible!” echoed the jester. Then, after a pause, raising his eyes with a steady gaze, he continued. “The rope broke, it seems. This strong rope—incredible!”

The other replied not.

“You are freed from your debt, Captain Ned,” resumed the clown, playing carelessly, as he spoke, with the broken rope. “You are safe now.”

“Name it not,” said Clifdon hoarsely, and turning away.

An exclamation from his companion called him back.

“It is strange,” said the clown intently examining the ragged piece of rope. “Here is a drop of blood—a single drop of blood; just where it was broken off near the ceiling. How came it here?”

“It fell from the body,” whispered Clifdon.

“The body did not bleed, except at the mouth, where the blood was mixed with froth, and could not leave so dark a stain.”

“You are swelling a trifle into importance,” said Clifdon, impatiently. “The spot may be accounted for in a thousand ways; it may not even be blood.”

His companion did not reply, but threw aside the rope as if convinced. Suddenly he stooped and raised from the ground some glittering substance that had apparently fallen from it.

“What is it?” asked Clifdon.

“Nothing; a silver fringe, or a spangle, I believe,” said the other, calmly. Then, with a rapid glance, “You have cut your finger, gallant Captain Ned.”

“A trifle,” said Clifdon, hastily, but coloring as he spoke. “I cut it with some of White Fleeta’s showy trappings, and it bleeds afresh.” And turning upon his heel, he strode from the saloon.

——

CHAPTER III.

Fifteen years had elapsed since the occurrence of the incidents recorded in my last chapter, when a company of circus-riders took up their abode for the night in a village of one of our northern states. It was late in the autumn, and after having satisfactorily disposed of their baggage and horses, most of the travelers were glad to find refuge in the spacious bar-room of the village tavern, where the blaze that roared and crackled up the wide chimney, seemed in its cheerfulness almost a sufficient recompense for the day’s journey. Chilled by the evening air, wearied by their dreary march, and little inclined at any time to be regardful of ceremony, each of the party had chosen the position most conducive to his own comfort; and while some occupied the settees and arm-chairs dispersed around the apartment, their companions stretched themselves upon the floor and round the glowing hearth.

Apart from them, and reading, or affecting to read, for, although he had held the volume for many minutes, the page remained unturned, sat one who by word nor look took part in their merriment. With his arm resting on the little table beside him, and his eyes shaded by the hand, over which had fallen a profusion of dark silvered curls, he kept his eye immovably upon his book, and neither looked up nor stirred.

“Look at Clifdon,” said one of the company, to his companions, “he is in his dark mood to-night.”

“He is ever gloomy,” said the person addressed.

“True,” returned the first speaker, “he has never been the same since the death of his pretty wife. Let me see, that was fifteen years ago, soon after Mark Brendon was killed.”

“Ned was one of the same company?”

“Ay, ay. You should have seen us then. I was clown, with limbs a trifle lighter than now; and Clifdon—as I said, he has never been the same since her death.”

“She left but one child?”

“You mistake, she died in giving birth to pretty Lilia; but there was a son, who was sent to old Mordaunt. Little Phil; he must almost be of age now.”

The noise made by a vehicle dashing rapidly up to the tavern-door arrested their attention, and the conversation was suspended.

There was a sound of heavy boots ringing upon the stone pavements as the travelers sprung to the ground, a loud barking, and then a voice, whose deep bass was like the reverberation of distant thunder, was heard exclaiming, “Down, Pedro! Ho, there! Down close! Back to! Unbuckle the leash, Philip.”

Then the voice of the host, like the yelp of a puppy after the growl of a mastiff. “Fire, gentlemen? Yes, fire in the bar-room. This way, this way.”

The door was flung open, and a man advanced in life, but of almost gigantic height and proportions, entered the room. A heavy furred over-coat was tightly buttoned across his broad chest, and the black hunting-cap, which he had disdained to remove, shaded a brow, white and massive as a slab of marble. Upon his shoulder rested a superbly finished rifle, and from the flaps of his surcoat-pocket protruded the silver handle of his hunting-knife. He was followed by a handsome youth of about twenty, who, as he entered, shook the moisture from his over-coat, and lifting his cap, brushed off the snow that had powdered the shining sable of his hair. Two powerful hounds, of a rare and foreign breed, sprung before him and secured their places by the hearth, shaking vigorously as they passed, the water from their chilled limbs upon those around them.

“Room here!” said the elder stranger, imperiously; and they whom he addressed, intimidated, though resentful, moved back, while the new comers drew their chairs before the fire.

A dead silence had succeeded their boisterous mirth, and while the elder of the sportsmen sat wrapped in thought, his young companion, with a countenance expressive of the most extreme ennui, occupied himself alternately by pushing with his boot the logs that, when disturbed, sent a torrent of bright sparks crackling up the chimney, and by teasing the drowsy hounds stretched beside him.

Still apparently intent upon his book, but gazing earnestly upon the twain through his parted fingers, sat Edward Clifdon.

At last the elder stranger spoke, but in German, to his companion. “I have decided, Philip,” he said, abruptly. “You are young—too young; yet I leave you your own master. I give my consent to your marriage some few years hence, with the woman you have chosen, and chosen, I trust, wisely.”

“A thousand, thousand thanks, my dear father,” began the youth, with animation; but Mordaunt, for it was he, checked him.

“Thanks! yes, that I have decided in accordance with your wishes,” he said, bitterly; “but had it been otherwise—how then, Philip?”

His companion spoke not, but looked deeply hurt.

“I have seen enough of filial disobedience,” said Mordaunt, rising as he spoke, “to be doubtful with regard to the result; but we will let that pass. Nay, no thanks, if you please; I am weary, and you know how I detest a scene. Good night!” And striding hastily across the room, he retired.

His grandson, or, as Philip Clifdon had been taught to believe himself, his son, did not follow, but falling back in his chair, and planting his feet upon the broad hearth, abandoned himself to vague and delicious revery.

The constraint which the presence of Mordaunt had imposed, wore off with his disappearance, until Philip, disturbed by the loud voices and ringing laughter of those around, roused himself, and addressed a few words to him who has been announced as the former clown of the little company.

Clifdon had disappeared.

In the course of conversation with this man, young Clifdon, or rather Mordaunt, for he bore the name of his supposed parent, had occasion to draw forth and open his pen-knife. A singular dilation of the eye, a sudden flush upon the countenance of his companion, arrested his attention, but was forgotten, as the ex-clown, recovering his composure, quietly observed,

“That is a curious blade—will you let me examine it?”

Young Mordaunt resigned it carelessly into his hands, remarking, “It is a knife I seldom use, but having lost that I ordinarily carry, I have been obliged to bring it forward.”

“It is an old-fashioned piece of work,” said Garvin, for such was his name, earnestly examining it. “I think I have seen it before.”

“I value it as one that has been in my possession from my childhood,” returned Philip. “It has served me trustily.”

“Here is a broken point,” said Garvin, opening a second blade. “What a pity!”

“It has been broken ever since my remembrance,” returned the other.

As he spoke, his companion rising, either accidentally, or, as Philip afterward suspected, from design, managed to catch with his foot the leg of a table upon which a group of his companions had arranged their smoking glasses. It was overthrown; and after the confusion this created had in a measure subsided, Mordaunt looked in vain for the author of the mischief. He had vanished, and with him the borrowed knife.

“So much for my confounded carelessness,” said the youth, internally, as half vexed, half amused, he left the bar-room. “I will see to this to-morrow; but not to-night, not to-night.” And why “not to-night” might have been explained by the dreams that floated through his brain, as beneath the moon that shone brightly in the now cloudless sky, he paced to and fro upon the broad piazza of the inn.

——

CHAPTER IV.

Upon a couch, in one corner of a mean apartment, with folded arms and a countenance livid with despair, sat Edward Clifdon; and before him, with an exulting smile, stood the man who had so dexterously escaped during the confusion in the bar-room.

“It is as I tell you, Clifdon,” he said, “the proofs are in my possession. See you now. The drop of blood and your wounded finger; the broken point which fell from the twist of the rope, and which tallies exactly with the knife found in the possession of your own son—the knife I have seen you use a hundred times; the money due from you to the murdered man; your previous quarrel. Truly as that I now stand before you, Edward Clifdon, it was your hand that tampered with the swing from which Mark Brendon fell to meet his death.”

Huge drops gathered upon the brow of the wretched man, but no words fell from his blanched and quivering lips.

“It was the horror of that thought that killed your wife,” pursued his tormentor. “I knew it; I needed no further proof. But you are in my power now, mine enemy.”

“Do as you will,” said Clifdon, gradually recovering from the shock inflicted by this sudden and terrific accusation, and speaking with a remnant of his ancient pride. “If years of anguish and remorse, and the loss of her who was dearer than life’s self, be not sufficient punishment, death has none darker.”

“Brave words!” said Garvin, sneering. “Will you stand up in the open court, to be branded as a murderer? Will you receive the penalty the law awards your crime?”

“Man!” said Edward Clifdon, sternly, and raising his shaken form from the couch upon which he had fallen, “I tell you that in one moment of remorse, one glance to the dark past, there may be more horror than in all the shame and agony of the hangman’s rope; and if by my death I may expiate before human eyes the sin that I have repented before my God, I tell thee, I will meet it, and never tremble.”

“And your children?” returned the other, with a sardonic smile. “Your little Lilia, and your boy, with his haughty brow and curling lip? Think you they will not die for shame? A goodly heritage would you leave them!”

Clifdon bowed his face upon his hands and groaned aloud.

“Revenge for me!” pursued his companion, tauntingly. “Revenge, to heap ashes upon the head of the old man who looked scorn upon me to-night! Revenge, to humble the gay youth who has already learned his pride! Revenge, to see the beauty I covet cast friendless upon the world, and perchance within my reach!”

With a wild cry Clifdon threw himself at his feet.

“Spare me!” he said; “spare them! By the heaven above us, I swear, that from this moment I will be your slave! See, I kneel to you, mine enemy! I will crouch beneath your feet; I will beg for you, toil for you; I will bind myself to you, body and soul—only spare them!”

“No!—never! never!”

“Hark, man! If you have a human soul, listen to me! When I did the deed, it was to save my wife, my child from starvation, from madness. I thought not of myself, Garvin; by the great God, I did not! And by the loss of the child I loved, of the wife for whom I had periled my soul; by years of lone remorse and agony I was punished. Pity me! Pity them—the boy with her sweet eyes and her smiling lips; the child she left me on her death-bed—my little Lilia! Oh, mercy! mercy!”

Like the shriek of a damned spirit thrilled those last words.

“Give me Lilia,” said Garvin, eagerly, and bending forward.

“Monster!” shouted Clifdon, springing to his feet. “Name her not, lest, tempted to a second crime, I strangle thee on the spot! To thee—thee? My pure, my pretty Lilia? Sooner let her lie before me, with her winding sheet about her! To thee? Off, monster! Off, hell-hound—off!”

Intimidated, Garvin retreated, but with outstretched arms his victim followed. One moment more, and with the blood gushing from his mouth and distended nostril, he had fallen to the floor. The tempest of passion had proved too much for a frame already long shaken by fear and anguish; and as Garvin, horror-stricken, raised him to the couch, life seemed almost extinct.

A physician was called in, whose remedies stopped the immediate flow of blood, but who attempted to give no hope of recovery. Ere he left the room, however, the senses of his patient returned.

“Clear the room,” he said, in a low voice to Garvin, “and call them both. If you are not fiend, do this.”

His orders were obeyed, and marveling at the summons, young Mordaunt shortly after followed his grandfather to the room of the dying man.

A single lamp cast its dull rays through the deserted apartment upon the deathly face of him who, with livid and muttering lips, and glassy, upturned eyes, seemed uttering his last prayer to the unknown God, unto whose throne his spirit was fleeting. But rarely beautiful amid the gloom and horror of that desolate chamber, radiantly fair as a single star shining through the hideous rack of the tempest, knelt by the bedside, a girl—a child of fifteen summers; and with her hands clasped, and the braids and curls of pale-brown hair showering from her upraised face, upon the folds of her white night-robe, she looked up fearlessly, as though through the dark-stained roof, she gazed, amid the blue above, up into the mercy-seat of heaven.

And ever and anon the dying man tossed upon his bed, muttering with ghastly lips, “Pray for me, Lilia; thy lips are pure—pray!” and the child prayed earnestly.

A slight movement of those without attracted his attention, and raising himself in his bed with reviving strength, he beckoned the elder Mordaunt to his side.

“This is death,” he murmured, “terrible, terrible death! Look upon it, old man, and refuse, if you can, the mercy my God will not deny me!”

“What would you with me?” said Mordaunt, moving restlessly. “What would you, Edward Clifdon, for I know you now?”

“Mercy, mercy!” said the dying man. “You cursed her that she clung to me, and I pray for your forgiveness. Let me bear your pardon to her whither I go.”

“Is she then dead?” said Mordaunt, quickly.

“Thank God that I may say it! Thank God, save for Lilia’s sake!”

“And Lilia,” said Mordaunt, after a deep pause.

“Her child, her last-born, who is even now at my side. And for her, and for her only, would I supplicate!” As he spoke, he would have thrown himself from his bed, but his companion forcibly withheld him.

“Kneel not to me!” he said, sternly. “My forgiveness is yours; but I have sworn, and my oath may not be broken. Kneel not to me.” But as he spoke, his eye wandered toward his grandson.

“It shall never pass my lips,” said Clifdon, eagerly, and catching that roving glance. “He shall never hear from me, and Lilia knows it not.”

Mordaunt understood him. “Call him,” he said, turning away. “I forbid you not.” And Philip, summoned, advanced, wondering, to the bedside.

But as Clifdon gazed upon the face of him he yearned to clasp to his bosom and call his son, speech utterly deserted him, and with a face of anguish and wringing hands, he could only point to the crouching form beside him, and the bright head that was now buried amid the drapery of the couch.

And over the soul of the young man there seemed to come a vague and singular remembrance; and pressing his hand upon his brow, he stood like one who strives to recall a bygone thought that ever, despite his efforts, eludes his grasp.

Clifdon was the first to break this dangerous silence.

“Lilia!” he said, and she raised her face, no longer rapt and beaming, but pallid as his own, and deluged with her flowing tears.

“We are strangers,” said Clifdon, turning to Philip, and speaking with difficulty, “nevertheless, as the ear of God is open alike to all, so may one of his creatures in the extremity of need, call upon his fellow. I call upon you now, as you value the mercy of that God, to be merciful.”

“Speak on,” said Philip, with emotion, and bending over the lowly couch.

“Look at my child!” said Clifdon, with a cry of anguish; “on the child I have kept pure as the spirit of her mother! Look upon her. Shall she be cast upon the wide world to eat the bread of shame or starve?”

With a quivering lip the youth averted his eyes.

“Take her, oh, take her!” murmured the dying man. “She is yours! be unto her as a brother! Save her, I pray you! Snatch my lamb from the jaws of the wolf!”

Still hesitating, Philip raised his eyes to his grandfather’s face.

“I leave you free,” said Mordaunt, in a voice hoarse with emotion; “be it as you will.”

With a sudden impulse, the young man bent down and raised in his arms the light and childish form. But she struggled for freedom.

“Ah! no, no!” she shrieked, “I will go with thee, my father!”

“Lilia—child—in mercy!—you harrow my soul!”

Instantly she was motionless, but her face became like death, as it rested on the bosom of her supporter, and from beneath her delicate lids the large tears stole silently.

Deeper and more labored became the respiration of the dying man; and as the agony of death wrung the drops from his working brow, he murmured unconsciously her name.

In a moment she was at his side, with her small arms clasped across his heaving chest, and her eyes turned eagerly upon his face.

“Lilia! my precious one—my child! her blessing, not mine, rest upon thee!”

“Thine! thine, my father!—Leave me thine!”

He raised himself in his bed, and with her little hands clasped in his own, spoke solemnly, and in a firm voice.

“Not with the lips of purity, not with the heart of the upright man may I invoke a blessing on thee, my Lilia. But if love, perfect love, that has never known chill or change; that has kept thee inviolate in the midst of guilt, and lovely, though surrounded by corruption—if such can win a smile from Heaven, it is thine.”

His head sunk lower and lower, until it rested upon her innocent brow, and upon her shining curls. Suddenly she started with a piteous cry.

“He is cold! he is dead! Leave me not yet, oh, my father!” and lifeless as the corse beside her, the orphan fell to the ground.

Yet a few days, and Philip Mordaunt, strong in the hopes of youth and love, passed forever from the house of death. Unconscious that the little being, whose fair head rested upon his bosom, and whose welfare he had sworn to guard with a brother’s love, possessed indeed a sister’s claim; unconscious that his presence had soothed the dying hour of a parent; unconscious how nearly he had been sent forth branded as the son of a felon. Thus tread we ever blindly amid the precipices of our fate.

BIRD-NOTES.

———

BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.

———

Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle, and the crane and the swallow, observe the time of their coming. Jer. c. vii. v. 7.

The stork in heaven knoweth

Her own appointed time,

And like an arrow goeth

Back to our colder clime:

The turtle, crane and swallow

Come, on unerring wing,

When northern hill and hollow

Bask in the light of Spring.

But we, endowed with reason,

Cannot foreknow the hour—

The sweet, appointed season

For bursting of Hope’s flower;

When near the glad fruition

Of toil that worked annoy—

When sorrow’s drear condition

Gives place to heart-felt joy.

Lo! blighting frost encroaches

On Autumn’s sad domain,

And Winter wild approaches

To end his feeble reign:

The birds of passage gather

And fly across the wave,

Their guide a Heavenly Father,

Omnipotent to save;

But man, with reason gifted,

Cannot the hour foreknow

When Hope’s bright curtain lifted

Reveals a waste of wo;

When clouds send lightning flashes

Our idols to consume,

And dreams, resolved to ashes,

Are scattered on his tomb.

THE DAWN OF THE HUNDRED DAYS.

———

BY R. J. DE CORDOVA.

———

The evening of a cold and stormy day in February had just set in, when a traveling carriage of rather a better order than usual arrived at the gates of the large and populous town of L——, in the south of France. The horses were covered with foam, and hung their heads with that jaded appearance of fatigue which tells of the labors of a long and hasty journey. The postillion presented the anomalous appearance of a dispirited Frenchman. Drenched to the skin, and bespattered with mud, he descended from his seat on the near horse, and ejaculating with considerable fervor that pithy monosyllable “peste!” which Sterne has rendered famous, he opened the door of the vehicle for the travelers to alight.

The interior of the carriage was occupied by two men, of whom this elder might be five-and-thirty years of age, and the younger nineteen. The one was a handsome, bold-looking, tall man, with rather large black moustaches, and eyes of the same color; the younger had soft and delicate features, much more effeminate than manly, but prepossessing and attractive, with blue eyes, delicate brown moustaches and whiskers, and dark brown hair. The younger of the travelers awoke as the carriage stopped, and called to the other in a delicate and musical voice, which quite accorded with his juvenile appearance, “Rouse up, Pierre; we are already at L.” The sleeper awoke at the summons, and motioning his companion to be silent, bade the postillion call the sergeant of the guard, and request him to attend at the door of the carriage, in order to viser the passports, as the travelers were invalids whom it would be dangerous to remove. The boy did as he was desired, and in a few moments returned with the officer of the guard, who bore a huge sword in one hand and a lantern in the other.

“Bon soir, Monsieur l’officier,” said the elder traveler.

“Bon soir, Monsieur le voyageur,” returned the other drily.

“Do you know the reason, M. l’officier, why I have come to L.?” asked M. Pierre.

“Dame!” replied the officer, “how should I know why you have come to L.? My business is to see that your passports are correct, if you please, and I will trouble you to show them to me as early as you can make it convenient to do so, for standing in the rain does not benefit the constitution.”

“I am sorry,” returned the traveler, “that you have so little curiosity, my friend; but as you will not ask me the question, I will give you the reason of my own accord. I came here because I knew that Jacques Lapin would be the officer on guard to-night, and would allow me to pass even if he suspected my disguise.”

“Diable!” shouted the other—“Eh! pardieu! no man knows me by that name except my former colonel, Monsieur Desart,” and he looked up in the face of his visiter by the light of the lantern which he held in his hand. “Ventrebleu! it is indeed he, and the other must be —”

“Silence!” interrupted the colonel. “Here are the passports, let them be visées directly.”

The alacrity with which the order was obeyed manifested some authority on the one hand, and no small amount of obedience on the other. In considerably less time than usual the passports were returned to the travelers, the gloomy postillion mounted to his former perch, and the carriage slowly rumbled through the ill-paved, ill-lighted, and otherwise ill-appointed town of L.

Until they reached the hotel neither of the travelers could trust himself to speak. The victory over impending danger and the present sense of security were too much for words. But as soon as the door of the double-bedded room which they had ordered had closed upon them, they threw themselves into each other’s arms, and sunk on their knees together in gratitude for their deliverance.

Colonel Desart had risen from a very humble rank in a foot regiment to be its colonel. He in a great measure owed his promotion to courage, excellent military judgment, and that admirable savoir-faire which is peculiarly characteristic of an educated Frenchman. He was, nevertheless, indebted for much of the signal good fortune which attended his rise to the partiality of the emperor. Napoleon, who was a profound believer in physiognomy, and who moreover prided himself on being an almost infallible physiognomist, imagined that he could discover marks of great fidelity in the lineaments of Desart’s visage, and trusted him accordingly. Nor was he mistaken; for Desart was ever grateful for the patronage bestowed, and the kindness which was manifested toward him.

It was owing to this partiality that Desart had been able to intercede successfully with the emperor for the life of Jacques Lapin, who had once been condemned to be shot, for a frolick which might have been attended with serious consequences. Nothing would please M. Jacques Lapin, private of the —th foot, on the evening before Jena, when it was absolutely necessary that the position of the army should be kept as much as possible from the knowledge of the enemy, but to adorn two stuffed images of the Emperor of Austria and his imperial spouse with heavy cartridges, and display the same by the aid of fire before the eyes of his delighted countrymen. The reflection of Lapin’s pyrotechnic pleasantry shone even in the tent of Napoleon. The offender was dragged forth and ordered for instant execution. But Desart seized the moment when the emperor’s anger had somewhat abated, ridiculed the exhibition of the unfortunate artiste, proved to demonstration that he had been incited thereto only by his hatred of the enemies of France, got the emperor into good temper and secured a pardon for Lapin, who, as we have seen, did not omit to be grateful in the hour of need.

After basking for so long a period in the sunshine of the emperor’s favor it was with sincere grief that Desart learned, on his return from Moscow, after a long and tedious illness which afflicted him on his way, that his patron and benefactor had quitted France and was then in the island of Elba. His first impulse was to disregard his own feelings as a husband, to leave, for his young and amiable wife, the still ample remnant of his once considerable fortune, and to follow his illustrious patron to his place of exile. But the formation of those wild but heroic clubs of “Buonapartists” led him to change his determination. He felt that he could do more good to the cause of the emperor by assisting it with his counsel, and, if necessary, with his sword, than if he were to retire to the presence of Napoleon for the purpose of sharing an exile which, to say the least, was inactive and useless. He therefore resolved to remain in France. He joined one of the most powerful of these clubs, and became so enthusiastic in his desire for an immediate counter revolution that he was unable, in public, sufficiently to conceal his political bias. He soon fell under the suspicion of the suspicious court, and was fortunate enough to receive, from a devoted brother officer, information of an arrest having been signed, within a minute or two after that document had passed under the hands of the minister. He had scarcely time to effect the necessary disguise of his person, and to pass through one of the gates of Paris, before the alarm was given generally, and ordered to be disseminated throughout the provinces. With the aid of an old passport, however, the date of which had been ingeniously altered, he contrived to evade all the posts on the route, until he arrived at L., where his confidence in his disguise failed him, and he resolved rather to trust to the fidelity and gratitude of his former subordinate soldier.

Le Chevalier Pierre Babat de la Bonbonnerie, and his brother Monsieur Louis Babat soon became extremely fashionable in L. Everybody thought it a duty to call on so accomplished a nobleman who, there was no doubt, had much influence at court; and the chevalier’s table soon “groaned,” as the fashionable novelists of the day term it, “under the weight of visiters’ cards.” The papas of all the respectable families in the town called on the new comers, and not a few mammas of unmarried daughters waited with impatience the visit of the fashionable brothers, to whose credit a vast deal of interest with the king was immediately set down.

It was far from being the interest of the colonel to keep himself secluded from society. Retirement would have created mystery, and mystery would have set all the officious mischief-mongers of L. writing voluminous dispatches to the minister of police in Paris; by which means his retreat would have been discovered, and his plans frustrated. He accordingly returned all the visits which were paid at his hotel, sometimes accompanied by his brother, but most frequently alone. In the meanwhile, the younger ladies of L. had, individually and collectively, lost their hearts to the young Monsieur Louis Babat. He was considered “charming, piquant, so delicate a figure, so sweet a voice, so elegant an every thing in fact.” The strangers were duly fêted, and amused in every variety of way which the ingenuity of the inhabitants could invent. The gentlemen became jealous as fast as the young ladies grew enamored of Monsieur L., and the peace and quiet of the town of L. was more disturbed by the arrival of monsieur le chevalier and his brother, than Paris had been by his departure.

Madame la Comtesse de Demibête, in particular, was very desirous to bring about a match between her daughter and Monsieur Louis. This young lady was, to say the truth, much superior to the generality of the lady butterflies who were so much attracted by the new light; but as she was enamored of a young merchant, on whose birth the proud mamma looked down with considerable disdain, and who was then on a voyage to the Indies, she was not likely to fall very readily into the plan of captivation which her mamma designed for the young nouveau venu. Between Mademoiselle Mathilde and Monsieur Louis, however, there appeared to grow up a sort of feeling which no one could understand. It was not love, for it seemed to be entirely divested of every thing like passion; it was not indifference, for there really seemed to exist a sort of affection between the two young people. All therefore that the scandal-mongers of L. could discover, was that they knew nothing about it, and that it was impossible to fathom the nature of the partiality which was so palpably evinced on both sides. Immediately, however, it was ascertained that there was a penchant on the part of Monsieur Louis for one of the young ladies, all the rest broke out into bitter enmity against the offending “boy,” (a great deal was meant to be conveyed by the use of this word) who could dare to choose one particular young lady from among so many who voluntarily offered. “And she, too,” as they one and all remarked, “by no means either pretty or witty, or even tolerably sensible.” It was at a large evening party given by M. Bassecour, a converted Buonapartist, (people were converted most miraculously after the abdication,) who preserved a sort of middle place between the aristocracy and the people, and whose company, consequently, consisted of a strange mêlée of both classes, that the first positive outbreak took place.

The chevalier and his brother had arrived late; and, in spite of all their attempts to appear at ease and cheerful, there was an evident disquiet and an unusual degree of thoughtfulness unwillingly expressed on their countenances. The rooms were filled when they arrived, and several dancers were enjoying their favorite exercise in excellent spirits. Such of the young ladies as were not dancing, immediately separated and repaired to unoccupied sofas, where they might leave spare seats beside them—a manœuvre which is often performed by young ladies when a favorite enters the room—for what reason, of course, they best know.

Monsieur Louis Babat looked rather wearily round the room for his friend Mathilde. She was dancing with the brother of the young merchant, much to the rage and chagrin of her aristocratic mamma. Shunning the too lively clatter of the ladies, Louis seated himself near two dowagers, who were warmly discussing the correct pattern of the new court-sleeve for evening dresses, hoping that they would be too much engrossed by their wordy combat to attend to him. He was doomed to disappointment. Madame Nezrouge no sooner discovered who her neighbor was than she immediately turned to the attack.

“Ah! Monsieur Louis, I am charmed to see you. You are late this evening—but you seem ill. Is any thing the matter?”

“Yes, madame,” answered Louis, “I have not been well to-day.”

“Ah!” returned the old lady, “I see how it is. You young men dissipate too much. You should marry, Monsieur Louis. You should look out to settle yourself in life: all young men should. But I do not wonder, indeed I cannot, at young men remaining single. The young ladies of the present day are not what they were when my lamented husband had the honor of carrying Louis the Sixteenth’s snuff-box. They are too bold, Monsieur Louis—much too bold. I am sure I preach enough to my girls. Many and many’s the time I say to them, ‘continue, my dear children, in your present course. Do not imitate the follies and vanities of your companions. The great aim of a woman’s life should be to make her husband happy.’ Thank Heaven my girls listen to my advice. They are not like the rest. I’m sure, my poor lamented husband, who had the honor of carrying the king’s snuffbox used often to say —”

“Who knows what to-morrow may bring forth!” murmured Louis, between his teeth, carried away from the babble of his neighbor by the intensity of his own feelings.

“Why, yes, Monsieur Louis,” continued the old lady, “he did say that, too, sometimes, though how you ever came to know it, I am sure I can’t tell—but what I was going to say —”

“Pardon me, madam, but Mademoiselle Mathilde is about to sing. Would you permit me to join her at the piano?”

“Oh! certainly, if you wish it,” returned Madame Nezrouge, bridling up. “Of course: oh! certainly.”

In fact, Mathilde had already taken her place at the piano. She had one of those sweet, dear, yet mellow voices which belong only to southern countries, and she sang with deep feeling, as well as artistic correctness. As Louis walked to the piano, his brother whispered in his ear, “Be firm, for God’s sake; he is here.”

The lip of Louis quivered as he prepared to turn the leaves of the page before Mathilde, and he was so excited that he did not hear one syllable of the following song.

THE MEMORY OF LOVE.

Though boundless seas between us roll

And keep our lips and eyes apart,

Thou art not absent! for my soul

Treasures thine image; and my heart

In every throb thy name repeats.

Ah! Mem’ry’s spell

Awakes too well

Its echoes as it beats.

Thou art not absent! every thought

Is thine alone! Thou art still with me;

For my mind’s eye, by mem’ry taught,

Looks back into my mind—ON THEE.

In sleep, a voice, ah! not unknown

My pillow seeks:

’Tis mem’ry speaks;

That voice! ’tis all thine own.

Before the song was concluded, a group of ladies had been formed in the centre of the room wondering what could possibly cause the singular agitation of Monsieur Louis. Some whispered that it was love—others that it was wine—and one or two audibly expressed a pious wish that it might not “prove something worse,” which many persons are ever ready to do whenever they happen to be profoundly ignorant.

As Louis gave his arm to Mathilde to lead her from the piano, his brother whispered in his ear, “Courage for one hour more—It is all right; Lapin has returned.”

A ray of joy shone over the pallid features of the youth, as he heard these words; yet he seemed to tremble. He had advanced as far as the group of ladies, with his brother on one arm and Mathilde on the other, when a sinister looking individual was seen to approach from the other end of the room. There appeared, for the moment, to be considerable excitement among the company, but every thing was as silent as the grave while the strange man marched slowly up to the chevalier.

“Du par le Roi,” said he, as he approached, “I arrest you, Colonel Desart, on a charge of treason against the king.”

“Colonel Desart, the Buonapartist!” shrieked the horrified ladies, in discordant chorus.

“The same, ladies, at your service,” replied the colonel, with that look of quiet and sarcastic disdain which annihilates impertinence.

“Du par le Roi,” continued the savage-looking individual, addressing Louis, “I arrest you Madame Louise Desart, née Plestours—”

The storm of voices here interrupted the officer.

“What! Madame Desart! a woman!”

“Yes, ladies,” returned the soft, sweet voice of the abashed lady, “I could not leave my husband in his danger.” She turned as she spoke, and fell fainting in the arms of the affectionate Mathilde, whose penetration had long since discovered the secret of her sex but whose prudence and good breeding had put a seal upon her lips on that subject.

“You are my prisoners,” said the dark man, turning towards the colonel, who was quietly putting his whiskers and black wig into the fire; “you will, if you please, prepare for instant departure to Paris.”

“Indeed,” coolly replied the colonel, “I shall not go to Paris to-night, nor yet to-morrow.”

“Monsieur, the colonel,” said his captor, “will forgive me if I remind him that I have with me an armed force, to sustain the authority of the king’s command.”

“Oh! do not disturb yourself at all on my account,” replied the colonel, “I dare say you have an armed force—so have I—what then?”

“Monsieur is jesting,” answered the officer. “You must really depart at once for Paris.”

“For what purpose, my good friend?” asked the colonel, with enviable naiveté.

“Parbleu! it is the king’s pleasure,” returned the other—who began to feel that he was being quizzed.

“But the king will not be in Paris when I arrive, Monsieur l’Officier. How then?”

“Oh! diable! you must wait till his majesty comes back—that’s all.”

“But he will never come back, Monsieur l’Officier.”

“Mille tonnéres! and why not?” thundered the officer, who was waxing wroth, in proportion as his prisoner become cooler. “And why will not the king come back?”

“Oh, I will tell you why, with all my heart,” replied the colonel, “and when you go back to Paris, which you will do by yourself all alone, presently, and even without your soldiers, you can retail the information in every quartier and faubourg. Here! stoop down and I’ll tell you quietly.”

The officer stooped as he was bidden, with a heart full of misgiving, while the colonel shouted with the voice of an officer commanding a regiment,

“Because THE EMPEROR is in France, and will be in L. in a few moments; and further, because his avant-garde is now passing through these streets on the way to the Tuilleries.”

He had scarcely concluded the last sentence, before a tremendous shout of “Vive l’Empereur,” was heard from the street. The officer turned and fled, as Lapin sprang into the room, threw up the window which overhung the street, and joined, with all his might, in the loud viva of joy which marked the unhappy return of Napoleon Buonaparte to the land which his valor had twice won for him.

Colonel and Madame Desart started for Paris early next morning, in the train of the emperor.

SYMBOLS.

———

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

———

I looked all abroad for a symbol of thee,

And a thousand bright symbols replied,

They bloomed on the land, they shone on the sea —

There were flowers and stars that likened might be

To thy beautiful spirit, so nearly allied

To all that is brightest on land or on sea.

The brooks on the hills in their crystaline flow,

Singing out of their mystical springs,

The heralds of joy to the valleys below,

Making all things more lovely wherever they go,

Are the types of thy spirit, whose beautiful wings

Make gladness and music wherever they go.

The birds, the sybiline birds of the grove,

Entempled in shadowy bloom,

Or clothed in a luminous vesture above

Of sunshine and azure and music and love,

Are the types of thy soul, that in brightness or gloom

Is clothed in a luminous vesture of love.

All things are thy symbols—thou sheddest on all

The lustre and sweetness of Song,

Like the angels whose star-loving pinions let fall

A glory that holdeth true poets in thrall: —

To thee all things lovely as symbols belong.

And thou art the beautiful symbol of all.

SONNET. TO SHIRLEY.

———

BY WM. P. BRANNAN.

———

Like a delicious dream that fades away

When morning zephyr breathes into the room,

Bearing from unknown blossoms their perfume —

Though thou art gone, still round my spirit play

The radiant memories of thy maiden bloom;

Delightful fancies riot in my brain,

A painful gladness thrills my throbbing heart,

And I would live forever thus apart,

Deeming such bliss may never come again.

Enchanting vision! hast thou fled for aye?

Thy seeming presence haunts me with a spell,

That musing on thy image thus alway,

The world would smile again an Eden-dell

Where all things lovely should delight to dwell.

THE FIRST LOVE OF ADA SOMERS.

———

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

———

Poca favilla gran Fiamma seconda.   Dante.

When Ada Somers was a romp of twelve years, she chanced one day, in too bold a search for some water-lilies, to fall headlong into the stream from whose blue depths they lifted their pretty heads.

Truth alone compels us to relate this mishap of Ada’s: for although the quasi drowning of heroines has been a popular tableau of romance ever since streams and heroines were; still, this is the era of investigation; and we who on our railroads outstrip the speed of the bronze horse—we for whom the delicate and trembling wires of the telegraph do the office of a thousand Ariels—we who have called upon the sun to be our portrait-painter, and upon the moon to yield up her secrets that our lecture-rooms may be crowed; surely we have some right to think for ourselves! and we boldly proclaim that nothing can be less sublime and more ridiculous than the loss of one’s equilibrium—a plunge head-foremost—and the spectacle of two inverted feet without any apparent body.

Perhaps that sometime race of heroines, who wandered up hill and down dale in satin slippers—unsoiled—undraggled—and unscratched—and wept without the concomitants of red eyes and swelled noses; perhaps a race of such curious physiological construction possessed also the secret of losing their balance without losing their grace. But our poor Ada was not of this race: she was only a little American girl, subject to the laws of gravitation, so she fell into the river in the manner above described. Poor little thing! she might have floated off to keep company with Glendower’s spirits in the vasty deep, but for the timely interposition of a certain youth, by name James Darrington. James was taking his afternoon ride along the river-bank, when he heard a sudden splash, and turned his eyes just in time to catch a view of the two little feet above-mentioned. He was not, like the Countess Hahn-Hahn, versed in the physiognomy of feet, so without venturing a guess as to the ownership of the pair in question, he sprung from his horse and plunged into the river.

The spot where Ada had fallen was deep, and its bed was a mass of treacherous slime; but James was a bold swimmer, and after some moments of struggle, ay, and of danger too, he succeeded in bearing his prize to the shore.

Now, as Ada was no heroine, she did not emerge from the river like a water-nymph: her faithful chronicler is fain to say that her dress was a net-work of slimy weeds; that her hair was tangled, and her face dirty. Nevertheless, she was a pretty little thing in spite of her draggled condition, and when James went home and thought over the matter, he felt bound by the chivalry of fifteen to fall in love with her, and he did so. To be sure, he had passed Ada Somers a hundred times, in his father’s house and at hers, without bestowing a thought upon her—but now that Destiny had thrown her into his arms, he saw that her hazel eyes were starry with brightness—that her rosy mouth was the nest of all the loves—and he resolved to keep her where she was.

Up to the day of her mishap, Ada had never thought of any thing more sentimental than skipping-ropes, pet fawns and ponies—but she suddenly became addicted to solitary walking, wild-flowers and moonlight. (N. B. These tastes lasted for about a week.) And instead of scampering over the country with a servant behind her, her pony Lightfoot roamed his paddock in lazy leisure, unless James Darrington was at liberty to accompany Lightfoot’s mistress in her ride.

James, though only fifteen, was so accomplished a horseman that Ada’s parents had no hesitation in committing her to his care. They were often joined in their rides by Ada’s favorite playmate, Catharine Ashton; but sometimes they rode alone, and although these rides were generally silent ones, still James thought them pleasanter when Catharine’s merry voice was not constantly challenging them to some childish feat, or making the woods ring with its bursts of glee.

“I hope I shall have her to myself to-day,” thought he, as he rode up the oak avenue to Mr. Somers’ house. Yes, there was Lightfoot pawing the ground alone—and no Catharine trying Fenella feats—cracking her riding-whip, and breaking the luxurious silence of his reveries with her ceaseless mirth.

James threw himself from his horse, rushed up the steps of the portico, and just as he was stammering an apology to Mrs. Somers for nearly upsetting her as she advanced to greet him, Ada came out equipped for her ride.

How sweetly the little gipsy looked, with her habit of dark green, her tiny while collar, and her black velvet hat and plume. Before James could present his hand, she sprung into her saddle, and cantered off with such speed that he put spurs to his horse to overtake her. The woods were gorgeous with beauty. Summer still lingered in the tender green of some trees, while others, tinted by the bold hand of autumn, towered in all the pomp of scarlet and yellow foliage. The crisp leaves rustled to the tread of their horses’ hoofs, and the soft breeze that swept over golden meadow and sunny hill, came laden to their young hearts with those sweet, vague reveries that visit the soul but once—but once!—in that untried season of youth when the earth seems starred with flowers, the sea mirrors naught but heaven, and the very consciousness of animal life is happiness. For some time the youthful pair rode on in silence, till at length emerging from the shady woods they came suddenly to an opening, where a grassy slope led down to the river, and to the spot which some months before had been the scene of Ada’s misfortune.

“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed she, as she drew in her rein to look around. The turf was still bright with sunshine—the waters sparkled as if they had stolen the golden bed of the Pactolus—and above them, forever changing shape and hue, floated the silver clouds that hide from mortal gaze the home of Immortality!

“Beautiful!” was the response of her companion.

“Did you ever see such a bright sky!” continued the delighted child of nature. “And such a soft green turf, which, by the bye, Lightfoot is enjoying in his way—see, James, how nicely he crops the grass in a circle. Do you remember the story of the Dervise and the stray Camel? How he not only knew him to be astray, but found out that he was blind of one eye, lame in one leg, had lost a tooth, and was loaded with corn and honey, and all without having seen him? What a curious observer he must have been, that dervise!”

No answer was vouchsafed to this piece of Oriental lore, whose connection with Lightfoot’s skill in cropping grass was somewhat unintelligible to one who had not read the story; so Ada broke into new raptures over the beauty of the river.

This time James looked up, and gazed earnestly at her varying and animated countenance. “That stream had nearly wedded us, Ada.”

Ada tossed her pretty little head as she replied, “I am glad that I escaped such an ugly bridal.”

“Pshaw!” thought James, “she is but a child, and does not understand me.”

And he was quite right; for while he was perfectly aware of his being “in love,” Ada was utterly ignorant of the meaning of the phrase. All she knew was that James Darrington’s presence materially increased her happiness; but she would not have confessed to the very reeds and rushes that she liked him even more than she did her dear Catharine. Her wise and gentle mother, aware that her little daughter was in an Eden of ignorant bliss, prudently forbore to tender her the fruit of precocious wisdom. She knew that Ada was as childish as became her years, and she judged it best to leave that little heart undisturbed by knowledge of the good and evil of artificial life.

James, on the contrary, though he ventured no more declarations to the lady of his thoughts, indemnified himself for the same, by pouring out his ecstasies into his mother’s ear. Mrs. Darrington was something more than amused with this juvenile courtship; she was delighted to be the recipient of her son’s confessions: too well skilled in the human heart to repulse his confidence by ridicule, she contented herself with reminding him that to win Ada he must deserve her. So, the course of Mr. James Darrington’s true love ran on, for a while, without a ripple.

——

CHAPTER II.

Oh! how this Spring of Love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day.

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Some months again passed away, when, one morning, as James was about to leave the breakfast-room, he saw his mother suddenly put down an open letter, which she had been reading, and turn to his father with an exclamation—“Minister to France, William! Is this a stroke of Fortune or of Misfortune?”

“Such a question,” replied Mr. Darrington, “requires no answer. Whatever my appointment be to me, to you, I see that it is misfortune. But you are a woman, and therefore a stranger to the pleasures of ambition.”

“And to its pains,” said the wife quietly.

“Then from you,” resumed Mr. D., with a shade of vexation in his tone—“from you I may expect no congratulation. Have you no pride in such a mark of confidence to me from my country?”

“If by ‘your country’ you mean, as I suppose you do, your government, I fear that I am not to be any more elated by its confidence than depressed by its distrust. And besides,” continued she fondly, “my pride in you, William, is of too old a date to be increased by political success.”

The husband smiled, as what husband would not, to so flattering a declaration.

“Whether I be worthy of such praise or not, Julia, you must be right, as you always are, for your flattery has driven politics out of my head. See how the magic of a few kind words has transformed his Excellency the Minister into William Darrington, the most devoted of his wife’s vassals.”

“ ‘Ambition should be made of sterner stuff,’ William.”

“So it should, dearest, and therefore you need never fear her as a rival. The fact is, that I have been at my distaff so long as to love my very servitude. But here is a fellow smiling saucily to hear us talking of love. He thinks we should leave such things to Quixotic young gentlemen of sixteen, who go about the world rescuing hapless damsels from watery graves. Well, my boy,” continued he, rising, “since you are so precocious a gallant, what think you of exchanging pretty little Ada Somers for some black-eyed nymph, who traces her pedigree to the crusades, and calls herself Montmorency or De Longueville?”

James said nothing to this treasonable discourse; but like the silent parrot, “il n’enpensait pas moins;” and his thoughts were by no means flattering to the Ladies de Montmorency and de Longueville.

“What!” exclaimed his father, at the sight of his lugubrious countenance—“at your age not enchanted to see the world! Your little Omphale must have strong spells indeed if she can chain the roving spirit of sixteen to her feet! But come! I hear my phaeton at the door—I am going to town, and I want you to drive those little gray ponies for me to-day.”

At any other time the gray ponies would have divided James’ heart with Omphale herself, but just then love was in the ascendant, and he could only stammer out —

“I would—if you would—please to excuse me this morning, sir.”

But his father knew better than to excuse him, and after some persuasion they drove off together. At first, the discomfited lover held his reins in dejected silence, but by and bye the infection of his father’s cheerfulness spread over his young heart, his reins grew tighter, and his horses went faster, and by the time they reached the city, as he dashed along the streets at full speed, his brain was a kaleidoscope in which love, horses, Ada Somers and boyish curiosity tumbled about in glorious confusion.

Meanwhile Mrs. Darrington ordered her carriage and drove over to acquaint Mrs. Somers with her intended departure. For a series of years the families had been united in such close friendship that it was natural the movements of one should sufficiently interest the other to be made the object of a special visit.

Mrs. Somers, though her acquaintance in town was numerous, could hope, in none of her idle visiters, to find a substitute for her old friend; and she was sincerely distressed at this separation. They sat together for some hours, talking of the prospects of their children—their fears and hopes—the one trembling as she spoke of the dangerous career of her boy—the other, as she remembered that her child, as a woman, was to receive her fate from the hands of others. They then naturally fell upon the subject of their children’s mutual inclination, and wondered whether their destinies would ever be united.

“Ada is very near to my heart,” said Mrs. Darrington; “but it would be too much to expect any serious results from this childish freak.”

“We must leave them to themselves,” replied Ada’s mother. “In such cases, it is sacrilegious to lay a hand upon the web of the Fates; but I confess, I should be glad to know that Ada would ever marry your son.”

“Here she comes,” interrupted Mrs. Darrington; “I am curious to know what she will think of Mr. Darrington’s appointment.”

Ada ran up the steps, followed by her shadow, Catharine Ashton, who, guiltless of admirers, was addicted to romping of every kind. Not but what Miss Ada heartily enjoyed a romp herself, but of late she had become ashamed of being caught climbing fences and running races. At that moment, however, she had entirely forgotten that she ever braided her hair, or tied her sash “avec intention;” for the said sash streamed like a pennant to the wind, while the hair followed the same direction. Catharine, behind her, in much the same guise, was trying not to make too great a clatter upon the marble pavement of the hall; but Ada dashed on like a young Bacchante, and never stopped till she reached the lawn behind the house, where she threw herself full length on the grass, and screamed to Catharine to do the same.

“She is something of a romp, my Ada,” said Mrs. Somers, smiling. “Not yet a lady, certainly.”

“So much the better,” replied her friend. “Who would wish to stretch those free young limbs upon a Procrustean bed of propriety?”

“Not I, certainly,” said the mother. “But I am sometimes afraid that in my dread of making Ada artificial, I give too much sway to—Nature.”

“Not to such a nature as hers. Were there any tendency to coarseness in Ada’s mirth, you might be right to moderate it; but where nature is graceful in her wildness, no art can compete with her in loveliness.”

Another shout of mirth was heard, and Ada and Catharine burst into the parlor.

“What descent of wild Indians is this, Ada?” asked her mother, doubting the grace or refinement of this last movement. Ada started back, coloring with shame, and Catharine sneaked behind the nearest causeuse that offered concealment.

Mrs. Darrington easily divined that Ada’s embarrassment had special reference to her presence; so she smilingly extended her hand, and as Ada advanced with sheepish mien and awkward gait, she kissed her and said,

“I am glad to find you so merry, Ada. What a nice romp you must have had under those shady trees.”

At so gracious an opening, Catharine’s head appeared above the frame of the causeuse, but seeing Mrs. Darrington look toward her, down it popped again.

Mrs. Darrington saw her plainly enough; but she resisted her inclination to laugh, and went on.

“I want you to come and spend to-morrow with me, and I shall stop on my way home at Mrs. Ashton’s to ask if Catharine may come with you.” In her joy, Catharine nearly upset the causeuse, which rocked as if a little earthquake were taking place under it. “But I came this morning especially to tell you a piece of news.” At this, Catharine could hold out no longer; not only her curly head, but her entire self, emerged from concealment, and she slided, as she imagined, unobserved, into a seat.

“We are going away for awhile, Ada,” resumed Mrs. Darrington, “and I have various commissions to intrust to you. Will you do them?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I want you to take care of Hector and Fleeta,” continued Mrs. Darrington.

Hector and Fleeta! Then James was going too! Ada longed to ask where, and for how long, but she dared not; and Mrs. Darrington, seeing her large eyes ready to overflow, merely added that they would speak more on that subject on the morrow. She then spoke a few words to Catharine, repeated her invitation, and drove off.

“Where are they going, mamma?” asked poor Ada, the moment Mrs. Darrington left the room.

“To France, my love.”

“To France?” gasped Ada, to whom a voyage to Europe, or a voyage to the North Pole, was equally terrific.

“Yes, dear,” said her mother, “and I am not surprised that you are sorry to part with Mrs. Darrington and James, who are so kind to you.”

This at once relieved Ada from any obligation to contend with her grief; and using her mother’s sympathy as a carte blanche for any amount of tears, she burst into a violent fit of crying, in which she was joined by the sympathising Catharine. Mrs. Somers, not feeling disposed to make a third in this jérémiade, left them to weep in concert, which they did for some time à qui mieux mieux.

At length Ada dried her eyes, whereupon Catharine, who for some minutes had been squeezing hers to little purpose, quickly did the same; and after both had drawn a long breath, and had held up their handkerchiefs to see how much they had cried, Catharine thought it time to administer consolation.

“Never mind, Ada, when James is gone, brother George will ride with us. He is coming home next month.”

Conceive this, ye who have loved! The audacity of one’s bosom friend proposing some uninteresting brother as a substitute for one’s lover!

Ada was indignant, and forgetting the proof of friendship exhibited in Catharine’s exceedingly wet handkerchief, she gave such strong vent to her abhorrence of George, that a quarrel seemed unavoidable. At that moment, however, a servant came to call them to dinner, where decency forbade that Ada should be rude to her guest. At first the friends were quite formal, but with each course disappeared one layer of reserve, till the dessert was put on the table, when the desire to eat Philapænas together was irresistible, and the first twin-almond found in Ada’s plate restored peace.

The next day was spent with Mrs. Darrington. It passed in mingled joy and grief; but it must be confessed that the former predominated. Late in the afternoon, a procession, composed of James, Ada and Catharine, escorted Hector and Fleeta to their new home.

At length came the parting-hour. The Darrington family spent their last evening at Somerton; and Ada, though her father deposed that she had spent the entire day in the cave of Trophonius, was somewhat revived by the sight of Mrs. Darrington’s parting present. This was a beautiful writing-desk of ebony, dainty enough to have served Seneca or Sir Philip Sydney; for the inkstand, pen, pencil, and sand-box were, as Ada triumphantly pointed out to Catharine, of “real gold.”

As for James’ gift, what could it be but a ring set in the form of a Forget-me-not? And as he was a student of the classics, and had heard of the ring of Polycrates, he chose an emerald. He attempted an explanation of the resemblance between these two rings, which poor Ada vainly endeavored to comprehend; and no wonder, as King Polycrates threw his emerald to the sea, and James gave his to his sweetheart—but never mind! an emerald was in question, and Ada had been picked up out of a river; and as for the rest, why—the genius of sixteen is highly imaginative.

That night Ada went to bed with her ring on her finger, and cried herself to sleep. The next day the Darringtons sailed for Europe, and she heard nothing of her friends until three years afterward, when tidings arrived of the death of the American Minister at Paris, and the removal of his widow and son to England. After that, the mention of their names became less and less frequent; and when Hector and Fleeta were gathered to their fathers, so little remained to remind Ada of her lost playfellow, that she threw his ring into a box with old jewels, and by and bye threw his memory to the winds.

And so ended the first love of Ada Somers.

THE SECOND LOVE OF ADA SOMERS.

——

CHAPTER I.

——Hasset noch weil sie nicht liebt.

Schiller.

Ten years have glided away since we left Ada in tears and pantalets, and she has reached the mature age of twenty-three, “in maiden meditation fancy free.” Not that she ever bestowed a thought upon her childhood’s love—not that she lacked suitors either; for beautiful as one of Domenichino’s dark-eyed sybils, and with too many of the incidental endowments of fortune not to be worshiped for her wealth, if not for her worth, Ada might have had admirers as many as she had thousands. But she chose not to have them; and they might as well have “loved a bright particular star and hoped to wed it;” for Galatea would step from her pedestal for none of them. Always graceful and high-bred, the only charge brought against Ada by the sex who begin life by expecting to bag women’s hearts as they bag pheasants, was, that she returned their assiduities and their flattery with the utmost consummate indifference. “Favors to none, to all she smiles” extended; but beyond that, no word, look, or action ever gave evidence that the beautiful heiress regarded men in any other than in the light of so many monads, representing certain qualities of mind and soul, good or evil.

The men of —— were in amazement at such powers of resistance, when they reflected upon the amount of fascination and worth resisted; and Ada became as remarkable as the Rock of Gibraltar, not only in the eyes of the baffled enemy, but in those of certain of her female acquaintances, who, rather than die under the ban of old maidenhood, would have married Bluebeard himself, and therefore looked upon mankind as a race of husbands, “to be or not to be”—theirs.

But Ada was no Lydia Languish, and had no horror of being called a spinster; neither saw she any thing so attractive in marriage that all the world must go mad for it. Early in life, she had learned, as do all little girls, her lesson of inferiority to a greater sex, and she grew up with a vague idea of the sublimity and wisdom of man, and the folly and ignorance of woman; but by and bye, as faith gave way to reason, she discovered that the lords of the creation were, generally speaking, none the wiser for their usurpation of the glorious privilege of praising God with their intellects, but that three-fourths of this boasting race were as frivolous as if, like woman, they had been all their lives shut out from the Paradise of knowledge, and had not had possession of all the learning of the earth for thousands of years. Moreover, Ada took an exalted view of the condition of old maids; she considered it a position which gave scope for the exercise of a wider philanthropy than is safe or consistent with the duties of a wife and mother; and she wrought up her enthusiasm for the vocation of the sisterhood to such a pitch, that she made up her mind to become one of them. But,

“Varium et mutabile semper

Fæmina——”

So thought Catharine Ashton, when she heard of these resolves; for she had grown up with very different opinions; and faithful to her convictions, she was on the eve of being married, and wished for nothing in the world so much as that her friend should be as happy as herself. Catharine had spent two years in Europe, and although her lover, Charles Ingleby, had always resided in ——, they met for the first time in Germany, where Ingleby was spending the summer with a friend, whom Catharine never wearied of lauding; for, like a true woman, she was ready to take to her breast any thing and every thing that loved her Charles; and between him and Mr. Stanley, there existed so warm a friendship, that the latter had greatly hurried some business transaction which detained him in Europe, to return in company with his friend and his pretty fiancée.

Mr. Stanley was daily expected to perform the part of groomsman to the lovers, and Ada Somers had been chosen to bear him company as bridemaid.

Ada and Mr. Ingleby were the best friends imaginable; and they had, from their first interview, seemed so pleased with each other, as to cause Catharine to hope that all was not yet lost for her poor friend. If she had made so signal an exception in favor of her (Catharine’s) lover, as to grant him the boon of her friendship, what might not be accomplished by a high-minded and estimable man who offered more than friendship? Mr. Stanley, for instance.

——

CHAPTER II.

’Twas throwing words away, for still

The little maid would have her will.

Wordsworth.

A week before the wedding Mr. Stanley arrived, and as Ada had been invited to join a family party at the house of Charles Ingleby’s sister, Catharine took the liberty of inviting Mr. Stanley on her own account, for she was determined to begin operations at once. She had deliberated for some time whether or not to apprize Ada of the important arrival; at last, it was decided in the negative, and as the decision had cost the impetuous Catharine a fearful exercise of self-denial, she repaid herself by hurrying off her mother, lover, and protégé, half an hour before the time appointed. She might as well have spared herself the trouble, as no Ada made her appearance, and it was not until the evening had almost passed away that Catharine learned from their hostess, Mrs. Howard, that Ada had excused herself early that morning, upon plea of a pre-engagement.

This was too impertinent of Ada, and Catharine resolved, early the next morning to go over and tell her so. The Somerses always spent their winters in town, and as a few squares only separated the friends, Catharine was soon at the door of Mr. Somers’ house, ringing the bell with the vehemence of a postman. The well-bred servant who opened the door, looked surprised when he found that it was Miss Ashton who had nearly broken his bell-wire; but as Miss Ashton was a privileged belle herself, and had been running tame about Mr. Somers’ house ever since he could remember, he stepped back respectfully, while she passed unannounced into the sitting-room.

“Good morning, Mrs. Somers, where is Ada?” asked she, taking off her bonnet.

“You will find her in the library, my dear,” replied Mrs. Somers, and away flew Catharine, with the easy familiarity of one whose welcome is unquestionable. She was prepared to heap abuse upon the head of the offending Ada, but when she flung open the door, she had not the heart to find fault with any thing so pretty.

Her blouse of rich Cashmere was fastened around the waist by a cord and tassel, its loose sleeves lined with crimson silk, were looped back so as to contrast with the snow-white cambric of the under sleeve; and the dainty little collar that encircled her white throat was fastened by a very small cameo brooch. Her dark hair was drawn over her ears à la comtesse, and the edge of its large twisted coronal, was just visible above one of the prettiest heads in the world. Ada had been poring, with rapture, over Jean Paul’s apostrophe to an old maid. She had found an advocate, and her large orbs were luminous with the enthusiasm of a mind that has just found, mirrored in another, the image of its own thoughts; and she looked so fair, so fresh, so any thing but like a student, that Catharine forgot her offences, and could only exclaim:

“Ada, you are radiant with beauty this morning. So should a woman look who has just parted from her lover. But you! you might as well be a mummy three thousand years old, as the beautiful girl you are.”

“Thank you,” said Ada quietly, while Catharine rattled on.

“Pray, whose is the spell that has brought such brilliancy to your eye?”

“Jean Paul’s.”

“Jean Paul’s!” echoed Catharine, disdainfully, “Only think of giving one’s best feelings to an author! Literally falling in love with a set of abstractions!”

“Falling in love!” returned Ada, laughing. “Who but you would have applied such a term to such a passionless recreation as reading? Ah, my poor Kate, you are far gone, indeed, and there is no method in your madness!”

“Well, don’t preach, but shut your book, and listen to me. I am very angry with you. Why were you not at Julia’s last night?”

“Why, because I was engaged to go and hear Mr. —— lecture on Shakspeare.”

“How absurd! These lecturers are a nuisance to society, and ought to be suppressed. I wonder the ghost of Shakspeare has not risen long ago, to beg that they will leave his ashes in peace.”

“He ought to be much obliged to them, for unfolding his beauties to the million who have a comprehension, but no perception of the beautiful, and are quite capable both of seeing and admiring, when they have been told what to see and admire.”

“You are very wise and eloquent, no doubt, Ada, but I am not able this morning to take part in a discussion on literary acumen,” said her lively friend, “I am here for something less profound, and more important, Julia’s soirée.”

“Well, what had you to offer, that could weigh in the balance with Mr. ——’s eloquence?”

“Mr. Stanley.”

“Who is Mr. Stanley? A rival lecturer?”

A rival lecturer! This was too provoking of Ada to forget the name of Charles’ friend, and Catharine looked up to see if the forgetfulness might not possibly be assumed. Alas! it was but too real, and she gave full vent to her indignation, as she recalled to Ada, who and what Mr. Stanley was.

“True, I had forgotten,” quietly rejoined the offender. “But surely, Kate, there is no occasion for so much warmth. How should I remember him, when I have never even seen him?”

“That is just the reason why I am provoked—I wanted to present him to you last evening.”

“Another time will do just as well.”

“But there is no time to be lost,” replied Catharine, vehemently.

“Why we have no preliminaries to settle about the wedding ceremony, have we?” asked Ada, ingenuously.

The question recalled Catharine to a sense of the blunder she had been about to commit, and she answered carelessly:

“Oh, no! but it would be pleasanter for both, had you met before the wedding. By the bye, Ada,” added she, to change the subject, “you should have seen how handsome Charles was last night.”

“I dare say! Had he chosen to deck himself with an ass’s head, Titania would have found him so.”

“Poor Charles! That I should live to hear him likened to Bottom, the weaver. But I ought to know better than to expect you to appreciate him; you, who waste your love upon books and music, and —”

“Saucy girls like yourself, Kate. But when you begin to wander over your ‘Carte du pays tendre,’ pray don’t expect me to keep you company, for I have never explored it. I will acknowledge, at the same time, that Charles is handsome—nay, the handsomest man of my acquaintance.”

“Ah, you will!” said Catharine, with a bright smile. “Then I forgive you, but I predict that the day will come, when you will be punished for despising this ‘Carte du pays tendre,’ for mark me, Ada! yours is the very nature for une grande passion, and when you love—angels and ministers of grace defend me!—it will be Ætna poured into Vesuvius.”

Ada laughed heartily, and a very sweet laugh was hers—low and musical, as the chime of fairy bells.

“Pray, Kate,” asked she, “when did the mantle of divination fall upon those pretty shoulders?”

“Oh, I became wise like Cassandra. Love has made me a prophetess.”

“And like Cassandra, a prophetess whom nobody heeds.”

“Right, Ada,” exclaimed Catharine, exultingly, “and to complete the resemblance, a true prophetess, notwithstanding.”

“You are clever at repartee, my Kate, but you have mistaken your vocation. If at the mature age of twenty-three I have never loved —”

“You forget James Darrington.”

“Pshaw,” said Ada, slightly coloring, “as if that deserved a name.”

“It does—for it proves that the object, not the feeling, is wanting.”

“It proves no such thing, so stop weaving romances for me, and make up your mind, like a good girl, to see me live the life, and die the death of an old maid.”

“The death of an old maid!” Catharine lifted up her hands in horror.

“I could not die in better company, Catharine, and I am surprised to hear any thing so missish from one who was once a rational being.”

“Thank you, Ada. But if I err, I have the comfort of erring with the whole world; and as I am no Briareus, I cannot lift my single arm to do battle with its errors. Besides, the prejudice against old maids is not one of yesterday; remember the lament of Jeptha’s daughter.”

“Do not quote the Jews to me for any thing!” cried Ada. “A wicked and idolatrous race, who, in the very desert where heaven rained manna for their food, and the rocks gushed forth water for their drink, could turn from the visible presence of the living God, and bow down before a golden calf! The heathens, for their opportunities, were both wiser and better than the children of Israel; and among them, the priestesses of the temples, the most honored of their women, were virgins. But stay! we do not need their sanction. The most perfect of created beings, she who was chosen to be the mother of the Saviour, is she not called ‘the blessed Virgin?’ ”

“Ay, dear Ada,” said Catharine, dropping her levity, “but she was a mother, and so fulfilled woman’s highest and dearest mission.”

“In her case it was both; and in all cases, the vocation of the wife and mother is a beautiful and joyous one; but precisely because in the eyes of the world it is so graceful and honorable, does it seem to me less noble than that of the lonely woman, who, first in the heart of none, devotes herself to all, for the love of heaven. The sister of charity, whose gentle hand smoothes the pillow of the dying outcast, the pensive nun, who sits at the Redeemer’s feet, are they not the Marys, ‘who have chosen the better part;’ and the busy wife, with her thousand cares, is she not that Martha troubled about many things?”

Catharine was touched by the eloquent earnestness of her friend’s manner, but it was not in her nature to be serious; she could only pause, to get over the embarrassment of feeling solemn, and then answer:

“Ada, your ideal of an old maid is charming, but unluckily, it is but an ideal. Who that saw the faultless picture you have just drawn, would recognize as its original Miss Trott, who, instead of sitting at anybody’s feet, spends her days pattering about town as a fetcher and carrier of scandal, or Miss Dolly Wiggin, whose religion is made up of pious detestation of her neighbors’ faults, and whose life is an epitome of the Pharisee’s prayer?”

Dearly as she loved Catharine, Ada felt sometimes that she deserved chiding for her levity; but as in all her attempts at reproof, Catharine invariably got the better of her, through her drollery and good-humor, Ada merely shook her head as she answered:

“Trifler! trifler! will nothing be sacred from your indomitable spirit of fun?”

“Certainly not old maids—and if you persist in being one, expect no bounds to my contempt.”

“My nature will steel me against it,” replied Ada, “for you well know that I am not one to be turned from any purpose by ridicule; and as argument on this subject, is about as unavailing as a homily on the virtues to a staring idiot, you had better leave me to my unhappy fate, and confine your exertions to the shaping of your own destiny. Marry if you will, dear Kate,” continued she, rising, “and swear by the simplicity of Venus’ doves; but don’t expect all your friends to go philandering over the world after your example. And now, come with me to my room, and tell me whether my dress for your wedding shall be of Organdie or Tarlatane.”

“I will, with pleasure,” exclaimed Catharine, gayly, “for I was just beginning to fear that you were:

‘A creature far too bright and good,

For human nature’s daily food,’

but, thank Folly! you remind me that you are nothing but a woman after all!”

The next morning Ada ordered the carriage early; for besides having various purchases to make, she wished to deliver to Catharine Ashton, in person, a dressing-case, which she had ordered as a wedding-present for her friend.

Ada was ushered into Catharine’s own room, where on a centre-table lay scattered the countless pretty offerings, which, at such a period, never fail a bride, (I mean a bride rich enough to buy them for herself,) for it is a remarkable fact in the physiology of present making, that gifts are carefully disproportioned to the need of the donees; to the rich, much, to the poor, little is invariably given. Miss Ashton was wealthy, and, therefore, her friends had spent a great deal of money in her honor; and many a rich bauble calling itself “Friendship’s offering,” had it been labeled “Gift of ostentation,” would have worn the livery of the motive that sent it.

Over the glittering heap that dazzled Ada’s eyes, as she entered the room, was flung the scarf of delicate Brussels, no longer the veil but the ornament of brides; and Kate herself was standing before a Cheval-glass, adjusting the folds of a bright Cashmere, which fell, soft as silk, around her slight figure.

“Beautiful!” exclaimed Ada, herself an exquisite judge of dress: “and how becoming.”

“Which is more to the purpose,” replied Catharine, laughing; and she threw her shawl upon the bed, thereby disturbing the flounces of six silk dresses, which flew up like so many peacocks’ tails. The next moment she was snapping asunder the cords that bound up Ada’s package, and her busy fingers had soon torn off the papers that enveloped it.

“Beautiful! beautiful!” cried she, delighted, “the very, the only thing I wanted. Oh,” cried she, opening it, “this is really prettier than Mrs. Darrington’s gift to you in days of yore, Ada. Do you remember your exultation, and my envy on that memorable evening? And the ring—poor James’ emerald! Suppose he were to return with another ring, do you think your heart could be made to beat to the tune of ‘Auld lang syne’?”

“I should not know him if I met him,” replied Ada; but she was so busy fastening her glove that Catharine could not see whether her saucy question had made an impression. She knew that Ada disliked the least allusion to her early love, a symptom which, as Catharine was “herself and not Œdipus,” puzzled her exceedingly.

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” said she, carelessly, and after replacing all the boxes and flacons she had taken out of her dressing-case, she continued: “Well! I suppose I must give you up. George wouldn’t do, would he?” asked she, with a saucy smile, and then shaking her head: “No—No—I see you resent my old offer of him as successor to the unfortunate James, whose memory now lies ‘five fathom deep under the blade waters of Lethe.’ ”

Ada leaned her head upon her hand, and her fancy wandered back to the days of her childish love, and the spell of memory was so potent that her heart beat as if the black waters of Lethe had not engulfed all remembrance. Catharine looked at her in some surprise, and then snatching from the table a little Cupid of bronze artistique, whose quiver was filled with harmless lamplighters, she placed it before Ada, saying:

“ ‘Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître

Il est, le fut, ou le doit être.’

After all, Ada, there is nothing but the difference of a tense between you and me. I am, and you have been in love, and if ‘Il a bu boira,’ I think I may venture to hope that ‘Elle a aimée, aimera.’ ”

Ada shook her head. “Bad taste and false reasoning, Kate. The false reasoning I pass over, for there is often poetry, if seldom justice in comparisons between things tangible and immaterial, but for the crime of sinking love to a level with intemperance, you deserve ‘La peine forte et dure.’ ” And having enlisted Catharine in a defense of her taste and judgment, Ada took advantage of the first pause that ensued, to take her leave.

She threw herself back into her carriage, and her reveries were of auld lang syne. Her rescue—(it had been no jest!) her subsequent love for the noble boy who had risked something to save her—his departure—her childish grief—one by one, in the twilight of memory, rose the phantoms of the past; and then, as Ada’s fancy sketched its ideal of James Darrington’s present self, she wondered whether —

But just at that moment she felt the carriage violently thrown back, and heard a tumult of voices, giving token that something unusual had happened.

A child had just been rescued from under her horses’ feet.

“Is he killed?” exclaimed the shuddering girl; but no answer was vouchsafed to her terrified inquiries; for the crowd was like all other crowds, and a fine lady was of less consequence than a mangled child—for a mangled child was a spectacle!

There was much pushing—many oaths—much angry contention; for every man in the crowd was determined to see the child himself, and was fiercely engaged in forcing his way, and in abusing the curiosity of his fellows.

Ada shuddered again—but it was with disgust.

At length the dense mass before her began to thin—and the oaths to cease. The child was not mangled, and there had been nothing to see.

There was now room for her to act. She dared not alight, but she called her footman. “Quick! Quick, Grey, go bring me news of that poor child, and say that I will take it in my carriage to the nearest physician.”

The footman disappeared, and Ada counted five minutes of intense anxiety. At length he returned. The gentleman who had rescued the child, accepted her offer, for no physician resided any where near, and this was the best plan that as yet had been proposed.

“Then fetch him, Grey, and let us begone,” said his trembling mistress.

Grey pointed to an opening, where a gentleman was seen advancing with the child in his arms. He then opened the door, and Ada leaned forward to receive the little plebian, but his preserver drew back.

“Nay,” said he, respectfully, “that would be repaying benevolence with imposition. The child is heavy and unfit for such hands as yours. If you will not deem me impertinent then,” added he, slightly coloring, “I will carry him myself.”

Ada comprehended the implied request, and permission was as frankly given as it had been asked.

The stranger had foreseen every exigency. The first object was to consult a physician, and then the child would be conveyed home. Ada thought only of the speediest means of relieving its suffering; she therefore approved of every thing, and the carriage rolled away from the gaping crowd.

This was rather a perplexing position for two young people who had never met before, but strange to say, neither of them felt it. They were too much engrossed with benevolence, to remember convention.

Meanwhile, the carriage drew up before the door of the physician, and as, contrary to the custom of the faculty, he was sometimes to be found at his own house, no delay ensued. To Ada’s infinite joy, he pronounced the child sound in limb. There was nothing, he said, to prevent its immediate removal; and if the lady and gentleman would allow him, he would accompany, instead of following them; it would be safer than to wait for his own phæton.

“Lady and gentleman!” These were the first words that awakened Ada to the fact of her having allowed a handsome young man, a perfect stranger, to enter her carriage. She blushed, and inwardly blessing the doctor for his proposal, she soon found herself going, she knew not whither, in the company of, she knew not whom.

Dr. B. was an eminent surgeon, and a very humane man, and to prevent any offer of remuneration for his services, he expressed his pleasure to his new acquaintances, at the opportunity they had afforded him, of being included in a deed of charity. Something more he added, which would have been all very admissible, had he rightly conjectured the relation, or rather the non-relation of the parties addressed; but as he mistook them for husband and wife, his words not only brought a glow of burning shame upon the cheek of our poor Ada, thoughtless, through excess of thoughtfulness for another, but they somewhat heightened the complexion of her guest also.

With a delicacy and tact, for which the young girl thanked him from her heart, he explained the accident which had brought them together; and while the disturbed Ada was beginning to accuse herself of culpable imprudence, the doctor scarcely knew whether most to admire her for her disinterestedness or to pity her for confusion.

Ada was sensibly relieved, when, having restored the child to its mother, and promised to call again on the morrow, she was once more alone on her way home.

The stranger watched her till she was out of sight, and then went home with the doctor.

As they walked together, the doctor thought that if so remarkable a meeting between two such interesting persons came to nothing, it would be a great waste of romance in real life.

The next day Ada begged her mother to accompany her on her visit to little Johnny Wilson; she had some scruples about going alone. But when the hour came, Mrs. Somers was indisposed, and Ada was forced to go unaccompanied. The first person she saw on entering Mrs. Wilson’s little parlor, was the stranger; and not even the sight of his arm in a sling had power to soften Ada’s displeasure at his appearance. Good Mrs. Wilson, however, was in high spirits; Johnny was better; the gentleman had brought him some toys, and she attributed entirely to the said Johnny’s attractions, the two hours which her guest had been spending at her front window. When in the height of her volubility, Mrs. Wilson deposed that he had spent the whole morning with Johnny, the culprit had once more recourse to the window, to hide his embarrassment; and while he was wondering what he should do next, Ada, after a few brief inquiries as to Johnny’s wants, bowed coldly, and took her leave in serious displeasure; for she felt that this interview had all the appearance of a rendezvous.

Just as she opened the street door, she was met by Doctor B., the sight of whom by no means contributed to diminish her vexation or confusion. The doctor saw that she seemed uneasy, and a glance at the person looking out of the parlor window accounted to him for it; he therefore checked the greetings he was about to offer, and gracefully bidding Ada good morning, he entered the house.

Doctor B. comprehended the whole matter, without help or hint—for he was in the habit of studying the mental as well as the bodily ailments of mankind.

“Foolish fellow!” said the kind-hearted physician, to himself. “No wonder that pretty creature is offended. I must really tell him that there is no tact in his proceedings. What a magnificent creature she is!” continued he, musing, “with her wide brow and intellectual eye. I must find out her name, and give my friend here a hint not to dog her steps, as if she were a vain and silly miss of every-day mould.”

Meanwhile the subject of his musings walked home in no serene state of mind. If she had been disturbed yesterday, to-day she was cruelly mortified. But it was all owing to her own misconduct. How could she so far forget herself as to share her carriage with an entire stranger! Why had she not resigned it to him, and walked home? But what indiscretion—what utter absence of delicacy to go with him! She could never forgive herself. And poor Ada’s cheek burned with the stinging shame of delicacy compromised. And then she colored, and asked herself “what right she had to suppose herself an object in a visit so natural? Perhaps he had not thought of her at all;” and she began to breathe more freely, when she suddenly remembered his conscious look, when Mrs. Wilson had expatiated upon his kindness in sitting with them so long. Back, then, came thronging confusion and shame; so that by the time Ada reached home, she had tortured herself into a headache, and was obliged to send an apology to Catharine, with whom she had promised to spend that evening.

Early the next morning came Catharine on a visit of inquiry. Mr. Stanley (whom she had invited expressly to meet Ada) had been so stupid and so unlike himself that she had been several times on the point of going to sleep; and she had half forgiven him, in the belief that he was stupid with disappointment, when he suddenly interrupted a long pause by relating an adventure which had befallen him the day before. There was a beautiful girl in question, and she it was, and not Ada, who had made Mr. Stanley “duller than the fat weed of Lethe.”

Ada then heard his version of their meeting, and Catharine, in the fullness of her indignation, grew so red and angry as she dwelt on the marks of his visible infatuation, that Ada laughed outright. Still she was sufficiently ashamed of the whole affair to have kept it quietly to herself, had the hero thereof been any one but Mr. Stanley. This she now saw was not possible, for in four days the wedding was to take place, and for her own sake the confession must not be withheld.

It was made as briefly as possible, and Catharine was so overjoyed that she scarcely marked the cold and discouraging tone of Ada’s recital. “Just like him,” exclaimed she, “to sprain his wrist in saving the life of a little ragged democrat—it is not the first time he has risked himself for others.” And she was now as loud in praise as she had just been in condemnation.

Ada never doubted for a moment, that Catharine, whose impetuous nature converted life into a series of telegraphic dispatches, would fly off and relate what she had just heard to Charles, Mr. Stanley, and the whole world. She implored her therefore to confine her disclosures to the two former, and to be as sparing as possible of raptures. Catharine promised every thing, for she had just been seized with the humorous idea of saying nothing at all about it, and so of witnessing the effect of Ada’s unexpected appearance upon Mr. Stanley.

Four days are not long in passing, even to lovers—and the wedding-evening came at last. Catharine was as free in step, as joyous in heart as ever. She laughed and talked of her happiness, as she twined her fingers around her glossy curls; and she spoke gayly of her love for Charles, as she gathered up the folds of her veil, and requested Ada to fasten in her hair, so as to make it becoming, as well as emblematic.

Catharine was more than ever an enigma to her friend, for Ada could not comprehend that happiness which wears the form of so much gayety. To the one, happiness was a deep and subdued feeling; to the other she came

“With nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles.”

But the two girls were as dissimilar—as friends usually are.

At length, with heightened color, and eyes dewy with emotion, (for she dearly loved Catharine,) Ada followed the bride; and perhaps she had never looked so lovely as she did to the astonished eyes of Mr. Stanley, when, scarcely believing the evidence of his senses, he recognized the face which for one whole week had visited him in dreams.

His surprise was not to be mistaken, and Ada, overwhelmed with confusion, turned upon Catharine a glance so reproachful, that the glaring impropriety of what she had done instantly flashed upon her. She remembered that Stanley knew her too well, not to be assured that she had poured the history of his adventure into Ada’s ears; and now it seemed as if both had been conspiring to enjoy his surprise—as if poor Ada had been accessary to a joke—a thing for which she had the greatest aversion. Catharine was so displeased with her heedless conduct, that she was unable to detest herself sufficiently; and not possessing Ada’s habitual self-control, her penitence and apologies only made the matter ten times worse.

Ada’s humiliation is not to be described. The mistake of Dr. B.—the visit to Johnny Wilson were bad enough—but this was a positive indelicacy, a thing for which Mr. Stanley must justly despise her. But she was mistaken. Mr. Stanley knew Catharine well enough to recognize her as sole author of the plot, and his behaviour on the occasion testified his conviction of the same. Ada felt his kindness, but her wounds bled none the less; and with bitter reluctance she placed her arm within his, and descended to the parlor.

What a dangerous thing it is to interfere with the inclinations of others. If there is anything in the world calculated to disgust two people with one another, it is the discovery that their friends are laboring “to make a match between them.”

Ada had just made this discovery.

The ceremony over, etiquette required that for a time at least she should endure the attentions of her luckless admirer. He really was in a position of some difficulty, but he acquitted himself therein with such perfect tact and good-breeding, that Ada felt bound to hate him less. But as soon as an excuse presented itself, she crossed the room, to join another group, and left Mr. Stanley to the civilities of a young lady, who seemed disposed to pay him every attention in her power. He, poor fellow, almost sighed, as he followed her graceful figure; but he resolved not to distress her with pursuit; so he addressed himself to the young lady beside him—talked a variety of elegant nonsense to half the company, and finally took his seat by Catharine.

“What have you done?” said he, reproachfully.

“Enough to mar the pleasure of my bridal day,” replied the penitent bride; “but how could I dream—it was all a jest springing from my unbounded delight, when I found that, like Romeo, you had fallen in love with her at first sight.”

Mr. Stanley shook his head and smiled.

“It might as well have been,” answered she, and then lowering her voice, she added, “How strange! how very strange! and how delightful!”

“Delightful for you, perhaps,” said her companion, in a serious tone; “but first from my own, and now from your blunder, Catharine, I fear that the day on which I first met her, will be an inauspicious one for me.” He then related to Catharine all that Ada had omitted—blamed himself for the indiscretion of his visit to Mrs. Wilson; “and now, my dear Catharine,” said he, “have you and I together not done enough to make her hate me?”

“Hate you! Heaven forbid! for then I shall have held my tongue to no purpose, and shall have wasted a great deal of good feeling in your service.”

“Your feelings are just what they ought to be, ardent and affectionate, but your judgment, I fear,” added he, with a smile, “is no better—than my own.”

“Then what shall I do?” asked Catharine, despairingly.

“Do, my dear Catharine? Do—nothing.”

“Well, this is sentence of death, indeed, upon my talents for meddling; but never mind, I am so much more anxious to serve you than to distinguish myself, that I will—try.”

She kept her promise; and for a month at least, Ada was suffered to like or dislike Mr. Stanley in peace. During this time, many parties were given to the popular bride; and though Ada was not fond of balls, still, as bridemaid, she was forced not only to attend them, but to accept as much attention as the enemy chose to offer. He was careful that this attention should be no more than etiquette required of him; and it was so unobtrusive, that at length Ada felt less and less embarrassed in his presence, and ceased to think of his acquaintance as the greatest misfortune of her life.

——

CHAPTER IV.

“Noch seh’ ich sie

Die herrlichste von allen, stand sie da.”

At length, to Ada’s infinite relief, came the last of Catharine’s bridal parties. This was one of the largest and gayest of the season; and the throng was so great that the two friends were separated soon after entering the room, and saw nothing of each other till the evening was more than half over.

The music had been so inviting that Catharine danced on until, thoroughly exhausted, she made her way to another room, and sunk into the depths of a Louis Quatorze, which, despised by the dancers, had been tending its cushioned-arms for hours in vain. When she was sufficiently rested, she began to look around her, and perceived that at last accident had brought her so near to Ada, that the light folds of her crape dress almost touched Catharine as the air from the open windows swayed it to and fro.

Ada was talking with Mr. Stanley, and listening to his animated and brilliant conversation with an interest which spoke in her smiling lips and sparkling eyes. As for the gentleman, he was perfectly happy; he would have asked nothing better than to look into those eyes for ever; and, elated with the conviction that he had conquered her growing aversion for him, he was now cherishing the hope that time might win for him her regard. He already judged too correctly of her character, to fancy it subject to sudden changes or hasty attachments; but he thought it something to have brought her to a state of amiable indifference—to have “smoothed the raven down of darkness till it smiled.”

“If you like the sentiment, Miss Somers,” were the first words Catharine overheard, “I am sure you will be pleased with the whole book. The author of Lacon, though he has borrowed largely from La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, has some claims to originality. His style, moreover, is epigrammatic, and his subjects will interest one like you, whose cast of mind is metaphysical.”

“Humph!” said Catharine to herself, “you have been studying its nature, con amore, I perceive;” while Mr. Stanley, unconscious of listeners, went on.

“Will you allow me to bring it to you to-morrow, together with Picciola?”

Ada gave a gracious assent, while Catharine pursued the current of her remarks.

“Picciola! Lacon! Upon my word, he is advising a course of reading.” And the demon of mischief strongly tempted her to break her promise—but this time she resisted, or rather mischief was stifled by curiosity; for, just at that moment, Charles advanced toward Ada with a middle-aged and gentlemanly-looking man, whom he begged to present to Miss Somers as Doctor B., a gentleman who, for some time, had been anxious for the honor of her acquaintance.

“Doctor B.!” exclaimed Catharine, almost audibly. Why that is the celebrated surgeon. What interest can he have in Ada, so particularly to desire her acquaintance? And, gracious heavens! how Ada blushes! What can there be in the appearance of a respectable-looking elderly gentleman to cause such a fluttering? And he and Stanley appear to be such excellent friends, too. Oh, I can stand this no longer. “Charles! Charles!” cried she, as Ada was led off to the dance, and Doctor B. and Stanley moved away together; “Come quickly and tell me why you took such special pains to make Ada acquainted with Doctor B. I was not aware that you knew him personally.”

“I did not until this evening,” replied Charles, “and I introduced him to Ada by Stanley’s request.”

“Why that is singular. I never knew they were intimate before. But why, then, did he not introduce him himself?”

“He would not take the liberty,” said Charles, with a smile.

Catharine understood and returned the smile; then observed, “Stanley ought to go on the stage. He has great talents for playing ‘The Stranger.’ ”

Charles nodded his head, and then explained the origin of the intimacy between Dr. B. and Stanley, and left Catharine traveling in seven-league boots, till she ended her journey with Ada’s marriage.

Catharine had seen and heard too much that evening not to be primed for mischief; and an opportunity soon occurred which put to flight all her promises of neutrality. The dance was ended, and she had just comfortably married Ada, when she once more spied the object of her thoughts. She was alone, for her partner had gone in search of an ice for her; and her attitude was that of complete meditation. Slowly and deliberately she was tearing to pieces the prettiest flowers in her bouquet, without seeming to know what she did. Catharine had just seen Mr. Stanley leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing at Ada as if his whole soul had been in his eyes; she instantly converted what she saw into cause and effect; and delighted with her own penetration, she could not resist so favorable an occasion for displaying it.

Catharine was right as to the object, mistaken as to the cause of her friend’s meditation. Ada was thinking with genuine satisfaction of the very agreeable person whom she had just escaped hating; and though, like all generous minds, she liked him the better for her former injustice, her thoughts were neither of rapture nor of love; they wore the sober hue of justice; and if she was thinking of Mr. Stanley without prejudice, she was also thinking of him without enthusiasm, and she was unconscious of his gaze until Catharine called her attention to it.

“Where’s your bouquet, Ada?” said Catharine, pointing to the carnations and geraniums that strewed the floor; and looking so intensely mischievous, that Ada, innocent though she was, felt guilty.

“Really—I—it was so heavy,” stammered she, scarcely knowing what to say.

“Indeed!” said Catharine, significantly; “then do let me ask Mr. Stanley to come and hold it for you; it is the least he can do after causing its destruction—shall I call him?”

Ada followed the direction of Catharine’s eyes, and one glance at Mr. Stanley, gazing at her with an expression of intense admiration, explained what was passing in Catharine’s mind. Ada was not pleased with such public homage; moreover she had an aversion to what is commonly called “being teazed about a gentleman;” but this was no place to remonstrate with Catharine, and she resigned herself.

“Oh, no!” said she, smiling, “he has probably some object in view. Perhaps he is practicing for a tableau vivant, designed to represent Lara, or the leaning tower of Pisa. I have no desire to interfere with so rational an amusement.”

“In other words,” replied Catharine, intent upon tormenting, “I am politely requested to mind my business, and let Mr. Stanley look at Miss Somers as long as he pleases. Well, all I have to beg is, that you will keep out of my green-house whenever you indulge him in this ‘rational amusement,’ at least till you have read Picciola, and have learned the value of a flower.”

“Picciola!” echoed Ada, looking surprised, but by no means confused, as Catharine had anticipated. “So, Kate, you have been playing Hephæstion to-night! What a waste of conscience for a parcel of ballroom nonsense!”

“Oh, no! not Hephæstion,” exclaimed Catharine, “I am not so ambitious. I am a mere snapper up of inconsidered trifles.”

“Well! considering the way in which you collect them,” said Ada, good-humoredly, “I think you might be more scrupulous as to the way you use them; and though you disclaim the resemblance, let me tell you that you are quite as much in need of a seal to your lips as Hephæstion himself.”

At this moment appeared Ada’s partner with an iced peach, and many apologies for not bringing it sooner. He then offered to procure another for Mrs. Ingleby—and she, to rid herself of his presence, accepted the offer.

“Upon my word, he is staring at you yet!” exclaimed she.

This time Ada thought Catharine was jesting; and she looked up to prove her indifference. But no! Once more her eye met his, and blushing with displeasure, she replied to Catharine’s exclamation of triumph,

“I should never have suspected any gentleman of trying to stare a lady out of countenance; but you know Mr. Stanley better than I do, Catharine, and since you have constituted yourself his protectress, you would do well to teach him the rudiments of politeness.”

“He will be delighted with such a proof of your interest,” replied she, “and as I am just about to challenge him to a walk on yonder balcony, I’ll not fail to tell him what you have said. And if Charles inquires for me, tell him, that at your special request, I am undertaking the education of his friend; and pray be particular on that point, for I remember some ten years ago, when gray eyes were in the ascendency with us, and Charles might think that such a pair as Mr. Stanley’s, and given to staring, too, might be dangerous. And now thank me, Ada, for I am going to take him away;” and off she flew, delighted with having achieved the difficult task of vexing Ada, and convinced that because she was vexed, she must be in love.

A few moments after, Catharine was pacing the balcony on Mr. Stanley’s arm, and actually repeating to him Ada’s very words.

“No wonder,” sighed her mortified companion, “you have never any peace till you vex her with me in some way or other. She, so gentle—why should you provoke her to speak harshly?”

“Oh, I could not help it!” said Catharine. “I was sorry for the poor flowers—anxious that your admiring glances should not be thrown away, and—in short, the fit was upon me.”

“What a reason, Catharine, for wounding the feelings of your dearest friend, and enlisting her womanly pride against one whom you profess—nay, I will be just, whom you really like.”

Catharine looked penitent, while he continued, “If I had not made that foolish promise, she would not think me so presumptuous as she does; and but for your interference, Catharine, I might perhaps have no cause to regret it. But —”

“But remember that I am going away to-morrow, and you will then have the entire management of your love affairs in your own hands.”

“True,” said he, smiling; “and you are such a mischievous Puck, that I shall certainly mark the day of your departure with a white stone.”

“Saucy, are you, sir? Well! I shall punish you on my return. But hist! no more of Ada, for she comes this way. The traitress! she has been flirting with my husband, while I have been tormenting her lover.”

“My dear Catharine,” said Ada, advancing, “I defended you to Mr. Ingleby to the best of my abilities, but he insisted upon testing my sincerity by confronting us.”

“Mr. Ingleby is pleased to play the Othello,” returned Catharine; “I demand, therefore, that you give him up to my vengeance.” And Catharine would have taken her husband’s arm, but seeing that Ada had no mind to relinquish it, she whispered, “For shame! to bear malice so long; his eyes are not basalisks.” But Ada went on quietly talking to Ingleby’s sister, Mrs. Howard, who had joined them; and the conversation became general, and turned upon the expected departure of the newly-married pair. Not long after, they took their leave, and Ada, to atone for her unkind remarks, accepted Mr. Stanley’s arm to the carriage, and bade him a cordial good-night.

Early the next morning Catharine started on her bridal tour, to be absent the entire summer. She wished Mr. Stanley much happiness, and he, bowing with mock gravity, assured her that he looked upon her disappearance as the first step thereunto. And he was really as glad to have her gone, as he professed to be; for Catharine, with a warm heart, a generous nature, and a thousand good qualities, lacked seriousness of character—and she was too apt to lay the sacrilegious hand of mirth, upon the heart’s sacred altar, and to jest of what to Stanley seemed matters of deep and serious import.

He therefore went home light of heart; for he was not only relieved from the presence of his tormentor, but he was glad that the gay season was now over. He felt that the regard of Ada Somers was not to be won at balls and parties, and he longed to know her where she would seem loveliest—in the tranquil intercourse of a refined and happy home.

——

CHAPTER V.

“Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,

And men below, and gods above.”

The month of May saw the Somers family once more settled at Somerton; and twice a week did Mr. Stanley’s curricle make its appearance there also, until the month of September; when suddenly his visits doubled, not only in number, but in length; and as Miss Somers never complained of the same, it is to be presumed that he had made all the improvement she could desire in politeness, and all the progress he could have wished in her esteem.

Early in October, on a day as bright as herself, came Catharine—the wild, merry, but affectionate Catharine. She kissed Ada o’er and o’er, vowed she was prettier than ever, though she had never written her a line for the last two months, and was just about to ask what had become of Mr. Stanley, when her attention was called off by the sight of a diamond ring which glittered like a star on Ada’s third finger. In her admiration of its brilliancy, she quite forgot Mr. Stanley.

“What a beautiful solitaire!” exclaimed she; “what a pure water!—where did you get this, Ada?”

Ada’s cheeks were crimsoned in a moment. She fastened her eyes upon the ring, as if to gain courage from the sight, and in a low voice she replied:

“It was a gift.”

“And the giver,” quickly replied Catharine.

The color deepened—the eyes were raised with an expression which Catharine had never seen before, and she guessed rather than heard, the scarcely audible name of “Mr. Stanley.”

She gave a cry of delight, threw her arms around Ada’s neck, and gave vent to her joy in broken sentences:

“Oh, I am so happy!—I knew it would be so!—my dear Ada, did I not predict it, and am I not indeed Cassandra? To think of every thing ending so charmingly when the beginning was so inauspicious. And I—oh, Ada, do forgive me my heedless impertinences; I have often thought of them with contrition. Why is not Charles here to have a hornpipe with me for joy?—But never mind—now I remember, he went to see Stanley, and perhaps he is hearing it all from him! You in love, Ada! Ah! confess that the word is a sweet one! And now come and tell me all about it! But stay,” said she, relapsing into her own saucy vein, “what have you to say for your high-flown opinions of last winter, on celibacy?”

“They remain unchanged,” replied Ada.

“But your feelings. Defend them if you dare from inconsistency.”

“I will not attempt it,” said Ada, smiling. “Like Rousseau, ‘Je serais bien fâché d’être du nombre de ceux qui savent répondre à tout.’ ”

“Ah! there is nothing like wit to silence just accusation,” began Catharine, but just then she felt the little hand which she still held, tremble, and her ear soon after, caught the sound of carriage-wheels. “Ah, that must be he!” cried she. “Commend me to the acuteness of lovers’ ears! Why, Ada, your heart has almost the gift of prescience!” and away bounded Catharine to greet her favorite.

“And so, Stanley, the sun has at last risen on Memnon’s statue,” were almost the first words she uttered.

“Yes,” answered Charles Ingleby, emerging from the carriage, “and very much elated he seems to be with his new achievement.”

“Why, Charles, are you there too?” said his wife. “See,” exclaimed she to Stanley, “how marriage blunts the sensibilities. There was Ada who had an electric presentiment of your coming; while I, though I have been a wife but seven months, stood as dumb as an effigy, while Charles was near.”

“Encouraging for you, Stanley,” observed Ingleby, and he passed into the parlor where Ada was sitting. Stanley looked wistfully after him, and having caught the first sound of Ada’s sweet voice, he took Catharine’s arm within his, and they walked to the opposite end of the piazza, where they talked together for some time, in a low voice.

Catharine was the first to break out into an audible tone. “Arrived to-day,” exclaimed she, with evident delight, “when will she be here?”

“In an hour, I think,” replied he, “and I must now go and prepare Ada to receive her. I really begin to tremble as the time draws nigh; and I owe it all to you, for scaring me with the spectre of my own name.”

“Then pray, modest youth, let me do it for you. I long to take this dénouement in my own hands. I have always had a talent for comedy, and this is probably the only opportunity I shall ever have of making my appearance on any stage.”

“Now, Catharine! none of your plots. I have a shuddering recollection of your talents for comedy, last winter, and I beg that you will not lay your wicked little hand upon the web of my destiny.”

Catharine held up a hand as white as snow. “Does this look like a thing having power to harm your great clumsy destiny? I scorn to meddle with any thing so weighty. I am intent upon pleasure only—a scene—a surprise—dramatic effect—tears—joy, &c., and when that is over, the curtain may fall on you and your ladye love, while I shall go home, like a good Griselda, and mend Charles’ clothes.”

Who could help laughing when Catharine chose it? Not Mr. Stanley, so he yielded the point; and she had soon arranged her scene, and taken to herself the lion’s share of prominence therein.

“And now,” said she, “go and tell Ada, for the thousandth time, that she is ‘dearer to you than the ruddy drops that visit your sad,’—Oh, no! not sad, I must alter Shakspeare a little—‘your joyful heart;’ send Charles to me, and—Oh! there comes Mrs. Somers, and I must speak with her directly,” and away darted Catharine through the shrubbery to meet Mrs. Somers, who had just returned from a walk. As she bounded lightly down the walk, Stanley could not help confessing that she was graceful as a nymph, but there was one still more graceful in his eyes, whom he had not yet seen; and with a quick step he entered the house. His first act was, faithfully to deliver Catharine’s message, and send Ingleby away. He then took a seat by Ada, and paraphrased the words “I love,” with commendable ingenuity, for nearly half an hour. He then suddenly remembered that he had another mission to perform, and after a pause, during which he wondered how he should begin:

“Ada,” said he, “you have not yet asked me any questions relative to my family. Have you no curiosity to know who I am?”

“On all subjects connected with you,” replied Ada, “I feel an interest too strong to be called curiosity; but in matters relating to your family, your communications, to give me pleasure, must be voluntary. I expect to be told without the asking,” added she, smiling, “who you are.”

“So you shall, my Ada, and you are about to receive the astounding information.”

“Must it be astounding?” laughed Ada, “for if so, I am bound to conclude that I have been over hasty in my acceptance of your attentions. I hope you are not Jupiter Tonnans, for I have no ambition to be dazzled to death. But perhaps you are only an earthly prince in disguise, or, perchance, The Wandering Jew. If the last of these, I must be permitted to decline the honor of becoming ‘The Wandering Jewess.’ ”

Stanley laughed, and shook his head. “I am the son of one of those princes, who govern in America under the name of ‘The sovereign people,’ but for further particulars I refer you to your friend, Mrs. Ingleby, for—”

“Parlez du diable,” said a voice at the door, and in walked Catharine herself, followed by Ingleby, who having been forbidden to say a word, crossed the room, and meekly seated himself in a corner. “May I be allowed,” continued Catharine, “to ask what use was being made of my name, as I entered this room?”

“Certainly,” replied Stanley. “Miss Somers has been affecting to doubt the respectability of my parentage—”

“I!” exclaimed Ada, who scarcely knew whether he was in jest or earnest.

“Can you deny it! when you began by accusing me of being a heathen, and ended by kindly suggesting that I might possibly be The Wandering Jew?”

“To the point, Mr. Stanley, if you please,” said Catharine, with mock dignity.

Stanley bowed submissively. “I was about to say then, that however well I may be known to your husband, your knowledge of my name and station is, I believe, anterior even to his; I beg that you will now declare the same to this young lady, together with any incidents of my life which it may please you to reveal; and in the presence of her who is to be my judge, I fearlessly request that of my past deeds you will ‘nothing extenuate.’ ”

Here was a beginning after Catharine’s own heart, but its effect was somewhat spoiled by Charles Ingleby, who called out familiarly from his corner: “Faith, Stanley, you run far more risk in Kate’s hands of having ‘much set down in malice.’ ”

“Silence in the court, Mr. Ingleby!” cried his wife, trying very hard not to smile.

“Oh! I am the court, am I?” persisted Charles, “then I can almost say with Louis the Fourteenth, ‘L’état c’est moi.’ ”

“Oh, Charles! I wish you would not interrupt me to show off your learning,” cried Catharine, who began to feel her comedy fast degenerating into farce; but determined to make a certain speech which she had prepared for the occasion, she quickly composed her features—compressed her lips, and thus began:

“James Stanley! I do accuse you, in presence of these witnesses here assembled,” (here Charles muttered something about its being quite true that he was a host within himself, but Catharine went steadily on,) “I do accuse you of having basely insinuated yourself into the affections of this damsel, (Ada, be quiet) insomuch that she hath eyes for no one else—and this you have done under false colors and a false name. Therefore, I here pronounce you traitor and impostor, and denounce you to the said damsel by the name you blush to bear—the infamous name of James Darrington!”

“James Darrington!” exclaimed Ada, in a tone of the deepest emotion. “Yes, yes,” murmured she, “my heart spoke truly—from its depths I heard his name, even before—before—” she paused and timidly raised her eyes to her lover’s countenance. That smile! she had seen it in her dreams—those eyes, so tenderly riveted upon her! how often had their glance awakened in her soul vague recollections of something loved and forgotten. Her heart beat violently, and pressing her hands to her eyes, her over-wrought feelings found relief in tears.

But they were tears of joy, and while they flow undisturbed, we must defend James Darrington from the serious charges preferred against him by Mrs. Ingleby.

It will be remembered that at the time of Mr. Darrington’s death, he resided in Paris. Partly by the expenses entailed upon him by his position as American minister, partly by the failure of banks at home, he became so involved, that at his death, a mere pittance remained for the support of his widow and son. Mrs. Darrington decided upon an immediate return to America, but her plans were changed by the reception of a letter from a near relative, then residing in England. The letter was not simply one of condolence—Mr. Stanley offered a home to his impoverished niece, and before she had time to accept or refuse his proposal, it was followed by himself in person.

The parties were mutually pleased. Mrs. Darrington was prepossessed in favor of her uncle, by his resemblance to her father, and he, without ties, seemed anxious to find an object for his tenderness in the person of his brother’s only child.

Thenceforward Julia, and Julia’s son, became the first objects in his heart. To minister to the happiness of the mother, and to shower every advantage of education that wealth can confer upon the child, seemed the aims of his existence.

James so richly repaid these benefits, that in time he became the idol of his uncle, and the old gentlemen often sighed when he remembered that his nephew was not a Stanley. After reaping, in the devotion of his niece and the respectful affection of his nephew, the rich reward of his generous conduct toward them, Mr. Stanley died, and, without condition of any kind, bequeathed his large fortune to Mrs. Darrington and her son. Attached to the will was a letter, in which he made it his last request that James should add to his own the name of Stanley. The old gentleman knew James too well to make it a stipulation; he was aware that his fortune would be rejected on such terms, and he gave it to his adopted son, bore he the name of Stanley or Darrington. But this request—couched in terms of so much tenderness—made in such an unassuming way, seemed binding to the grateful James; and what he might have refused to his uncle’s pride he granted to his affection. Moreover, Stanley was his mother’s name, and James had always loved it for her sake.

Their hearts now yearned for home; but a year’s delay ensued, from some tedious formalities of the law, and that year they passed in roaming over the Continent. In Italy they were joined by Charles Ingleby, and after spending some months in that beautiful land—beautiful, though but the whitened sepulchre of departed greatness—they decided upon passing the summer at Baden-Baden. There they met with the Ashtons.

James soon found that the pretty American girl, whose lively manners made her the toast of the “hoch-begoine” visiters of Baden, was his old friend Kate. Except that she was older and prettier, she had not much changed since the days when they had gone berrying together; and James, whose republican heart had withstood not only the heraldic charms of the De Longuevilles and De Montmorencies, but had refused to surrender itself to “all the blood of all the Howards,” hung with breathless interest upon Catharine’s words, as by turns she dwelt upon the beauty, the talent or the thousand virtues of his once cherished Ada. His old passion awoke from its long slumber, and he was now as much in love with the ideal as he had once been with the reality. Catharine was ready to worship him for his romantic fidelity, but his conviction that he would know Ada again, after ten years’ separation, she laughed to scorn.

Meanwhile, Charles Ingleby’s heart had strayed, or been stolen, and after some months’ endurance of the loss, he announced the same to Miss Ashton, accused her of the theft, and modestly professed himself willing to compromise the matter, by accepting hers in exchange. Catharine had no alternative but to submit, and the matter went no further.

James became now so restless to return home that his mother offered to wind up his affairs for him, and proposed that he should sail with the Ashton family. James knew that his mother was quite as capable of managing business as she was of managing servants, and he accepted her offer with many thanks. It was then arranged that he should act as groomsman to Ingleby, while Ada should be bridemaid to Catharine, and it was on that occasion that Catharine imagined a plan for testing their remembrance of one another.

If neither recognized the other, James was to be punished for his audacity, by keeping his secret till his mother’s arrival; all of which, in the height of his presumption, he promised, with no more expectation of being called upon to fulfill his bond than had the Merchant of Venice.

He met Ada, and the impression she made was such as to occasion certain doubts in his mind of his boasted constancy. This unknown looked as he would have had Ada look; and he felt that if her mind at all resembled her person, he was in danger. When he discovered who she was, he was so transported with joy that he forgot to be humiliated for not knowing her at once. But we have seen how severely he was punished in the sequel by Ada’s cold reception of his advances, and his own inability to claim her regard by the slightest appeal to the past.

“And now,” said he, “I ask you, Charles, whether I have not been unjustly bound to secrecy? I contend that I did recognize her, for my heart knew her and loved her at once.”

“So you did,” replied Charles. “ ‘What’s in a name?’ Ada Somers or la belle Inconnue, James Stanley or James Darrington, were one and the same person, and both were constant to the object; how that object was called is of no importance.”

“Mere sophistry,” said Catharine disdainfully, but James appealed to Ada, and she reversed the decision.

Whilst they were still debating the matter, a carriage drew up before the door, and Catharine darted out of the room with the speed of an arrow. In a moment she returned, followed by Mrs. Somers, and a lady whom Ada recognized in an instant, and starting from her seat, she found herself in the arms of Mrs. Darrington.

——

CHAPTER VI.

“Et l’on revient toujours à ses premiers amours.”

(This is the veriest nonsense ever penned. It chimes in with our story and we use it, but without endorsing it the least in the world.)

That night Ada relieved her full heart, by talking over the events of the last six months to her mother, who listened, as only a mother can listen, till midnight. Mrs. Somers had scarcely kissed her daughter’s cheek and left the room, when Ada rose, unlocked one of her bureau drawers, and took thence an antiquated-looking rose-wood box. Under heaps of broken chains and old fashioned jewels lay a dingy little emerald ring; she seized upon it, and uttered an exclamation of pleasure, as she found that it fitted her third finger. She then replaced her box, kissed the ring, and murmured a “good-night” to the giver.

Some weeks after, Ada, her diamond and her emerald, became, one and all, the property of James. Dr. B. was at the wedding, and Catharine related to him every circumstance connected with what she styled “Ada’s pompous apostasy from the faith of her girlhood;” beginning with the drowning, and ending with the resumption of the emerald ring. Dr. B. evinced such lively interest in her story, that she proclaimed him to be the best listener she had ever met with in her life.

The day after the wedding, Johnny Wilson was favored with a large consignment of wedding-cake; and in after life, when, through Ada’s means, he had risen in station and fortune, he was heard to declare that he had marked with a white stone the day on which he had been nearly crushed to death by the horses of Mrs. James Darrington Stanley.

NARCISSOS.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

There is a flower which haunts the banks of streams,

That blossoms only in the path of Spring,

Lovingly bending where the water gleams.

Its fragrant perfumes fill the azure air,

As, gazing always in the limpid brook,

It seems to watch the Naiades braid their hair,

Or sport, in naked beauty, caroling hymns

Of siren sweetness to poetic Spring,

While gliding, here and there, on milky limbs.

All day it gazes: day by day its eye

Searches the stainless crystal of the stream,

Watching those faultless, fairy forms float by.

Day after day it watches, hour on hour,

Like love above the grave of that it loved —

More like a mortal than a simple flower.

When night descends—when darkness, like the grave’s,

Falls on the stream—when moss and fern and grass

Are lost in gloom—when naught is heard but waves

That roll and ripple through the restless reeds,

It droops its head and sinks in dreamless sleep,

Couched, like a jewel, among worthless weeds.

But sometimes, when the argent moon awakes

The Naiades to midnight mirth and song,

The blossom from its mournful slumber breaks,

And breathes again its sweet, unanswered sighs;

And all the stars that gild the glassy stream

Shine on its heavy gloom like pitying eyes.

Day after day it watches—hour on hour —

Love weeping by the grave of what it loved,

More like a mortal than a simple flower.

And day by day it pales and wanes away

Until it lays its form along the stream,

And slowly sinks to silence and decay.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .

There is a legend told in classic Greece —

A myth, so musical of the olden time,

That none who hears can bid the singer “Peace!”

Pausanius tells it! In its rhythmic flow

We find how fair Narcissos, young in years,

Passionate beyond his age, so long ago

As when the gods came down and walked with men,

Had a sweet sister—would that sister’s name

Had ever have fallen within the poet’s ken —

A young, twin sister, lovely as the light

Of twilight in her own delicious land —

Lovely as Venus was at birth of Night.

Narcissos was as fair, albeit his mould

Had all the attributes that mark his sex;

And men were deities in the Age of Gold.

The sympathies of twin existence ran

So warm in both, their being grew like one,

Though she was feeble woman; he, strong man.

Hand locked in hand, they haunted hill and plain,

Passing in peace their simple innocent lives,

Both singing, so it seemed, the same refrain.

Or angling in the stream, or through the groves

Hunting the deer, they owned one only rule —

One gentle rule, and that was rosy Love’s.

One day—the air was swooning with the heat —

The maiden sought the border of a stream

And stood and laved and cooled her burning feet.

The loving water breathed an amorous tale;

The maiden gave herself to its embrace,

And in its passionate clasp grew deathly pale.

Narcissos was afar: he could not hear

His sister’s piteous murmur of his name:

Alas! that poor Narcissos was not near!

He came at night, and on the river’s shore

Beheld her garments; but her faultless form,

Save in his maniac dreams, he saw no more!

And from that night, and from that hour, he lay,

Swelling the stream with little brooks of tears,

Sighing his soul away day after day.

And gazing in its depths in search of her,

He saw his image, which was so like hers,

He grew to be his own sad worshiper.

The gods, who saw him act this piteous part,

Wept at the sight, and made his pallid form

A snowy blossom with a crimson heart.

There, by the stream, it watches, hour on hour,

Love mourning by the tomb of what it loved,

More like a mortal than a simple flower.

TO ARCTURUS.

———

BY SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

———

——Nec morti esse locum, sed viva volare

Sideris in numerum atque alto succedere cælo.

Virgil, Geor. IV.

“Star of resplendent front!” thy glorious eye

Again shines out from yonder sapphire sky,

Piercing the blue depths of the vernal night

With opal shafts and flames of rubient light;

Till the pale Serpent gliding round thy path

Hides in dim shades his ineffectual wrath,

Pining with envy at thy dazzling ray,

Deep-hued and damasked like the orb of day

When in the purple west he slowly sinks away.

Hast thou not stooped from heaven, fair star, to be

Through Night’s wide, pathless realm of phantasie

So near—so bright—so glorious—that I seem

To lie entranced as in some wondrous dream,

All earthly joys forgot—all earthly fear

Purged in the light of thy resplendent sphere: —

Gazing upon thee till thy flaming eye

Dilates and kindles through the stormy sky,

While, in its depths withdrawn, far, far away,

I see the dawn of a diviner day,

And hear celestial harmonies that come

Burdened with love from thine elysian home.

For in that gorgeous world, I fondly deem,

Dwells the freed soul of one whose earthly dream

Was full of beauty, majesty and wo —

One who, in that pure realm of thine, doth grow

Into a power serene—a solemn joy,

Undimmed by earthly sorrow or alloy;

Sphered far above the dread phantasmal gloom

That made his poet-heart a living tomb,

Tortured by fires that death alone could quell

Fierce as the flames of Farinati’s hell.

“Was it not Fate, whose earthly name is Sorrow,”

That bade him with prophetic soul to borrow

From all the stars that fleck night’s purple dome,

Thee, bright Arcturus! for our spirit home —

Our trysting star, where, while on earth’s cold clime,

Our mingling souls might meet in dreams sublime?

Was it not Fate, whose name in Heaven above

Is Truth and Goodness and unchanging Love —

Was it not Fate that bade him turn to thee

As the bright regent of his destiny? —

For when thine orb passed from the lengthening gloom

Of autumn nights a morning star to bloom

Beside Aurora’s eastern gates of pearl,

He passed from earth his weary wings to furl

In “the cool vales of Heaven”—thence through yon sea

Of starry isles to hold his course to thee.[1]

Now when again my wistful eyes I turn

To greet thy beacon fires, feeding the urn

Of memory with sweet thoughts—I almost see

The presence of the loved and lost in thee,

Kindling within my soul a pure desire

To blend with thine its pale, candescent fire.

I have “no refuge from thy light,” no home

Save in the depths of yon empyrian dome,

Where thy bright Pharos ’mid the stars doth burn,

“Whence I departed, whither I return,”

To lose my very life in thine, and be

Soul of thy soul through all eternity.

[1]

For there is no place of annihilation—but alive they mount up each into his own order of star, and take their appointed seat in the heavens. Georgics, Book IV.

TRAVELING A TOUCHSTONE.

A PARTY OF PLEASURE.

———

BY F. E. F., AUTHOR OF “A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE,” ETC.

———

A gayer party, bent on pleasure, never left the wharf than that now on board the steamer bound for Albany. It consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Castleton, Ruth Meredith and her friend Grace Fanshaw, with young Meredith, who had been coaxed by his sister to join the party, so that “they need be no trouble to Mr. Castleton.” He had consented, though voting it rather a “bore.” The presence of the pretty, winning, graceful Mrs. Castleton reconciled him, however, somewhat to the scheme, which was declared perfect in all its prospects and details, except the one drawback to the young ladies, of having been obliged to ask Mary Randall to accompany them.

There was no particular reason why Mary Randall’s being invited should have been a point so much objected to, as she appeared a quiet, inoffensive girl, by Ruth and Grace, only that she was not intimate with either, and seemed in their apprehension to spoil the ease and interfere with the excessive intimacy and familiarity of the other two. Harry Meredith, too, was put out with the prospect of “another woman to be civil to;” but, as Ruth said, “there was no help for it. Papa makes a point of it, as he wants to pay the Randalls some attention, and so does it by making me civil to Mary. It’s not pleasant, Grace, but it is better than not going at all.”

“Oh, to be sure,” replied Grace, thinking in her heart that old Mr. Meredith was a very disagreeable old gentleman; but there being no help for that either, the matter was settled.

“I dare say Mrs. Castleton will take her a good deal off our hands,” said Ruth.

“What a charming woman she is,” replied Grace.

“Mrs. Castleton? Oh, she has always been my beau ideal,” answered Ruth. “She’s lovely both in mind and person. Her manners are so graceful, and her tones so sweet—there’s altogether a charm and witchery about her that’s indescribable.”

“I hope your beau ideal will be a little more punctual another time, Ruth,” said young Meredith smiling. “Faith! I thought we had lost our passage.”

“Well, but we did not,” replied his sister.

“No,” said Meredith. “More by luck though than good management.”

“What a fuss you men always make about punctuality,” returned Ruth.

“And well we may,” replied her brother. “It’s the soul of business—and traveling, too, you’ll find. So pray have your carpet-bag ready in the morning—or —”

“Now don’t begin with scolding, Harry, because Mrs. Castleton happened to be five minutes out of the way.”

“Well, well,” replied Meredith, “that’s enough. Now go and choose your state-rooms. One of you will have to share one with a stranger.”

The girls looked at each other; Ruth and Grace wanting to be together, and yet not liking to propose it to Mary Randall, who said at once, with the almost of good nature,

“Oh, I’ll take that one. It’s the same thing to me, you know,” in a manner that quite warmed their hearts to her.

Mrs. Castleton had the first choice, of course, and so all the arrangements were made accordingly. But just when they were retiring for the night, Mrs. Castleton came to Ruth and Grace’s state-room, with a servant following her, bag in hand, saying in her usual sweet manner and soft tones,

“Girls, you’ll have to change with me. There’s such a walking overhead that I can’t sleep below.”

And so bonnets and shawls and bags were hastily gathered up, and all tumbled in confusion in the condemned state-room below.

“She might have thought of that before,” said Ruth with some little vexation. “It was her own choice.”

“Yes, I think so,” replied Grace. “She could sleep here I suppose as well as we.”

“I should think so,” said Ruth. “However, it’s no matter.” And so, full of talk of pleasure, they chatted half the night, to the great annoyance of their next neighbor, (who chanced to be a crusty bachelor, who all but cursed “those girls,”) until they fell asleep, to continue their schemes in their dreams.

“Oh, Ruth, dear, just stop and fasten my dress,” said Mrs. Castleton, looking out from her state-room in the morning, as her young friend was passing in a great hurry. “I am so late,” she continued. “Do help me pack up these things.”

Ruth looked round in despair at the floor and chair, heaped with an indescribable mass of gowns, caps, shoes, and every thing that had been quickly out of the trunk, in Mrs. Castleton’s hasty search after a particular pair of manchettes, which were deemed indispensable to her toilette, because they just matched the pattern of her collar, and answered,

“I’ll come back, Mrs. Castleton, as soon as I have fastened my own trunk. I left my room in a hurry, to speak to Harry, who wanted me, and half my things are out yet.”

“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time,” urged Mrs. Castleton persuasively, but still pertinaciously, “and my husband will be so angry if I am late. He can’t scold you, you know,” she added, with one of those playful smiles Ruth usually thought so bewitching, but which she was in no mood to admire now, as she thought—“And so you mean to throw your unpunctuality on me”—but hardly knowing how to refuse, she was beginning to toss things in helter-skelter, venting her pet upon helpless frocks and caps, when Mary Randall coming by, saw her through the half opened door on her knees before the trunk, (for Mrs. Castleton was twining her long curls round her fingers at the glass,) said,

“Can I help you, Ruth? I am all ready.” So, to her inexpressible relief, she took Ruth’s place, saying in a low voice, “Go and finish your own packing—I’ll get Mrs. Castleton ready.”

“What a dear, good girl you are,” said Ruth, in a perfect effervescence of gratitude—for it is not always the magnitude of the favor, that produces the greatest amount of gratitude. “I declare, Grace,” she said afterward to Miss Fanshaw, “that Mary Randall is the nicest girl I know. I would rather have her with us than not.”

The hurry and skurry of getting ashore was hardly over, when it was discovered that Mrs. Castleton’s bag had been left in her state room, and to avoid an explosion of vexation on the part of the provoked husband, Harry Meredith had to start off poste haste to get it, having scarcely time to spring back to shore ere the boat pushed off for Troy, and thinking, as he did so, that if the lady had not been so pretty he would not have interfered to prevent her getting the scolding she so richly deserved. Heated and panting he returned in time for a cold cup of coffee, as the rest of the party had already breakfasted during his absence. But Mrs. Castleton said so gracefully, “I am afraid my carelessness has made you lose your breakfast, Mr. Meredith,” that he could not but answer,

“Oh, not at all. I have had a capital breakfast.”

The pleasant ride however to Utica restored the travelers to their usual high spirits. Mary Randall was discovered to have as keen a sense of enjoyment as any of them, with a fund of good temper that seemed inexhaustible.

“And so punctual,” as young Meredith said most approvingly. Her shawl was never missing, and her carpet-bag was always ready, (two great points, young ladies, if you would win a gentleman’s heart in traveling,) but graceful, charming Mrs. Castleton was forever forgetting something, and they never stopped any where that they did not hear Mr. Castleton’s voice saying, in a tone of mixed vexation and despair,

“Now, Julia, have you got your bag? and where is your shawl?” To which she generally answered

“Yes—no—is not this mine? No, dear, I believe I left it in the car—or perhaps its only in the carriage. Just call the driver back, wont you?”

“The stage starts at six in the morning for Trenton, ladies,” said Meredith at night as they parted. “So you must be bright and early. There’s no danger of your not being ready,” he said, turning to Mary Randall with a smile. “You are a capital traveler, I see.”

Mrs. Castleton did not look pleased. She thought the compliment to Mary was an implied reproof to herself—and she was not used to any thing but admiration, except, indeed, from her husband; but she seemed used to his scolding, for somehow she did not appear to mind, if indeed she heard it, which seemed doubtful. Meredith often thought him downright cross.

“How he does scold that pretty wife of his,” he said to Ruth. “And how sweetly she bears it. I declare I can hardly keep from answering for her sometimes.”

“She does not seem to care for it though,” replied Ruth, who was beginning to be a little disenchanted of her beau ideal; “and she is provoking.”

“If she were not such a beauty, I suppose she would be,” he replied.

“Are you ready, Mrs. Castleton?” said Ruth, in her animated voice, at her door the next morning.

“Ready!” exclaimed Mrs. Castleton, who was standing before the glass, as she stroked her glossy hair. “Ready!”

“Yes,” said Ruth, looking aghast at the trunk which was open as usual with half its contents on the floor. “Yes, Mr. Castleton sent me up to say that the stage starts in ten minutes.”

“Oh dear! then we can’t go in this one,” she replied, quietly. “I can’t get ready in that time. We must take the next one going.”

“But no other goes to-day,” said Ruth, in despair.

“Then we must wait until to-morrow,” replied Mrs. Castleton, calmly. “I would just as leave stay here a day as not.”

But Ruth would not, nor Grace, nor any of them; and as Mrs. Castleton continued, “I’ve been to Trenton before—so I don’t care about staying there more than a day.”

Ruth thought she should have exploded. To be cut short of a day at Trenton, she and Grace, who had talked and dreamed of nothing else all summer. And Mary, too, who wanted to take sketches there—it was more than her patience, or rather impatience could bear; but she saw that the only thing to be done, was to get her ready herself—so she said with the energy of desperation.

“Dress yourself, and I’ll pack your trunk. You have plenty of time.” And so she turned to and rapidly folded dresses, and packed and locked the trunk, and then seized the carpet-bag, and stuffed every thing in it she came across in an incredibly short time; and ere Mrs. Castleton had calmly put her bonnet on, she came panting down stairs, dragging the bag after her, and loaded with shawls and cloaks, heated and out of breath. She was just in time to hear Mr. Castleton call out,

“All ready, ladies?” to which his wife answered in the sweetest tones of bright alacrity,

“Yes, all ready!” to his infinite satisfaction and approving surprise, for he answered,

“Ah, that’s right!” as he handed her in the carriage, and as poor Ruth jumped in after her, she exclaimed,

“Why Ruth, dear, how heated you look!”

Now if any thing is provoking, it is to be told when you are heated, that you look so. But Mrs. Castleton, feeling fresh and cool, seemed quite amused as well as surprised at her friend’s looking so flushed and flurried.

Two stylish young men, strangers, who were to be their fellow-travelers to Trenton, turned their eyes on Ruth at this exclamation of Mrs. Castleton; and poor Ruth, who really was a pretty girl, when not flushed, feeling that she was appearing to no advantage, only colored the more, and grew the hotter for the attention she attracted, while she longed to say, “If I am hot, it’s packing your trunk that has made me so;” but as that would not do very well, she had no alternative but silence, while she saw the strangers glance from her to the delicate, fair, tranquil-looking Mrs. Castleton with looks of admiration that did not tend to pacify her. She had, however, to grow cool in temper and temperament the best way she could. And off the stage started for Trenton.

Two delightful days were passed at the Falls. The stylish young strangers had made Harry Meredith’s acquaintance, and been by him introduced to the party, which they joined. So the girls were in ecstasies. They could have staid there willingly for a month; but their time was limited, as they wanted to be back in time for the ball at West Point; and the young men being, like themselves, bound for Niagara, they were somewhat reconciled at leaving Trenton, which was declared to be the most perfect spot under heaven. “They could live there forever,” etc.; and so the whole party, with its new made addition, returned to Utica again.

“Oh, my bouquet! I left it on the table in the drawing-room!” exclaimed Mrs. Castleton, the next morning, just as they were all seated in the cars. “Do, dear,” turning to her husband, “go and get it for me.”

“It’s of no consequence, Julia,” he replied; “and I have not time.”

“Oh yes, indeed it is,” she urged. “You have plenty of time. Tell the conductor to wait a minute for you.”

“Nonsense, Julia,” he replied, impatiently. “Do you suppose he’d stop if I were to ask him—and I certainly would not ask him if he would.”

But she looked so imploringly, and at the same time so very pretty, that Mr. Sutherland (one of the strangers before mentioned) thought her husband a brute to refuse her, and darted out of the cars, which the next minute were starting off.

“There! Sutherland has lost his place!” some one exclaimed, as the bouquet was thrown in at the window, and fell into Mrs. Castleton’s lap; but a gentleman, putting his head out of the window, said, “No! there he is, jumping on the outside!” “Oh, how dangerous!” cried out two or three voices at once. And one old gentleman drew in his gray head with the quiet remark, “Young men will do these mad things. I only wonder more accidents don’t happen;” and in another minute, Mr. Sutherland, animated and laughing, was making his way through the centre of the car, and as he took his seat, said,

“I was afraid you would lose your flowers, Mrs. Castleton. I quite gave you all up as I saw the cars starting.”

“I am very much indebted to you,” she said, gracefully. “I am so fond of flowers. Their fragrance is really refreshing,” she said, as she raised the large bouquet to her delicate face, not less fair and soft than the beautiful flowers that almost hid it.

The young man looked at her most admiringly, as if it was a beautiful and refined taste, just suited to so lovely and graceful a creature.

The little party passed so pleasant a day together, and the young men were so captivated with Mrs. Castleton’s grace and beauty, and the high spirits and general good looks of the three girls, that it was proposed that they should join parties, and take an “extra” together for the next stage of their journey.

This suited the ladies extremely well, who were not less (only not so openly) charmed with the gentlemen. And the next day a later hour was named for their starting than usual, as the conveyance was their own.

“Is Mrs. Castleton ready?” said Harry Meredith, in a tone of suppressed impatience, the next morning. “It’s most nine o’clock, and we were to have been off at eight.”

“Oh, no!” replied Ruth, in a low voice. “I doubt whether we get off to-day, Harry. She says there’s no hurry as we have an “extra.” I do think with all her pretty ways, she is the most provoking woman!”

“Where is Mary Randall?” he asked.

“Helping her,” continued his sister. “I came away in perfect vexation and despair. As to her husband’s being cross to her, I think he’s a perfect marvel of patience.”

“I declare I am beginning to think so too,” said Harry. “Well, to-morrow we take the boat on the lake, thank fortune! so there’ll be no more running back for flowers and bags.”

In spite of little drawbacks, however, the pretence of the two young strangers, who kept Mrs. Castleton in high good-humor, made the two days stage-traveling very delightful; and now they had reached the boat, and were on the broad and beautiful Ontario.

“Do, Ruth, put on your cloak,” said Meredith, to his sister. “The morning air is very keen.”

“I can’t find it, Harry,” she replied.

“How could you mislay it!” he said, quite provoked. “You will catch your death of cold.” And a great stir was made for the missing cloak, everybody getting up and looking under chairs and behind benches; and poor Ruth, quite disconcerted at discomposing so many persons, was saying all the time, “Oh, it’s no matter, Harry.” But he only replied, “It is matter, Ruth. You’ll be ill.” When the general move having reached Mrs. Castleton, she said,

“What are you looking for, Mr. Meredith?”

“Ruth’s cloak,” he answered.

“Oh, I have it on,” she calmly replied. “I could not find mine. It’s somewhere in the lady’s cabin,” she continued, looking up at Ruth, without, however, making any offer of returning Ruth her own.

“Go and get it, Ruth,” said her brother.

She went, and in a few minutes returned without the cloak; and in answer to Mr. Meredith’s remonstrance, said, in a low voice,

“I cannot help it, Harry; the air is so bad down there that I could not stand it; and there’s such a confusion, it’s impossible to find any thing.”

Meredith insisted, however, again. “You are coughing already;” and this time he accompanied his sister, and presently they returned with the cloak, which it took all his good breeding to hand to Mrs. Castleton politely, who took it as quietly as if it had been quite a matter of course, and as she returned Ruth her own, said,

“I hope you have not taken cold. You look quite blue,” and she continued to gaze at her, with an air of surprise, at anybody’s being so cold and looking so ugly.

“Sutherland,” said his friend a few days after, “your pretty Mrs. Castleton’s a bore, with her sweet manner and dilatory selfishness. I mean to cut the party and travel off for Niagara by myself. I don’t ask you, however, to do so too, if you prefer remaining with them.”

“No,” replied Sutherland, “I believe you are right. Pretty women are very charming at home, and in ball-rooms, but it is, as you say, a bore to be tied to them in traveling.”

“The girls are nice girls,” pursued the other. “If it were not for this spoilt beauty, I would rather remain with them than not.” So it was determined between them that they should go on in the night train, and so free themselves from the rest of the party, who they would meet again at Niagara.

“How strange,” said Mrs. Castleton, as her husband conveyed to her the adieux of the young men, who affected a sudden haste that must carry them immediately on. “I declare it’s quite rude,” she continued, somewhat offended.

“I am not at all surprised,” said Harry Meredith, quietly.

“It’s very provoking,” said Ruth, who knew what her brother meant, and all the ladies were for the first time quite sulky. Mrs. Castleton, for she missed the admiration of the two handsome, fashionable, agreeable young men; Ruth, because she was angry with Mrs. Castleton as being the cause of their being driven away, and Grace, not less put out than the other two at losing the society of their agreeable traveling companions—all but Mary, were in thorough bad humor.

“You seem to bear the loss of our new friends very philosophically,” said Harry Meredith.

“They were very pleasant additions to our party,” she replied, good-humoredly, “but as we started without them, and without any idea or knowledge of them, I do not think they are at all essential to our having quite as agreeable a journey as we anticipated.”

“What a sweet tempered creature she is,” said Harry, pleased with the calmness with which she regarded the loss of the two heroes.

“Oh,” replied Ruth, “it is easy enough for her to keep her temper. You have not left the party.”

“I,” he ejaculated, looking amazed.

“Yes,” pursued his sister. “You are almost as much of a stranger to her, and quite as agreeable as either of the other two.”

“Thank you,” said he, laughing. “Then how comes it that you and Grace do not value me as highly?”

“You are my brother,” she replied, “and Grace has known you since she was a baby. There is no throwing the light of imagination round a man so circumstanced.”

Harry laughed, and he did not like Mary the less for his sister’s explanation of her good temper.

“Mrs. Castleton,” he said, “I’ve been to look at the rooms. There’s only one on the second story, and another in the third. I presume you’ll take the one on the second.”

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “I never mount more stairs than necessary.”

“So I presumed,” he replied; and presently he came back with a smiling expression in his eyes, that made his sister ask him once or twice what was the matter, to which he replied each time, “nothing.”

But she knew better. Something evidently pleased him very much.

“It’s excessively cold,” said Mrs. Castleton, as she drew herself up in her shawl. “I wish we had a little fire.”

“You had better go up stairs as soon as your room is ready,” said her husband. And presently, when the housekeeper came to show them to their rooms, shivering and blue, she bid the girls good night.

“Let me carry your shawls for you,” said Harry, as he gathered up his sister’s and friends’ “things,” and following them up, he heard one of the girls exclaim, as she opened the door, “Oh, charming! How comfortable!” It was a large room, and a nice wood-fire was blazing most cheerfully.

“Now, Ruth,” he said, “you see what amused me.”

“How?” she asked.

“Why, Mrs. Castleton chose, as usual, what she supposed was the best; but her room has no fire-place in it; and I really enjoyed her selfishness being for once at fault.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” said Mary, “for she seemed really suffering. I did not know it. If I had —”

“Yes,” said Harry, with an admiring look, “I thought you would offer to change with her if you knew it, so I said nothing about it.”

“You were right, Harry; I am glad of it,” said Ruth. “There’s no reason why we should not be comfortable too. So good-night to you.” And as she shut the door, she continued with, “A very bright idea of Harry’s; and now girls don’t let us go to bed this hour yet. Let us enjoy this fire.” And they did enjoy it, abusing Mrs. Castleton.

It was quite amusing to hear them. One would scarcely think she could be the same person they started with. But young girls are always equally enthusiastic in either liking or disliking.

Mrs. Castleton had been an angel because she was pretty and graceful. She was now, if not quite a devil, at least, detestable, because she was discovered to be spoilt. And “that cross Mr. Castleton,” was now “poor Mr. Castleton.” So much for moods and tenses. Traveling is a magic glass.

A few days at Niagara, in equal ecstasies, when Mr. Sutherland and his agreeable friend were met again. Then they turned their faces once more toward home. The gentlemen pursuing their original plan, separated to travel by themselves, but were to meet the ladies again at West Point.

At Albany, however, Mrs. Castleton said to her husband:

“We’ll take the night boat, my dear, I am tired.”

“But you want to stop at West Point, don’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she replied, “I am tired, and want to get home.”

“Not stop at West Point!” exclaimed the three girls in a breath.

“No,” she replied. “Those balls are stupid things.”

“But, dear Mrs. Castleton,” said Grace, and “Oh, Mrs. Castleton do,” said Ruth, in every accent of imploring urgency.

But Mrs. Castleton, though very gentle, could be very firm, when her own wishes were concerned, and as she did not care to meet Mr. Sutherland again, who had quite devoted himself to Grace the last few days at Niagara, and as his friend had been indifferent from the first, she saw no reason why she should stop there. As for the ball, she quite laughed at the girls for even wanting to go at all.

“It’s useless to say any thing more, Ruth,” said Harry, in a loud tone. “She’s a selfish creature—that’s the end of it.”

But that was not the “end of it,” for the three girls did not meet for a month that at least half an hour was not devoted to a lively abuse of their once beau ideal, “that lovely Mrs. Castleton.” And we are mistaken if Mary Randall, to whose joining the party Harry Meredith had so warmly objected, because he’d have to be civil to her, has not made a conquest of the same Mr. Harry Meredith. And there is every appearance of Trenton reminiscences leading to something with Grace and Mr. Sutherland; and so I rather think there’ll be two weddings next winter, at which Ruth will be bridemaid.

MARY.

———

BY WILLIAM M. BRIGGS.

———

There was a maiden once—so fair —

So shy in look—yet so beguiling —

With wealth of changeful golden hair,

And eyes so bright, yet ever smiling;

That fain thought I—so fair was she —

It should be writ in Poesie!

Her name was like a poet’s dream —

And that sweet name, they call it Mary —

A word of gentle, sunny sheen —

Though names may, like young maidens, vary —

And May, with woman’s wayward will,

Had sometimes gleams of April still!

But often on some dreamy day,

Out where the old green woods were swaying,

When the blue skies stretched far away,

And the glad sunshine’s every ray

Seemed with each bud and floweret playing,

And misty air and sunny beams

Grew tempting-full of foolish dreams;

Then would she sit in quiet mood,

With thoughtful face and gentle tone;

I dreamed the spirit of the wood

Had come to tryst with me alone,

And speak such earnest words as tell

That human hearts may love too well:

Such exquisite, sweet thoughts as rise

From souls that artless passion moves,

And mounting upward through the eyes

Betray the heart that loves,

And whisper, ere the lips can part,

That love lies brooding at the heart.

That love—young love—oh! who can tell

How much there is of mad’ning pain

For one who loves too deep—too well

To be beloved so back again —

To be so loved, yet doomed to see

All that he loves droop hopelessly!

Ah me! I look upon the past,

As o’er some book of faded flowers,

Where Joys, now crushed, too sweet to last,

Remind me of those vanished hours;

And every trace those leaves impart

Is pressed more deeply on my heart.

The touch, the tone, the melting look,

The half-reclining, gentle pressure,

The keeping time with hand and foot

To some love ditty’s murmured measure

While with her fingers, soft and fair,

She smoothed the tangles of my hair;

And how through long and silent ways

We wandered in the sunny weather,

As light of heart and full of lays

As any wanton bird in feather —

And every word that she would say

Seems ringing through my soul to-day.

There was a maiden once—so fair —

That I shall ne’er forget it—never —

Though time may silver o’er my hair,

And I may seem as calm as ever —

For dreams, whose guidance ne’er can vary,

Are trystings still for me and Mary.

THE POET COWPER.

———

By REV. J. N. DANFORTH.

———

In contemplating the varieties of human kind, nothing is more obvious than that some men are endowed with genius for the production of one set of results, while others are invested with the same power with a manifest adaptation to different results. So the interior texture of that impalpable thing we call genius, is diverse in various subjects. In some we find the development of extraordinary energies, in others the elaboration of the gentler traits of character. Some are eminently capable of devising, others of executing. One man is distinguished for the ardor of his imagination, another for the soundness of his judgment. A bold, daring temper of mind is indigenous to one class; a gentle, timid disposition characterizes another. The spirit of sarcasm, of irony, of invective, riots in the mental activities of some men, while that of tenderness, benevolence, and habitual charitableness constitutes the repose of others. Of the former, Byron might be mentioned as an example; of the latter, Cowper. They were both men of acknowledged genius. The world has adjudicated on their respective titles to the inheritance of fame. But how different the men!

It may be true that the qualities of Byron were more fitted to excite the stronger and sterner, as they certainly were to awaken the severer and more rampant feelings of our nature, while those of Cowper tend to elicit whatever in man is tender, reverent, social and sympathetic. He is eminently the poet of the home and the heart, and even when contending with the foul and formidable spirit of melancholy, he strives to make others cheerful and happy.

In one of his letters he says that his own experience contradicts the philosophical axiom that nothing can communicate what it has not in itself, for that he wrote certain poems “to amuse a mind oppressed with melancholy,” and that by so doing he has “comforted others, at the same time that they administer to me no consolation.” One can hardly believe that from a mind over which hung such clouds and darkness there could issue such a piece as “John Gilpin,” or the “Report of an adjudged case, not to be found in any of the books.” Yet the mind of man is wondrous! What powerful efforts will it not make to rise into a region, where it can behold the cheerful light of day, and breathe the healthful air of freedom. Cowper long looked upon himself as a doomed reprobate, a hopeless exile from the favor of God—but faith triumphed at last. That exploded absurdity—that a powerful genius must necessarily reside in a slender and morbid frame—seems long to have possessed even intelligent minds. Education is coming to be considered as properly embracing our whole physical, intellectual, and moral being, and the time, we hope, is at hand, when it will be no reproach to carry about a robust mind in a robust body. Indeed we have among the intellectual magnates of the land, men of massive fames and ample physical development. Look at the stalwort line of Secretaries of State for some years past!

But a poet must be a man of more ethereal mould. Why so? Behold Sir Walter Scott, that man of regal imagination, who breathed the spirit of poetry into the body of his romance, and transfused romance into his poetry, while with dramatic energy and verisimilitude he summons before us, on the stage he has erected, the stirring scenes and characters of other days, as with the wand of an enchanter. What an athletic form ministered to the commands of his kingly mind, for it was he who loved to say, “My mind to me a kingdom is.” And Johnson, the critic, moralist, essayist, lexicographer, poet—yes, POET, for in his great mind the elements of the sublime and beautiful lay in all their wondrous nativity; Johnson was a man of giant physical strength, of an apparent animalism too awkward to admit of refinement in this world. Burns, too, was a man of massive mould, yet how exquisitely poetical. The philosophy of the union of soul and body is as yet little understood. We want healthy men to conduct the affairs of the world, as well as to serve in the Court of the Muses and the Graces. What injuries have States sustained; what interruptions of the peace of the world have been caused by a fit of the gout, of dyspepsy, of morbid melancholy, of base intemperance, or by some paroxysm of passion engendered by the humors of an unhealthy body. The very Union of the States may be endangered by these causes.

Had Cowper been free from those distressing maladies, from the depredations of that “fierce banditti,” as he calls them,

“That with a black, infernal train,

Make cruel inroads in the brain,”

how much happier had he been, how much more might he have accomplished. Pity, not censure; charity, not severity, are due to the interesting sufferer, who had too much timidity to read aloud before his superiors, thereby losing a good office. That, however, was a trifle, compared with the deep fountain of melancholy that existed within him, whose waters no kind angel descending from heaven healed by casting in some celestial gift. Religion itself became tinged with the dark coloring of the disease it would relieve. To most pilgrims of Time the “New Year” is a cheerful season. “Happy” wishes then fly in clusters all around the domestic and the social circles. How does Cowper speak of the old year? “I looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it as a traveler looks back upon a wilderness, through which he has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping no other fruit of his labor than the poor consolation, that, dreary as the desert was, he left it all behind him.” While indulging a similar strain of lugubriousness, his thoughts fall into the natural language of the poet: “Nature revives again, but a soul once slain, lives no more. The hedge that has been apparently dead is not so: it will burst into leaf, and blossom at the appointed time; but no such time is appointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissembler.” Mournfully beautiful! And thus had he been talking for eleven lingering years, long enough to make “despair an inveterate habit.”

We do not recollect that any of the biographers of Cowper have given sufficient weight, if they have even adverted to one very natural cause of depression, the destitution of any regular profession or employment for nearly seventy years, with no wife to love, no children to provide for. It were enough to wither even a joyous temperament. “The color of our whole life,” said Cowper, “is generally such as the first three or four years in which we are our own masters make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments.” Those years were spent in idleness, to the influence of which was added the effect of his mortifying failure as clerk to the House of Lords, thus throwing him upon any chance resources for the supply of the various wants of life. The final result was the providential overruling of the whole to the production of a consummate poet. “Had I employed my time as wisely as you,” he writes to his friend, Mr. Rose, “in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps, but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society.”

He had reached fifty years before Fame had dropped a single wreath upon his brow, or he had even seriously courted the poetic Muse. “Dejection of spirits, which I suppose may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed.” He seems to have thought that the season of winter was the most congenial to the operations of his mind and the productions of his fancy. “The season of the year which generally pinches off the flowers of poetry, unfolds mine, such as they are, and crowns me with a winter garland. In this respect, therefore, I and my contemporary bards are by no means upon a par. They write when the delightful influence of fine weather, fine prospects, and a brisk motion of the animal spirits make poetry almost the language of nature; and I, when icicles depend from all the leaves of the Parnassian laurel, and when a reasonable man would as little expect to succeed in verse, as to hear a blackbird whistle.” The very spirit of modesty breathing through language deeply poetical! It is the province of genius, in its imaginative forms, to render tributary to its object the whole circle of the seasons, and to expound the thousand occult meanings of nature in her depths and her varieties, as well as to exhibit the more obvious images of beauty, of which she furnishes in such profusion the striking originals. Hear the voice of his Muse apostrophizing even stern Winter:

“I crown thee king of intimate delights,

Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness!”

Bachelor as he was, he sought his chief happiness in the interior sanctities of domestic life. There his gentle spirit was nourished with the aliment drawn from the purest sources of friendship and virtue, and thence his imagination took its flights, not bold, but beautiful, not ascending to the lofty height of Milton’s “great argument,” but holding its graceful way through that middle region of thought, and fancy, and feeling, familiar to the mass of minds in any measure susceptible to the beauties of poetry. The critics of half a century ago, while they hesitated to admit Cowper to that high rank among the great poets, which has been adjudged him by the verdict of posterity, confessed that his works contained many traits of strong and original genius, and a richness of idiomatic phraseology seldom equalled in the English language. Readers of poetry had become so accustomed to the refined diction and polished versification of his predecessors—Addison, Pope, Gray, and Prior—that they were slow to welcome a new aspirant for the bays, who came with a free, unfettered, and even somewhat careless air to claim their homage. He might gather a few humble flowers along the sides of Parnassus, but to think of reaping near its summit was the height of presumption. Yet which of those poets has now so many readers as Cowper? Goldsmith may better compare with him for permanence and extent of interest, so eminently natural is he; but what shall be said of Dryden, earlier, it is true, than the others, but one who had long been considered as having passed into the apotheosis of the Dii majores? He may have one reader to five hundred who luxuriate in Cowper’s parlor, alcove, and garden, with the Task in hand.

Then for purity, what a contrast between these last two. The Bard of Christianity, as he has been called, wrote no line, which, “dying he would wish to blot.” To Cowper the sentiment is more impressively applicable by the suffrage of the public mind, than Thomson, to whom it is applied by Lord Lyttleton—and deservedly so. They both communed with Nature, the one with her minute lights and shades, the other with her grander forms and more striking developments. The imagination of Cowper, like the microscopic glass, detected the shape and tint of the very petal of a flower. That of Thomson ranged with the sweep of the telescope through fields of light, and distant spheres, radiant with beauty and vocal with harmony. Each fulfilled his mission with dignity, propriety, and devotion, causing us to pray O! si sic omnes! But the nineteenth century has produced so much mysticism, such an amount of nebulous metaphysics in poetry and prose, as to make some honest people doubt the lawfulness of their veneration for the standard poets, especially the more intelligible ones, or whether there is any such thing as standard poetry. Coleridge, indeed, is clear, solemn, and sublime, when he approaches nearest to Milton, as in his Sunrise Hymn; and Wordsworth is most natural, perspicuous, and impressive, when he most resembles Cowper; but Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning—what do they mean in half their poetry?

Cowper stands almost alone in having nothing to do with the passion of love, which has always figured at such a rate in all sorts of novels, dramas, and poems. It was not because he was destitute of sensibility. His life was a tender sentiment, his heart was formed for friendship; he was even an admirer of the female sex, and he entrusted the happiness of his life to the care and sympathy of female friends; but the romance of the tender passion was beneath the dignity of his Muse, while for real purity of affection, as well as of imagination, no poet has been more distinguished. He possesses the sweetness, if not the grandeur of Milton; and if he does not emulate the song of the Seraphim, who, in their exalted spheres, minister so near the throne of the Eternal, his strain is ever coincident with the thousand choral harmonies of nature and mind around him. In speaking of the influence of the “country” upon his mind, even that country which “God made,” he says, with enthusiasm,

“I never framed a wish, or formed a plan,

That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss,

But there I laid the scene; there early strayed

My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice

Had found me, or the hope of being free.

My very dreams were rural; rural, too,

The first born efforts of my youthful muse.”

The regions of fiction he left others to explore; the artificial manners of a polished age; the martial deeds of heroic periods he relinquished to their admirers, and devoted himself to the socialities of domestic life, to the promotion of pure morals, and the elevation of public sentiment on a proper basis, and to a worthy standard. “He impresses us,” says Campbell, “with the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity.” He listened with alacrity to the secret suggestions of the spirit of philanthropy, and at times rose to the solemn dignity and fervor of a prophet’s strain, thus realizing the classic, nay, the Hebraic idea of the union of poet and prophet in the same venerated person.

Among those sentiments which have been incorporated into the thinking and speaking of men, may be found many of the conceptions of Cowper’s genius, especially as embodied in the Task, near the conclusion of which he ascends to so lofty a height, as to remind us of the sublimity of Milton. It is perfectly obvious, that before his muse took that flight, she had bathed her wing in the fountain of inspiration. The voice of the bard seems to echo that of the Hebrew prophet, as he stood upon the Mount of Vision, and beheld the unfolding glories of the latter day.

The satire of Cowper was at times as keen as his own sensibilities, yet blending itself with a gentle manner and a genial humor, it disarmed all suspicion of malignity in its composition, thus augmenting its moral power. Vice, folly, and even finery, felt the sharpness of his satire. In his themes, as in so many clear mirrors, we see reflected the multiplied images of the spirit of the man. Truth, Hope, Charity, Retirement, Ode to Peace, Human Frailty, the Rose, the Doves, the Glowworm, Lily, Nosegay, Epitaph on a Hare, such are the subjects that wakened in him congenial thought and feeling. The lines on his Mother’s Portrait are exquisitely tender and affecting, instinct with love, overflowing with affection, with that love which is never so intense as when softened by affliction, and intertwined with pensive recollections of the past. His pieces are not wrought with the perfection and coldness of artistic skill, like those of the sculptor, but flow from the imagination right through the channel of the heart, taking the most natural shape and costume of the moment and the occasion.

The great critic of the North, who sat so many years on the Bench of Literature before he occupied the Bench of Civil Justice, from which death has recently called him, thus pronounced his opinion of Cowper: “The great variety and truth of his descriptions; the sterling weight and sense of most of his observations, and, above all, the great appearance of facility with which every thing is executed, and the happy use he has so often made of the most ordinary language, all concur to stamp upon his poems the character of original genius, and remind us of the merits that have secured immortality to Shakspeare.”

Little need be added concerning his prose. It is known to have been eminently easy and natural. His letters especially are models. It is sufficient praise to say, that Robert Hall, that master of the art of composition, thus speaks of Cowper: “I have always considered his letters as the finest specimens of the epistolary style in our language. To an air of inimitable ease and negligence, they unite a high degree of correctness, such as could result only from the clearest intellect, combined with the most finished taste. I have scarcely found a single word which is capable of being exchanged for a better. Literary errors I can discern none. The selection of the words, and the structure of the periods are inimitable; they present as striking a contrast as can well be conceived to the turgid verbosity which passes at present for fine writing, and which bears a great resemblance to the degeneracy which marks the style of Ammianus Marcellinus, as compared to that of Cicero and Livy. A perpetual effort and struggle is made to supply the place of vigor; garish and dazzling colors are substituted for chaste ornament, and the hideous distortions of weakness for native strength. In my humble opinion, the study of Cowper’s prose may on this account be as useful in forming the taste of young people as his poetry.”

EVENING.

———

J. R. BARRICK.

———

How sweet to me the evening hour,

When Nature sinks to rest,

And like a warrior in his pride

The sun goes down the west.

As evening stars, like diamonds bright,

Come peeping through the sky,

Ah! what a thing of joy ’twould be

From earth to fade and die.

THE QUEEN OF THE WOODS.

MY “LIDA.”

———

BY “L’INCONNUE.”

———

The spring-time is waking to beauty and bloom,

The storm-clouds are breaking, and bright through the gloom

The blue heaven flashes like gleams of thine eye,

Through the dark silken lashes, which deepen its dye,

’Tis a glance full of tenderness, blended with pride,

Like thine own azure eye-beam, my sweet sister Lide!

The rose-buds are sleeping—but odors around

Tell of hyacinths peeping from yon grassy mound;

And the peach-bloom is blushing like cloudlets at even,

When the sunset is flushing the calm summer heaven,

And I dream as its leaflets float down at my side

Of the rose-tinted cheek of my sweet sister Lide.

The south wind is blowing, and up from the wood,

Where the streamlet is flowing, in charmed solitude,

Swells in low, liquid numbers the waterfall’s song,

As its chanting wave slumbers, or dashes along;

And the clear silvery tone of that murmuring tide

Seems the love-laden voice of my sweet sister Lide.

The soft stars are twinkling in beauty above,

And the dew-drops besprinkling their blossoms of love,

While a fresh, balmy breathing of spring-tide’s perfume

O’er my free soul is wreathing that delicate bloom,

Which glows o’er the beautiful feelings that glide

Through the pure angel-heart of my sweet sister Lide.

There’s a charm in the far gleam of waves on the sea,

And a spell in the star-beam that whispers of thee;

But as gay hours in fleeting new blushes of Spring

To this wild bosom’s beating in loveliness bring,

So its soft feelings deepen to glorious pride

When it dreams of its angel, my sweet sister Lide.

The world thinks us lonely—’tis true we’re alone,

Not as twin-spirits only—our hearts are but one —

With no parent, no brother, no glad, happy home,

We’re the world to each other, wherever we roam,

And my young life glides onward like spring’s sunny tide

When I dwell with “mine own one”—my “love of a Lide!”

Memphis, 1850.

SCENE ON THE OHIO.

———

BY GEO. D. PRENTICE.

———

It is a glorious eve—the stream

Without a murmur wanders by,

And on its breast, with softened beam,

The sleeping stars so sweetly lie,

’Twould seem as if the tempest’s plume

Had swept through woods of tropic bloom,

And scattered down their blossoms bright

To sleep upon the waves to-night.

And see—as hangs the moon aloft,

Her beams come gushing through the air

So mild, so beautifully soft,

That wood and stream seem stirred with prayer,

And the pure spirit, as it kneels

At Nature’s holy altar, feels

Religion’s self come floating by

In every beam that cleaves the sky.

There’s glory in each cloud and star,

There’s beauty in each wave and tree,

And gentle voices from afar

Are borne like angel-minstrelsy;

In such a spot, at such an hour,

My spirit feels a spell of power,

And all beneath, around above,

Seems earthly bliss and heavenly love.

Oh, Mary, idol of my life,

My heart’s young mate, my soul’s sweet bride,

Dear soother of my spirit’s strife,

I would that thou wert by my side,

And I would kneel on this green sod

In love to thee and praise to God,

And, gazing in thy gentle eyes,

Dream but of thee and Paradise.

I see thy name in yon blue sky,

In every sound thy name I hear,

All nature paints it to my eye

And breathes it in my listening ear;

I read it in the moon’s sweet beam,

The starlight prints it on the stream,

And wave and breeze and singing bird

Speak to my soul the blesséd word.

THE QUEEN OF THE WOODS.

THE LADY OF THE ROCK.

A LEGEND OF NEW ENGLAND.

———

BY MISS M. J. WINDLE.

———

(Concluded from page 334.)

CHAPTER XV.

wrought gems,

Medallions, rare mosaics and antiques

From Italy, the niches filled:

Thine is the power to give

Thine to deny,

Joy for the hour I live.

Calmness to die.—Willis.

As the object of young Stanley’s visit to England has no bearing upon the dénouement of this tale, we will not follow his footsteps thither. It is probable, however, that we may meet with him on his return, for we, too, although not in company with him, are about to cross the Atlantic, and bear our reader along with us.

It is known that when Alice Heath sailed for England, she had strong hopes from obtaining an interview with Charles II., that she might succeed by her persuasions, in procuring the pardon of her husband and father. These hopes, however, were by no means so strong as she had given the outcasts reason to believe, for it had been clearly represented to her, how difficult she might find it, owing to his bitterness against the murderers of his father. Yet there were those who advised her to the step, on the ground that her chance of success, although, indeed, thus slender, was by no means entirely void. And, on this bare possibility, the heroic wife and daughter had torn herself from the exiles, braved the perils of the ocean alone, and again set foot in her native land.

So far, at first, from her obtaining the desired interview with Charles, his minions had seized upon Alice as a hostage for the escaped prisoners, and thrown her into strict confinement. Here she lingered during the sixteen years of which our narrative takes no account. We have said that that length of time may pass, figuratively speaking, to many, as rapidly as the short turning of a leaf in our volume. But to her, who was thus imprisoned, how wearily must it have waned! Separated from those to whom she deemed her presence so necessary—with no means of communicating to them the fatal termination of her projected journey of hope, how interminable must it have appeared. Then it was, for the first time in her distresses, that the noble spirit of Alice Heath sank. Prevented from acting for those whom she loved, successive days presented to her, no object in life, and scarce the faint hope of escape from her imprisonment at any future period.

At length, however, at the time we again recur to her, she had succeeded in gaining the ear of one who stood high in the favor of the king. Through his influence she had been released, and was this day to have an audience with Charles in behalf of her proscribed relatives.

As Alice rode through London, the lofty houses, the stately streets, the walks crowded with busy citizens of every description, passing and repassing with faces of careful importance or eager bustle, combined to form a picture of wealth, bustle and splendor to which she had long been a stranger. Whitehall at last received her, and she passed under one of the beautiful gates of tesselated brick-work.

Noon-day was long past when Alice entered the palace, and the usual hour of the king’s levee—if any thing could be termed usual where there was much irregularity—was over. The hall and stair-cases were filled with lackeys and footmen in the most expensive liveries, and the interior apartments with gentlemen and pages of the household of Charles, elegantly arrayed. Alice was conducted to an ante-chamber. Here, in waiting, were many of those individuals who live upon the wants of the noble, administering to the pleasures of luxurious indolence, and stimulating the desires of kingly extravagance by devising new modes and fresh motives of expenditure. There was the visionary philosopher, come to solicit base metals in order that he might transmute them into gold. There was the sea-captain, come to implore an expedition to be fitted out, if not exactly to discover new worlds, at least to colonize and settle uncivilized ones. Mechanics and artisans of every trade—the poet—the musician—the dancer—all had collected here under promise of an audience with their monarch, many of them day by day disappointed, but still returned anew.

Alice halted at the door of the apartment, seeing it filled with so many persons, and beckoning a page to her, handed him a passport from the Duke of Buckingham. On glancing his eye over it, he requested her to follow him. He led her some distance, through various passages, elegantly carpeted, and paused before a small withdrawing-room. Throwing open the door, he desired her to enter. The apartment was hung with the finest tapestry, representing classic scenes, and carpeted so thick that the heaviest tread could scarcely be heard. Stools and cushions were disposed here and there about the floor, and elegant sofas and couches were placed against the walls. Statues of bronze, intended to light the apartment by evening, were placed in various niches. A large glass door opened into a paved court heated by artificial means. In this court a number of spaniels were playing, and numerous birds, of different species, seemed to be domesticated there.

Upon this day, the king held his court in Queen Catharine’s apartments. These were thrown open at a given hour to invited persons of something less than the highest rank, though the nobility had likewise the privilege of being present.

It is not unknown that Charles had allowed many of the restrictions by which the court had been surrounded during the previous reign to be remitted. This circumstance it was that had chiefly gained him the popularity which he possessed, and that, in fact, enabled him to retain the throne. All who could advance the slightest claims to approach his circle, were readily admitted: and every formality was banished from a society in which mingled some of the most humorous and witty courtiers that ever dangled around a monarch. The dignity of the king’s bearing withal secured him against impertinent intrusion, and his own admirable wit formed a sure protection against the sallies of others.

On the present day, Charles seemed peculiarly alive to sensations of enjoyment from the scene before him. Arrangements for prosecuting all the frivolous amusements of the day, were prepared by the gay monarch. A band of musicians was provided, selected by his own taste, which, in every species of art, was of the nicest and most critical kind. Tables were set for the accommodation of gamesters. From one to the other of these, the king glided, exchanging a jest, or a bet, or a smile, as the occasion suggested it.

While he was thus occupied, the page who had conducted Alice into the withdrawing-room, suddenly entered. He spoke a few words to an attendant upon the court, who immediately approached and informed his majesty that a lady, refusing to announce her name, desired to be admitted into the presence.

“By what right, then, does she claim to enter?” demanded the queen, hastily.

“She used the name of the Duke of Buckingham,” replied the usher.

“Who can she be?” said a nobleman present.

“In the name of adventure, let us admit her,” said the king.

The games were neglected; the musicians played without being listened to; conversation ceased; and a strange curiosity pervaded the circle.

“Does your majesty desire the lady to be admitted?” inquired the attendant.

“Certainly; but, no, I will see her in the ante-room.” So saying, he left the apartment.

Alice had sat some moments on one of the sofas we have mentioned, when a person entered, whose appearance caused her heart to beat rapidly, as if conscious that he was the individual with whom she sought an interview. He whom she beheld was apparently past thirty years of age. His complexion was dark, and he wore on his head a long, black periwig. His dress was of plain black velvet; and a cloak of the same material, hung carelessly over one shoulder. His features were strongly marked, but an air of dignified good-humor presided over his countenance.

Alice, conscious of the deep die which hung upon the issue of this meeting, grew paler than even imprisonment and sorrow had left her, and her heart palpitated with such energy that it seemed as if it must burst its prison-house. She rose as the king approached, and fell upon her knees. As we have said, there was not the faintest shade of vital color to enliven her countenance, and the deep black garb in which she was clad, as accordant with her feelings and suitable to her distressed condition, increased the effect of this unearthly pallor. She was still beautiful, despite of care and time, and the angel-like expression of purity had deepened upon her features.

Charles, ever alive to the charms of her sex, paused, much struck, at the interesting picture she presented. Advancing, after he had gazed on her for an instant, he bade her rise and be seated.

It was dangerous for the king to behold beauty in the pomp of all her power, with every look bent upon conquest—more dangerous to see her in the moment of unconscious ease and simplicity, yielding herself to the graceful whim of the instant, and as willing to be pleased as desirous of pleasing. But he was prone to be affected far differently by gazing on beauty in sorrow: for his feelings were as keenly alive at times to impressions of genuine kindness and generous sympathy, as they were to the lighter emotions of the heart.

Her glance was one rather of uncertainty and hesitation, than of bashfulness or timidity, as she still knelt and said, “I behold his majesty, the king of England, I presume?”

“It is Charles Stuart, madam, who requests you again to seat yourself,” said the king.

“The posture I employ is the most fitting for one who comes to ask a boon such as I have to solicit. I am the daughter and wife of certain of thy unhappy father’s enemies.”

The king’s countenance instantly changed. “Ah,” said he, “her whose release I have recently granted.”

“The same,” replied Alice, “and I come now on behalf of my husband and father, to beg you to extend your clemency to them.”

“Madam,” said Charles, “you have at length obtained your own pardon, and methinks that is already a sufficient act of generosity, when I might have held you still as a hostage for the escaped prisoners.”

“If you entertained any hopes from that circumstance,” rejoined Alice, “that those whom you pursue would ever deliver themselves up for my redemption, believe me, they were idle; for I had taken care to prevent the knowledge of my situation ever coming to their ears. And except for some such a hope, I can hardly think you would desire longer to confine an innocent female.”

“Your own release is freely granted,” said Charles; “and I grieve, now that I behold you, that it should have been thus long delayed.”

“My release is something, it is true,” said Alice, “since it will permit my return to those unhappy beings for whom I plead. But will you not add to this not of generosity one still more noble, and let me bear to them the news of their pardon.”

“It grieves me to refuse you,” answered Charles. “But your father was one of the most implacable judges in that parricidal court that condemned Charles I. to death.”

At these words Alice leaned back against the walls of the apartment for support, her countenance becoming, not paler than before, for that was impossible, but convulsed with the effort to repress her emotion.

“Hear me,” said she at length, after a violent struggle, “I have one plea to urge in behalf of my request, and if it fails of success, I will depart in despair.”

“Say on, madam,” answered the king; “your plea must, indeed, be powerful, since you are about to advance it with so much fervor and confidence.”

“It is in the confidence of small desert, my lord. But I will proceed at once to offer it. This is not,” she continued, “the first time that I have come to beg the boon of a human life within these walls—a life not endeared to me by personal ties as are those for whom I now implore your forgiveness. Unprompted by any motives of self-interest, but urged merely by feelings of compassion, such as I would fain excite this moment in your bosom, I came hither to beg the life of your father, my liege, the late unhappy king.”

Charles looked much astonished.

“I came hither, my lord,” pursued Alice, “on the night preceding that unfortunate day which I will not pain you by naming, to solicit the influence of the only man in England who could have interposed to save the life of the late Charles Stuart. My efforts, alas! I need not say, were but too unavailing. But, by those efforts, all fruitless though they were, I urge your pardon of the offenders for whose dear sakes I am here a suppliant. Let the loyalty of the wife and daughter atone in this instance for the disloyalty of the husband and father; and let this act of noble forgiveness distinguish your reign.”

The king’s eye had moistened while she spoke, and an exceeding softness came over his mood. It is known that he was peculiarly alive to gentle and generous impressions. “Your appeal,” said he, “is —”

“Not fruitless, I trust,” interrupted Alice, who had beheld with joy the effect of her words upon his countenance.

“Far otherwise,” replied Charles; “but ask not your demand as a boon at my hands, urge it as a debt of gratitude due from a son to one who would have saved the life of his parent.”

“Call it what you will, my lord, but grant my request.”

“Rise, madam,” said Charles, “my debt to you shall be canceled—your husband and father are pardoned.”

Alice pressed the hand with grateful warmth, and raised it to her lips. “May the Lord reward you for the blest and healing words you have uttered,” said she. “No thanks my tongue can speak may suitably express my acknowledgments for what you have done. You have yourself, my liege, known what it is to be hunted down by those who would have deprived you of life. And when you first learned that you might again hold your existence without fear, the thrill of happiness you must have experienced may be named as a fair parallel with that you now confer on those two outcasts whose lives and liberty hung upon your word. But there is no criterion by which one of your sex may judge of the blessing bestowed upon a wife in restoring the life and freedom of her husband. May God repay you for the joy you have conferred upon my heart.”

“I am already repaid in your gratitude,” said the king. “Besides, let me not forget that I am only returning an obligation.”

“I little dreamed,” rejoined Alice, “when I made an effort on account of the late king, that the time would ever arrive when I should urge it to your majesty as an obligation on your part. It was a simple act of compassion, and some instinctive feelings of loyalty toward my unhappy sovereign. But I find I did not misjudge his son when I thought to found on it some claims to his mercy and generosity.”

“The circumstance affords an illustration of the truth, that deeds of kindness sooner or later meet their reward even in this life.”

“May you live then to reap your recompense for that you have but now performed,” said Alice, terminating the interview, and turning to depart.

The king accompanied her in person to the outer door of the palace, and a page conducted her to the gate, where a carriage was in waiting.

——

CHAPTER XVI.

Adieu, oh fatherland! I see

Your white cliffs on the horizon’s rim,

And though to freer skies I flee,

My heart swells, and my eyes are dim!

Willis.

O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,

Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,

Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,

Survey our empire and behold our home.

These are our realms, no limits to their sway,

Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.

Byron.

A neat, tight-built brig was preparing to sail from London. On her deck might have been seen all the confusion usually attendant upon the departure of a vessel from port. Men hurrying to and fro with baggage—sailors hauling the ropes, and climbing the ladders, and fastening the boats to the side—passengers getting on board, and friends accompanying them for the sake of remaining with them to the last moment—and the voices of all resounding in dissonant tones in the air.

Among the passengers, two persons might have been particularly noticed. One was an exceedingly delicate and lovely-looking woman, apparently about the meridian of life. She was clad in black, and as she threw aside her veil to ascend the plank leading to the vessel, she discovered a face of such exquisite beauty, and an expression of such elevated purity, that all who caught a passing glimpse of her lineaments, turned to observe them more closely. She was alone, and borrowed the arm of a sailor to walk the plank, ascending it with a firm and dignified tread. As soon as she touched the vessel’s deck, she put a small piece of money into the hand of her companion, drew her veil again tightly over her face, and immediately sought the cabin.

The other was a young man of handsome exterior, who boarded the brig just after the lady we have described had disappeared below. Walking toward the stern of the vessel he leaned over the side. He remained thus for some time, apparently absorbed in a pleasing revery, and heedless of the bustle and confusion by which he was surrounded. At length he drew from his pocket a letter, evidently written in a delicate female hand, and read it with much interest—seemingly pondering upon every line of it with that lengthened perusal which a man bestows only upon the epistolary communications of the woman of his love.

Finally the preparations were ended. A bell rang, and those persons who intended to remain in England left the vessel. Slowly she got under way, and the breeze soon bore her out of sight of the harbor.

A voyage at sea is monotonous in the extreme; the only incident that can occur to give it positive variety being either a wreck or a capture—that variety is a thing to be dreaded, not desired. The smallest change in the weather—the sight of a bird or a fish—the meeting of another vessel—form the highest objects of interest, and epochs from which to date the flight of time.

In this manner six weeks passed away. The brig being bound for New Haven, had arrived within a hundred knots of Block Island on a certain afternoon, when the attention of the captain was attracted by the sight of a sail.

Immediately men were sent aloft to spy the approaching stranger.

“It is plainly visible,” said the captain, after a long and anxious search with a glass, to the young passenger we have described, who was standing by his side.

The person addressed raised his own glass and swept the water in the direction named. After one or two unsuccessful trials, his eye caught the object.

“What do you make of it?” he asked.

“Unless I am greatly deceived, sir, there is a full-rigged vessel under sail approaching us.”

The young man was silent for a few moments. He cast a cautious glance over the crew, who were anxiously regarding the approaching vessel, that was gradually becoming more and more distinct, and at length could be seen with the naked eye. She was a sloop, her tall and symmetrical spars rising against the sky in beautiful tapering lines, her sails set, and making rapidly toward them from the southward, the wind being fair from that quarter.

“A fine vessel,” said the passenger, addressing the captain. “I should take her to be Spanish built.”

“It is quite an unusual thing to see a Spanish vessel in these parts,” replied the captain, lifting his glass again. “She shows no colors,” added he, as he looked through it. “I cannot make out of what country she is.”

At that instant, without hoisting colors or hailing, two shots were discharged from the sloop, one of which glanced across the bows of the brig, and ran dipping into the water, while the other went through her sail.

The captain replied by hailing the sloop through a speaking-trumpet, and demanding what she was, and wherefore she was guilty of this unprovoked hostility.

The only answer he received was the command, in a stern voice, “Down with your sails, and we will presently show you who we are.”

It was evident now that the brig was assailed by pirates, and the captain knowing that the command to lay-to would be immediately followed by a broadside if he refused, and, being totally unarmed, perceived that there remained no choice to him between flight and instant surrender. The one, he knew, would be impossible, from the rapid advances which the sloop had already made upon them, though the other was still less consonant with his inclinations.

The order was therefore given to clear the deck for the reception of the pirates. The mandate was received by the crew in sullen silence, and a few of the younger and more fiery of the sailors were seen to shake their heads, as if they disapproved of a step, however necessary, that seemed thus cowardly. Whatever might have been the private feelings of the captain, when the character and force of his enemy were clearly established, he betrayed no signs of indecision from the time when his resolution appeared to be taken. He issued the further requisite commands from the spot where he first stood, in perfect calmness, and with that distinctness and readiness so important to one in his position.

A boat was at once lowered by the sloop and filled with armed hands, which rowed to take possession of their easy prize.

The eye of the passenger never quitted the vessel as it approached. The main-deck presented a picture of mingled unquietness and repose. Many of the seamen were seen seated on their guns, with their cheeks pressing the rude metal which served them for a pillow. Others lay along the deck with their heads resting on the hatches. A first glance might have induced the belief that all were buried in the most profound slumber. But the quick jerking of a line, the sudden shifting of a position, required only to be noticed to prove that the living silence that reigned throughout was not born either of apathy or repose.

“Perhaps you might pacify them by fair words,” said the young man, as he still stood by the captain’s side.

“There is no hope of that.”

“Is there not a lady below?”

“There is,” answered the captain. “I had forgotten her until this moment.”

“I will see to her,” replied the other, and turning away, he quickly disappeared below. He had known that there was a female on board, but as she had throughout the passage kept the cabin, and taken all her meals in private, he had not yet seen her.

When he entered, she was seated at a table in the centre of the cabin. An elbow rested on it, and one fair hand supported a brow that was thoughtful even beyond the usual character of its expression.

He felt the blood rush to his heart, for he fancied the beautiful and pensive countenance before him was familiar. He stood uncertain, when the hand was removed from her face, and raising her head, she perceived that she was no longer alone. Their eyes met, and each started with a mutual glance of recognition. In her he beheld the wife and daughter of the regicides; and she, in turn, had little difficulty in tracing in his features, now matured to manhood, those of the youth who had borne the basket of provisions to and fro, and who had spent a night in the cave. In a word, Alice Heath and Frank Stanley had met.

If Stanley had before felt for the lady’s situation on board of a captured vessel, merely from the compassionate feelings due to her sex, with how much more sympathy did he regard her now. After his interview with Jessy Ellet, on the night before his departure for England, with suspicions aroused in his mind that she whom he beheld might be the mother of that object of his affections, how painful, too, to him must have been the thought that the worst fears her mind might have suggested would probably be realized.

“I fear I can do little to quiet your apprehensions, madam. I have before had occasion to witness your strength of mind and courage, and, all things considered, I deem it best to prepare you for the worst. The ship is attacked by pirates, and being unprepared for defense, has been obliged to surrender. I will remain with you, and protect you as far as I am able.”

Alice received the awful information with calmness.

Meanwhile, Stanley had scarcely left the deck ere the boat drew alongside, and a number of men jumped on board. One of them, of about thirty years of age, who was evidently the commander, approached the captain, and claimed the brig.

This person was a man of a tall and bulky form, and attired in a dress which seemed to have been studied with much care, although the style of it exhibited more extravagance than taste. Several pistols were fastened by a leathern belt around his waist.

“By what warrant do you stop me thus on the high seas?” asked the captain of the brig.

“You shall have the perusal of any of my warrants that you may desire,” replied the other, pointing to the pistols at his belt.

“You mean that you intend to capture us,” said the captain. “Be it so, then; but use civility toward the lady-passenger in the cabin.”

“Civility to the lady passenger!” echoed the pirate commander; “nay, we will use more than mere civility to her: for when are we otherwise than civil to the women, and, if they be fair, kind to boot? Where is this dulcinea? We will see her, for she may be the flower of our prize.”

So saying, he turned on his heel and descended to the cabin. The captain of the captured brig followed, hoping that his presence might in some measure serve to protect the lady.

“A beautiful woman,” exclaimed the pirate, as he entered. “None of your youthful lasses, but a ripened specimen of the sex: and with a look of sorrow, too, enough to soften the heart of a stone. Come,” added he, “most fair and lovely queen of affliction, let me sympathize with you.”

The lady drew her veil closely over her face, and with much offended dignity endeavored to extricate herself from his grasp.

“Let go of her, sir,” exclaimed Stanley, in a tone of anger.

“Why should I let her go; and by what right do you interfere in her behalf?” replied the pirate, turning roughly upon the speaker.

“Because I command you, sir, and because I will protect her with my life.”

“You command me, indeed!” sneered the pirate. “You shall see then what weight your commands have with me. Come,” he continued, addressing the lady, “cast aside this muffling: you have a face, from the glimpse I caught just now, that can bear to be uncovered with the best.”

Suiting the action to the word, the ruffian had torn off Alice’s veil, when Stanley interposed, and strode him a blow which sent him reeling to the farthest end of the cabin. He fell heavily against the brass railing of the stair-way, and lay completely stunned. It was evident that his head had come in contact with the metal in his fall, for the blood streamed from it copiously. The noise brought the other pirates into the cabin. Seeing their commander in the plight we have described, they raised him and placed him on a berth.

Demanding next an explanation from Stanley and the captain of the brig, they seized upon them both and bore them on deck, where they were placed under a guard, and threatened, if they were guilty of another aggression, with instant death. With regard to the lady, considering her as the lawful booty of their commander, they contented themselves with uttering jests at her expense.

Whilst the incidents above related were occurring, the brig had been got under way again, by her captors, and was moving on in the wake of the sloop, which had changed its course, and was putting towards land in a north-easterly direction.

——

CHAPTER XVII.

Fear was within the tossing bark

When stormy winds grew loud

And waves came rolling high and dark,

And the tall mast was bowed.

The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast,

And the woods, against a stormy sky.

Their giant branches tost.

Mrs. Hemans.

About twenty-four hours after the capture of the brig, related in the last chapter, every evidence of a violent storm was abroad. The wind began to sigh, as if bewailing in anticipation the evils which its increased fury might perpetrate. Gradually becoming more violent, it raged with the violence of a young lion over its prey. A blackness, almost as thick as night covered the face of the sky, as though the Almighty were bending his most awful frown upon a devoted world. These indications were speedily followed by heavy rain, intermixed with hail, disturbing the ocean, swelling brooks and lakes into vast sheets of foam, borne by the might of the wind far from their original source, and inundating the land in a fearful manner.

Two weeks previous to this storm an aged colonist from New Haven, had arrived with his son at the island on which Newport now stands. The advantages of that situation for sea-bathing, at this day so thoroughly known and tested, had even at that early period been discovered, and the season being spring, their object was to make arrangements for putting up a rude bathing-house for the accommodation of invalids.

During the storm described, the pair had remained for shelter on board their schooner, which, anchored as she was, had hard work to live through the anger of the elements. At length, however, after four or five hours, their rage began to abate: the wind gradually blew less and less wildly, the clouds commenced to disperse, and the shower to fall more quietly. Finally, the sun broke through his shroud of darkness, a pleasant calm succeeded, and the only rain-drops perceptible were those which clung to the dripping masts and sides of the schooner, and the rocks and shrubbery on the island.

As the old man and his son looked around them, the sea swelled and heaved with the agitation of the recent storm, the effects of which upon the waves had been too violent to subside for many hours. The tide poured along a surf deafening to hear, and bewildering to behold. The sea came on toward the beach in swells, rather than waves, as though the whole flood were pouring on in one huge body, rising gradually as it neared, towering above the high ridge, drawing back for an instant, and standing as a wall of water, it poured down like some mighty cataract.

All at once, the young man started and exclaimed, “God in Heaven! father, there is a vessel drifting upon the opposite strand.”

The old man perceived an object among the tide. He took his spy-glass and looked through it. “She is dismasted,” he said, “nothing but her hulk is left upon the water.”

“And drifting against the breakers,” cried his son, in horror, “without the slightest means of weathering the point!”

“She makes no attempt,” replied the other, “she must be deserted by her crew.”

“No open boat could have existed through such a storm as is just past, all must have perished.”

“Most probably,” answered the old man, with the mild composure of his years.

The hulk was now in the midst of the current, and drifting rapidly toward the strand. Their sight of it, however, was still indistinct: though from the black speck it had at first appeared, it grew a visible object. At length, they could perceive that it was a freight or passenger vessel, unfitted for defense, for there were no port-holes discernible. She had evidently been dismasted in the storm, and lay water-logged upon the waves, at the mercy of their violence. The crew, finding themselves unable to guide her, or relieve the leak, had taken to their boats and left the ship to her fate.

There was nothing then to fear for human life in the end to which she was fast approaching; yet the old man and his son could scarcely behold her, without a feeling of apprehension, about to fall a prey to the waves. As she advanced, every fathom’s stride she grew larger and larger. At length, as she surmounted the summit of one mountainous billow, her whole bulk was discernible. And when that wave retired, she had ceased her existence, and the receding ocean carried back merely her shattered remains, in the form of planks and beams, to return again by the next wave and again be precipitated to a distance.

At this instant he perceived a plank floating toward the land, to which were fastened two human beings.

“It has grounded in a place so shallow as almost to be dry; those persons live and may yet be saved!” was the exclamation of the youth, as he jumped from the deck of the schooner, and began to make his way at an incredibly rapid pace toward the wreck.

“My son, return, your attempt is rashness, nay, it is death.”

But the young man was out of hearing. In ten minutes he stood upon the cliff which overlooked the spot he sought. He began to descend. His progress was several times impeded by the falling of huge stones to which he was about to entrust his weight. Large fragments, too, came rolling after him, as if to send him headlong to the bottom. But a courageous heart and a firm tread bore him safely to the foot of the precipice.

He was now upon the shallow portion of a small shelf, which projected out a little distance into the sea, composed of gravel and stones. Upon this a few pieces of the wreck had grounded. He eagerly sought among these the objects that had brought him on his perilous errand. He soon discovered them. They were in a most precarious position. One of them a delicate female, her wet clothing hanging in heavy folds upon her form, and herself tied by a handkerchief round her waist to a plank, being placed with her face uppermost. The other was that of a man, lying by her side in a reversed position, with his left arm thrown over his companion, as if to keep her more securely in her place, and his right clinging around the plank, with the tight, convulsive grasp with which he had taken hold upon it. In both these persons, sense and the power of motion were gone. The plank on which they lay, not being thoroughly grounded upon the beach, but floating still in part upon the sea, was liable every moment to be washed away, to return no more.

Just as the youth, who had come in the hope of being their preserver, had discovered them, he saw a billow approaching, and hastened to interpose his efforts before it reached them, lest, in receding, it might bear away the sufferers.

He rushed into the surf, and held the plank on which they were with the tenacity of some animal seizing upon his prey, though under the dictation of a motive entirely different. It was not without a severe struggle on his part, that he as well as his lifeless companions were not swept off by the wave, which proved even stronger in its might than he had anticipated. He succeeded, however, in retaining his position; and, before the return of another, by a violent exertion of strength, he dragged upon the small strip of dry sand, the plank as well as those attached to it.

He next asked himself, how he should remove the unhappy sufferers to his father’s vessel, and obtain the means of recalling their ebbing life and prostrated strength. He looked toward the cliff and shouted for assistance, but he was answered only by the roaring waves. He turned his eyes again on those who were before him. The lady, as she lay with her face uppermost, was a sight more beautiful in the eyes of the rough youth who gazed upon her than he had ever deemed were the angels in Heaven. She was at the middle age of life, but still interesting and lovely in appearance. Her garments were black, and contrasted strangely with the pearl-like whiteness of her skin. The face of her companion being downward, his features were not visible; but chestnut curls clustered over the back of his head, and his whole appearance gave promise of a pleasing physiognomy beneath.

Bending over them, their preserver discovered that they both still breathed, but so feebly that the respiration of each was scarcely perceptible. Of the lady especially, life seemed to have so slight a hold, that there was much ground to fear that unless it were at once re-inforced it would shortly become extinct.

At this moment his father crept cautiously along the beach. Anxious for his son, as well as wishing to assist him in his hazardous enterprise of mercy, if, in fact, he had not lost his life in the perilous path he had taken, the old man had reached him at length by a circuitous and less dangerous descent.

He uttered an exclamation of thanks at beholding him uninjured. Then, after a moment’s consultation, the father untied the handkerchief which bound the female to the plank, and lifting the insensible and fragile form in his arms with much care, he set out with rapid steps by the same path he had come.

His son had more difficulty in raising the body of her companion. But by one of those superhuman efforts of strength which great emergencies are known to inspire, he at length succeeded, and with labored breath, followed after his father, as rapidly as the heavy weight of his burden would allow.

It was about twelve minutes after the old man, that the youth reached the schooner. The lady, by this time, under the vigorous exertions of his father, had revived so far as to open her eyes and sigh heavily.

Both the men, therefore, deemed it best to devote themselves to the other sufferer. He too, though not so readily as his companion, owing to his face having lain downward, and his respiration having been thus impeded, at length gave signs of returning life.

Reader, we will not stay to behold their complete restoration to consciousness. We leave you to imagine the circumstance. Doubtless you have anticipated us in the information, that in them you behold Alice Heath and Frank Stanley, both of whom the storm had been the means of delivering unharmed from the hands of the pirates.

——

CHAPTER XVIII.

Oh, is it not a noble thing to die

As dies the Christian, with his armor on! —

What is the hero’s clarion, though its blast

Ring with the mastery of a world, to this?

What are the searching victories of mind —

The lore of vanished ages?—What are all

The trumpetings of proud humanity,

To the short history of him who made

His sepulchre beside the King of kings?

Willis.

Henry Elmore and his wife had suddenly been called to New Haven, in consequence of the receipt of a brief letter. By the same messenger, a letter had also come to Jessy Ellet, from her lover, informing her of his arrival in Connecticut, and giving some account of the capture of the vessel in which he had sailed, and of the shipwreck, with the details of his escape from which the reader is already acquainted. He also hinted at some tidings which would make her heart leap for joy, but added, that as he expected to have the bliss of meeting her before twenty-four hours from the time of his writing, he would defer his intelligence until then.

As Jessy sat alone, after having seen her sister and brother depart for New Haven, counting the hours until their return and her lover’s arrival, (for she supposed they would come in company,) her thoughts and feelings were of that agitated kind natural to her situation in expecting to meet so soon the object to whom her affections were plighted, after his absence for months in a distant land.

That part of the letter she had just received, which spoke of joyful intelligence awaiting her, increased the pleasurable disturbance of her mind. To what could it refer if not to the subject upon which she had opened her heart on the night when he had declared his love for her? Some clue, she deemed, he must have obtained to the truth of her surmises, and to the continued existence of that sadly beautiful lady, for whom she had so strangely felt the instinctive yearnings of a daughter’s affection. Filled with all that expectancy to which this conviction gave rise, in addition to that which the announced arrival of her lover was calculated to produce, she had drawn her chair into the corridor at the back of the house, to enjoy the spring-breeze, and muse at her pleasure.

As she sat thus, she was startled by the sound of a deep groan issuing from the door opening upon the wing of the house to which the corridor led. Much surprised, and inclined to think that her imagination had deceived her, and that in the occupation of her mind she had mistaken some ordinary sound, and fancied it that manifestation of distress which she deemed she had heard, she aroused herself completely from her reflections, and listened breathlessly to hear whether or not it should be repeated. In a few minutes it was audible again. This time it was impossible that she could be mistaken. It was a groan of human agony which she had heard. She rose instantly and approached the door from whence it came. She had never before sought entrance here, having always supposed the place sacred to her sister’s devotions, and containing no possible attractions which should lead her to visit it.

Hastily she glanced her eye along the door in quest of a handle or latch to assist her in opening it. But it contained none. She then pushed it, in hopes that it might give way to her pressure. It was firmly secured, however, and resisted all her attempts. At length she was about to desist in despair, when another groan, deeper and more heart-rending than those she had heard previously, caused her to make one more effort. She exerted her utmost strength, and in doing so, her hand accidentally touched upon a secret spring, and the door suddenly gave way. She found herself at the foot of a low flight of steps, up which she quickly ascended.

Jessy Ellet here encountered another door which stood ajar. She heard within the sound of a heavy tread, and, filled with astonishment, hesitated whether to advance or retreat. Again a moan of distress fell upon her ear. Stimulated by feelings of kindness and compassion no less than of intense curiosity, she proceeded, and stood within a neat though humble apartment. It was carpeted, and otherwise comfortably furnished. A table, strewn with prints and newspapers, was placed in the centre of the room. A low fire burned in the hearth, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, and a couch was drawn near it, beside which was placed a stand covered with phials, and a bowl containing nourishment for an invalid.

Upon this couch lay the form of a person covered with a cloak. Jessy’s quick glance rested here, and, at that moment, another of the sounds of pain, such as she had heard, issued from beneath the folds of the mantle. Instantly approaching, she turned down the cloak, and beheld the face of the dying person lying beneath it. It was that of an aged man, whose features were wan and worn. His eyes were closed, and through the midst of the traces of pain which rested upon his countenance, might have been discerned the calm beauty of holiness, and the placid smile of one whose hopes were placed in heaven.

As Jessy stood, she became conscious, by a slight movement behind her, that there was still another inmate of the apartment. Turning, she beheld standing near, a form of manly grace and dignity. As she did so the countenance of the person whom she viewed underwent an entire change, and he regarded her with a fixed and painful earnestness, while a flush that over-spread his fine features evinced no little emotion.

“Excuse my intrusion,” said Jessy, addressing him modestly, and with embarrassment. “I heard a sound of distress, and came hither to learn whence it proceeded.”

At the tones of her voice, the invalid, with another groan, stirred, as if about to awake. It seemed as though there had been some magic in her notes to arouse him, for his sleep had been deep, and she had spoken but in a low key.

“I heard the voice of my Alice, did I not?” said he, faintly.

Opening his eyes, he beheld Jessy standing by his side. “The Lord’s blessing be upon thee, Alice,” he murmured, endeavoring to stretch out his withered and feeble hand toward her. “I knew thou hadst not utterly forsaken us. See, William, she has returned; the Lord is still merciful to us. Mine eyes have beheld her once more, and I have now no other wish than to close them again and die.”

Jessy, supposing his words caused by the delirium of illness, gently took the faded hand he tried to offer, and he continued. “Years have passed over thee, my daughter. Thou lookest scarce older or less fair than when thou wert wont to trip about thy father’s halls, ere trouble visited us. Time has not dealt so lightly with thy husband and myself. See how thine absence has wasted me until I am dying to-day. Alice, thou must have been happier than we have been during thy separation.”

Surprised at these words, Jessy turned toward the other stranger.

“He mistakes me for another,” said she.

“Well might I too believe that thou art she,” replied the person addressed, regarding her fixedly in an absent manner, and speaking as if to himself. “Maiden,” said he, suddenly, shaking off for a moment his waking dream, and advancing a step nearer to her, “by what name do they call thee?”

“I am known as Jessy Ellet, sir,” she replied, modestly. “Whom do I so much resemble?”

The person spoken to did not apparently hear the query. His whole senses seemed absorbed in the one sense of sight; and he continued to gaze upon her until, in spite of all his efforts at self-control, he seemed almost completely overcome by some feelings of extraordinary emotion.

Jessy looked in surprise at his working features for a moment, and she felt her nature melt in a flow of generous sympathy toward him, as she tremulously and apprehensively repeated her question.

“Whom dost thou resemble?” he said at length. “Thine own mother, my daughter—my wife and the child of that dying man. Behold your father and grandfather in the unhappy beings before you. Come, my child, to this long-forsaken bosom.” And he stretched out his arms to receive her.

There was a moment’s doubt on the part of Jessy; but a mysterious instinct convinced her of the truth of the words she had heard; and the next moment her arms were about the neck of the stranger, and her voice was uttering through sobs and tears the endearing name of father.

After a while, gently disengaging herself from his embrace, she knelt down by the side of the aged sufferer, and bathed his feeble hands with her tears. The old man seemed to have no part in the recognition which had taken place. His imagination mistook the gentle creature before him for the lost child of his memory.

He appeared now to be sinking rapidly, and as the father and daughter sat with full hearts in the consciousness of being thus united, and listened to his labored respirations, the sound of approaching carriage-wheels slightly shook the house. It ceased, and a vehicle stopped at the door. A few moments more, and a creaking was heard upon the stairs. Presently after, a step fell upon the floor of the room, and a female figure softly advanced. The father and daughter started simultaneously, and rushed toward her. In a moment the arms of both were around her, and the heroic Alice Heath was at length restored to her husband and child.

We should attempt in vain to describe the scene that followed. From the state of torpor produced by approaching death, the old man was suddenly awakened to all the pleasure of an actual reunion with her most dear to him on earth. Imagination itself will find difficulty in supplying the effect upon all, when, with hands upraised, and on her bended knees beside his couch of death, Alice thanked God in all the fervor of true piety, that she had returned in time to shed a ray of comfort upon the departing spirit of her aged father. Neither can any conception paint her feelings of bliss as she arose to be clasped again in the arms of him to whom she had pledged her virgin faith, and was bound by the holiest of earthly ties, or to meet the embrace of the daughter toward whom her soul had yearned so long in absence with all a mother’s tenderness. Suffice it to say, that love and affection, the first elements of her nature, and her great sustaining principles throughout all her trials here, found ample exercise in the full fruition of joy.

We will not linger on the scene with minute detail, since no power of language we possess can convey the transcript as it should be. Pass we on then to the conclusion of our story.

——

CHAPTER XIX.

To sum the whole—the close of all.

Dean Swift.

The morning of the next day dawned on few who had pressed their customary couches in the house of Henry Elmore, for the aged sufferer, on the night that intervened, had breathed his last beneath its roof. The body extended on the bed, exhibited, even in death, that mildness and serenity of expression that had characterized his face during the latter portion of his life.

Sorrow could scarcely grieve that one who had outlived the full term of years allotted to man, and drank so deeply of earth’s cup of trial, should, at last, in a moment of unhoped for joy to cheer his exit from life, have finally departed; and Alice felt, as she kissed his cold brow, ere the coffin-lid had closed upon it forever, that her deepest feelings of filial affection could not inspire the wish within her to recall his departed spirit. Tears, many and heavy, it is true, were shed over him, but they fell rather for the sorrows he had passed, than because he was thus summoned in the fullness of time to a world where sorrow could never come.

He was followed to the grave, not only by his relations, but by Henry Elmore and his wife, whose feelings on the occasion were scarcely less deep than their own. In them, the deceased as well as his unhappy companion, had found true and sympathizing friends; and to their unremitting care and attention it was that they had not both sunk, long ere the return of Alice, into the same grave to which the one had now finally departed. Governor H. and his excellent lady likewise attended the funeral with much sympathy, and returned afterward to the house of their niece, to rejoice with Alice on her return, and congratulate her husband on the pardon of which he had been the bearer.

An interesting scene ensued, in which Jessy wept upon the necks of those generous friends, and returned her thanks to them for having so long sought to shield her from the misfortunes of her family. Between Lucy and herself a still more affecting embrace followed. The former, through the strict secrecy of her uncle and aunt, had never suspected that the tender name of sister by which she had known Jessy, was only assumed. But though she received the intelligence in some sorrow, it was scarcely of a heartfelt kind; for both had a consciousness that it was in the name alone that a change could take place, and that in feeling and affection they would ever remain sisters still.

Stanley, too, was present on this occasion. His meeting with Jessy at such a season of deep feeling for her had been tender in the extreme; and although he had not as yet had time for many words in private with the object of his affection, she read in his manner and countenance his deep and ardent sympathy.

The rumor of the strange reunion between the parents and child; of the long seclusion of Lisle and Heath in the wing of Henry Elmore’s house, thereby explaining all the mystery formerly attached to it, soon spread throughout the colony. But it scarcely excited the astonishment which such a romance in real life would create at the present day, for those were periods of tragical confusion and strange catastrophe, for better or for worse, when the rendings asunder of domestic charities were often without an hour’s warning, and where reunions were as dramatic as any exhibited on the stage.

It created little surprise, therefore, when Heath removed to Boston with his gentle and lovely wife, there to reside permanently, or when Jessy Ellet appeared as an inmate of their family.

It was just three months after this removal that Stanley and Jessy were united in marriage. No wedding-party was invited to grace the occasion; but Governor and Mrs. H. and Henry Elmore and his wife were the only guests.

We will now bid the reader adieu, leaving him to imagine that henceforth the fortunes of all of our characters ran in as smooth a tide as is possible in this world. We all know that the stream of actual life flows in an even course with but few. With most it is—romance aside—as our tale has shown it, a confused succession of alternating sensations, sometimes dark and dull of hue, like the clouds of winter, at others, breaking out into the glowing splendor and bright illusions of a dream.

THE JOLLY RIDE.

THE JOLLY RIDE.

[WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING.]

Oh! for those rides, those jolly, jolly rides,

When my sister and I were young,

When our hearts were bright and our spirits light,

Of sorrow and sin unstung.

When Neddy we bestrode, with our double load,

As good at our need as an Arab steed;

And merrily pricked, though he sulked and kicked,

O’er rivulet, rock and mead.

Alas! for those rides, they are gone, they are past;

Ned and we are grown old and gray;

But thoughts of those times, like Christmas chimes,

In our hearts must ever be gay.       H.

BALLADS OF THE CAMPAIGN IN MEXICO. NO. V.

———

BY HENRY KIRBY BENNER, U. S. A.

———

Buena Vista.

We lay at Aqua Nueva, sullenly, in stern repose,

Awaiting, with anxiety, the onset of our foes: —

We were few; but what of that? We were men, not one of whom

But was ready, when his country called, to meet a soldier’s doom,

And, looking toward the approaching fight with something like despair,

We were deadly as the lion when the hunter treads his lair.

Our foes, so said our scouts, when they came, at set of sun,

Were led by Santa Anna, and were more than five to one; —

They were more than twenty thousand, we, little more than four;

But deadlier fights, we knew, were fought by our ancestors of yore,

When, hand to hand, with axe and bill our fathers clove their way

At Agincourt, and Cressy, and purple Poitiérs.

Our general’s brow was care-worn; his eye leapt like a hound,

Seeking, wherever it rested, the advantage of the ground:

Between us and Saltillo lay a craggy mountain pass,

With sierra on sierra in many a granite mass —

The plain of Buena Vista, where, afterward, we stood

And fought till its ravines and sands were purple with our blood.

When the foe reached Aqua Nueva—when they found our army gone,

They pressed in marshaled masses, in solid thousands, on;

And noon beheld that river of human souls, for miles,

Like one of their own torrents, sweep through the wild defiles —

So, conscious of their strength, they came, while we, in mute surprise,

Looked wistfully and earnestly in one another’s eyes.

The foe had wedged us in, when a flag approached our ranks,

While the hovering enemy pressed on whence they might turn our flanks;

’Twas a summons to surrender—a summons unto men

Who had beat their bravest generals, and could do so once again:

We laughed in hearty scorn, for the rawest volunteer

Had grown so anxious for the fight he never thought of fear.

Then came a little pause, and we raised our eyes to heaven,

And prayed in silence that our sins and crimes might be forgiven;

For well we knew that many a heart which now beat high with pride,

Would lie ere night in icy rest along the mountain side.

And then we thought of Washington, whose spirit, from above,

Was gazing on his children with looks and eyes of love.

In our own green sunny land we were wont to mark the day

Which gave him to his country with many a mimic fray,

And now the thought ran through our souls that this, henceforth, should be

One which our children after us should hail with songs of glee;

And we gazed in one another’s eyes, and silently we swore

To do such deeds as history had never heard before.

We stood, each in our places, when, on our left, arose

The rattling roll of musketry from our advancing foes; —

They were mounting, troop by troop, the steep sierra’s side:

A moment! and our comrades, with hearty cheers, replied; —

Shot after shot, peal after peal, and we saw their scattered men

Rolling, like leaves before the storm, in terror, down the glen.

The night was cold and damp, but we scarcely felt a chill

As we lay, beside our arms, on the bleak and naked hill;

For our hearts were full of fire at the promise of the fray,

Which, we felt, would try our courage on the fast-approaching day,

While the murmur of the enemy, whose thousands hedged us round,

Came fitfully down the freezing wind, in gusts, along the ground.

At last the dawn arrived, and as the sun began

To kiss the summits of the hills, a thousand sparkles ran

Along the cliffs, like fire-flies on a sultry summer night,

And on the instant, every where was heard the din of fight —

On, like the sea, wave over wave, the army of our foe

Rolled toward our left, and pierced our ranks, and swept the red plateau.

We paused; we turned; some of us—fled, as the foe in thousands came,

And our guns in vain made breaches; and the air was red with flame:

We were staggering; we retreated; we were beaten; we would yield;

But Taylor’s eye shone every where at once along the field,

And the Mississippi volunteers, with Bragg, dashed madly on; —

We turned, and charged; and once again the purple field was won.

On our left the day was ours, when Santa Anna pressed

On our centre, now so weak, with his bravest and his best;

Once more our men retreated, when Bragg again came on,

And swept their ranks, but vainly; and every hope seemed gone:

Again—again—his cannon roared; again our rifles played,

And we hurled the beaten enemy in horror down the glade!

Night gathered round, and once again we made our bivouac

On Buena Vista, whence our foe had failed to drive us back.

On the morrow, wan and worn, but with spirits proud and high,

We would once more win the day, or, like soldiers, fall and die;

And we sunk in silent sleep, with an honest trust in God,

Where we lay the night before, on the cold and cheerless sod

But when the morning came, when the welcome sun arose,

We saw—each seeming in a dream—the files of flying foes;

And we lay on one another’s breasts—clasped one another’s hand,

And wept with joy, for God had saved our gallant little band —

God, and our courage, for we fought like heroes all will say

Who read in coming centuries the records of the fray.

SHAKSPEARE.

ANALYSIS OF ROMEO AND JULIET.

———

BY H. C. MOORHEAD.

———

The judicious critic, whilst insisting on the great and manifold beauties of the plays of Shakspeare, has felt himself constrained to admit that they are marred by grievous faults. Some of these have been laid upon the times in which he wrote; some upon the circumstances of his life; some upon the corruptions of his editors; whilst for others, the most ingenious of his apologists have, with all their zeal, been able to make no rational excuse. Conspicuous among these admitted faults are his “quibbles” and “conceits.” He is charged with marring all his fairest pages with them; and so introducing them as often perversely to destroy the most beautiful creations of his fancy, and in a moment convert the pathetic into the burlesque, and the sublime into the ridiculous. “A quibble,” it has been said, “is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world and was content to lose it.”

Those commentators who have deemed it a duty to vindicate their author at all points and at all hazards, have not failed to repel this strong charge with characteristic earnestness. The great German critic Schlegel, for example, speaking on this subject, offers the following defense, if defense it can be called: “Shakspeare, who was always sure of his object, to move in a sufficiently powerful manner when he chose to do so, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer play, purposely moderated the impressions when too powerful, and immediately introduced a musical alleviation of our sympathy.”

That is to say: Shakspeare, fearing that evil consequences might result from the overwrought sympathies of his auditors, mercifully threw in a quibble here and there to check the dangerous flow of sentiment! as if Paganini or Ole Bull had deemed it necessary to introduce an occasional jar in the midst of their most exquisite strains, lest the sensitive ear should be too powerfully ravished. But this defense is still more injurious than the charge itself; inasmuch as it substitutes for that oblivion of self, that apparent unconsciousness of the great things he was doing, which has been regarded as the highest proof of the serene majesty of his mind, an intolerable arrogance and presumption. Shakspeare, however, we may be sure, was governed by no such motive; he had no apprehension that his nectar would prove too intoxicating, and took no such pains to adulterate and weaken it.

The charge referred to is, in truth, applicable, in any great degree, to but a small number of his plays, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is one of these, and “Romeo and Juliet” is another, and the chief one. I shall confine my remarks at present to the latter play; and here, it must be confessed, quibbles are introduced into almost every speech: not only the wit, but the sentiment also is every where seasoned with them; and the different personages, “however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit.”

Now this feature, though not peculiar to Romeo and Juliet, is not found in any of the other great tragedies of Shakspeare, it cannot therefore be ascribed to inveterate habit. Neither is any trace of it found in the poem from which the main story, and many of the details and expressions of the play were copied: it was not therefore imitated from his original. The doctrine of Ulrici, however, affords a rational explanation. Quibbles and conceits are a part of the argument of the play, and therefore they are introduced. If they mar its beauties, they help to illustrate its theme, and to this purpose every other consideration is subordinate: for Shakspeare is not content, like other poets with simply moving his readers; but is careful also to cause all the currents of all the emotions he awakens to flow toward a common centre.

What then is the theme of this play? It is not easy to frame a definition strict enough and comprehensive enough to embrace it in all its aspects, and to embrace nothing more; but, in general terms, I believe the subject of the play may be thus stated: The unrestrained pursuit of the ruling passion or caprice of the moment.

This is the general subject of the whole play, and it is the particular subject of every scene and of every speech. All the winds of passion are let loose, and they blow where they list. Love and hate, hope and fear, courage and despair, and with them the wildest vagaries of fancy and caprice—all are in the field together; yet all move in subordination to the “central idea,” even as the ocean tides are governed by the moon.

All the personages of the play are made to illustrate this subject, each according to his own nature and circumstances. Romeo and Juliet tossed on the stormy sea of ill-starred love, pass from the summit of bliss to despair and death. The hatred of Montague and Capulet is drowned in tears, and from their grief springs reconciliation and friendship. Mercutio is a courtier and a wit, his spirits are always brim-full, and sparkling; and he pursues and runs down every phantom that happens to flit across his mind. His wit, and all his speeches are entirely of this character. He never opens his lips except to utter something fantastical. The Nurse, by following her impulses wherever they lead, presents a most ludicrous specimen of garrulity. Wherever the “fiery” Tybalt sees any one belonging to the house of Montague his sword instantly leaps from its scabbard. Friar Laurence and the Prince discourse on the subject, and all the inferior characters, as we shall see, adapt themselves to it.

For the purposes of a more minute examination, it will be convenient to group the chief passages under several heads.

1. Suggestives of the fancy; viz., quibbles, conceits, etc.

The play opens with a dialogue between Samson and Gregory, two servants of Capulet’s. I quote the first few lines:

Sam. Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals. [that is, bear injuries

Greg. No, for then we should be colliers. [An ancient term of abuse.

Sam. I mean an we be in choler we’ll draw.

Greg. Ay, while you live draw your neck out of the collar.

Sam. I strike quickly, being moved.

Greg. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.

Sam. A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

Greg. To move is—to stir; and to be valiant is to stand to it; therefore, if thou art moved thou runnest away.

Sam. A dog of that house shall move me to stand, etc. etc.

And so they proceed until certain followers of the house of Montague entering, an affray ensues. Now two things are to be observed here. The servants reflect the temper of their masters, and quarrel the moment they meet; and their conversation is a mere quibbling upon certain words, pursuing the fanciful suggestions of sound or meaning. Thus the whole subject is presented in the first page.

Very similar to this, though a little more refined, in accordance with the characters of the speakers, is the contest of wit between Mercutio and Romeo, (Act 2d, Scene 4th,) and the former’s description of Benvolio’s aptness to quarrel, (Act 3d, Scene 1st,) “Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes—what eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel,” etc. etc.

The servant who was sent to invite the guests to the supper at Capulet’s, having a paper with a list of their names, talks in the same style about the difficulty of finding out the persons writ there, when he could not read the names that had been writ there; and his misquotations of maxims is every way characteristic of the theme and of the clown. (Act 1st, Scene 2d.)

The Nurse makes her first appearance in the conversation with Lady Capulet about the age of Juliet. (Act 1st, Scene 3d) Instead of answering the question of her mistress directly, which she might have done with a monosyllable, she runs into a long reminiscence respecting her own daughter, her husband, and the “weaning” of Juliet, all matters connected with the subject, and suggested by it, but absurdly minute and complex. She resembles Mercutio in the recklessness with which she pursues her whims, albeit they are of a somewhat different character.

At the first interview between Romeo and Juliet, (Act 1st, Scene 5th,) Romeo happens in addressing her to use the word “pilgrim;” and the whole subsequent conversation consists of quibbles upon this word. In like manner the word volume, in Lady Capulet’s description of Paris, suggests all the remainder of her speech:

Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face

And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .

And what obscured in this fair volume lies,

Find written in the margin of his eyes.

This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

To beautify him only lacks a cover.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .

That book in many eyes doth show the glory,

That in gold clasps locks in the golden story; etc. etc.

The famous garden scene, (Act 2d, Scene 2d,) opens with Romeo’s speech:

He jests at scars that never felt a wound, —

[Juliet appears above at a window.

But soft! what light from yonder window breaks!

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.

This conceit leads to others about the sun, and moon, and stars, and Juliet’s eyes, which occupy the whole speech, and the remainder of the scene is either of a similar character, or distinguished by sudden revulsions of feeling, which I shall notice hereafter. The whole scene is highly illustrative of the theme.

Beautiful as some of the “conceits” of the garden scene are, Mercutio’s description of Queen Mab caps the climax of fantastical analogies:

Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

The traces of the smallest spider’s web;

The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams, etc. etc.

He represents her as galloping in this state through lover’s brains, o’er lawyer’s fingers, etc., when the former straight dreams of love, the latter of fees; and each according to his character, that is, their dreams are shaped by the influence of the moment, which is agreeable to the “central idea.” Indeed, this speech is not more remarkable for the exquisite ingenuity and propriety of its comparisons and allusions, than for its perfect adaptation to the general subject of the play.

Similar conceits and quibbles abound throughout the play, in the most beautiful passages, and in the most heart-rending scenes. When Juliet hears that Romeo, her “three-hours husband,” has killed her cousin Tybalt, her conflicting emotions find vent in a string of antitheses: “Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove-feathered raven,” etc. In like manner Romeo’s group of contrasts in Act 1st, Scene 1st, is suggested by the juxtaposition of the words “love” and “hate.” Both Romeo and Juliet quibble when relating their griefs to Friar Laurence. The Friar himself quibbles whilst attempting to console them; there is quibbling in the beautiful chamber scene, and in the scene so full of horrors at the church-yard.

Leaving the reader to follow up these suggestions at his pleasure, I proceed to notice some of the passages in which this spirit of abandonment is exemplified in reference to,

2. Passion, Impulse, etc.

I have already alluded to the affray in the first scene. Romeo’s love for Rosaline is strongly painted in the subsequent part of that, and in the following scene. Benvolio persuades him to go to the feast at Capulet’s, where Rosaline is to sup, promising that by showing him other beauties he will make him “think his swan a crow.” Romeo, in reply, makes loud protestations of fidelity to Rosaline, and declares that “the all-seeing sun ne’er saw her match;” and when he finally consents to go, expressly declares his purpose:

I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown,

But to rejoice in splendor of mine own.

That is, in contemplating the beauty of Rosaline. In this, Shakspeare has departed from the original story, in which Romeo goes to the feast, not to see, but to endeavor to forget Rosaline. Inasmuch as it presents his fickleness in a stronger light, this variation has been thought to injure the effect of Romeo’s character—for he no sooner sees Juliet than Rosaline is utterly forgotten; her image expelled from his heart, and replaced by the more beauteous image of Juliet. Shakspeare’s object in the variation, in this as in other instances, undoubtedly was, in pursuance of his theme, to make the transition as sudden and as conspicuous as possible. The effect being favorable to his main design, he cared little how it operated in other respects.

Old Capulet, as the revels progress, is filled with the spirit of the occasion. His heart overflows with genial hospitality; and inspired by the array of beauty around him, he descants on the time when he himself “could tell a whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear.” Tybalt, recognising Romeo, a Montague, among the guests, instantly calls out, “Fetch me my rapier!” On this, as on all occasions, the sight of a Montague is with him a sufficient signal for battle. But Capulet, whose ruling passion now is hospitality, rebukes and restrains him:

Let him alone!

I would not for the wealth of all this town,

Here, in my house, do him disparagement.

The unrestrained outpouring of the heart in the garden scene, needs only to be referred to. Whatever thought or feeling occurs at the moment drives out all other thoughts and feelings. Juliet dismisses Romeo with a thousand good-nights; then recalls him with passionate exclamations, and then says, “I have forgot why I did call thee back.” Her impatience to hear the Nurse’s report of Romeo’s message, with the Nurse’s tantalizing circumlocutions, (Act 2d, Scene 5th,) and her tumultuous emotions on hearing that her husband, Romeo, had killed her cousin Tybalt, (Act 3d, Scene 2d,) are equally in keeping with the general subject.

The first scene of the third act opens with a quibbling conversation. Presently Tybalt meets Romeo, and on the instant challenges him to fight; but Romeo (who before this has been secretly married to Juliet) declines the challenge, when Mercutio takes up the quarrel, and is slain. Mercutio was a zealous partisan of the house of Montague; but after he receives his mortal wound, yielding to a new influence, he becomes sensible of the folly of the dispute which he has so long helped to maintain; “A plague o’ both your houses!” is his dying exclamation. Romeo, finding his friend killed and his own reputation stained through his forbearance, can restrain himself no longer. The sudden transition of feeling and conduct here, from tame submission to fierce defiance, is one of the finest of the many instances of the kind in the play. When Morok touched the crouching lion with his flaming rod, he instantly bounded up in wrath, and stood erect, majestic, and fearful to look upon. Not less sudden and complete is the change produced in Romeo by the re-entrance of Tybalt.

Ben. Here comes the bloody Tybalt back again.

Rom. Alive! in triumph! and Mercutio slain:

Away to heaven, respective lenity,

And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now.

The chamber scene (Act 3d, Scene 5th) is filled with the expression of spontaneous and characteristic emotions. The dialogue between Romeo and Juliet at the beginning is the most exquisitely beautiful passage of the play; and there is none more illustrative of the theme. The art with which the contending passions are depicted is only surpassed by the beauty of the imagery and the melody of the diction. In the same scene Capulet urges the marriage between Juliet and Paris, and on her refusal, forgetting his former declaration that his consent would lie “within her scope of choice”—alive only to the rebellion against his authority—displays a degree of rudeness and violence which the pride and the habit of dominion alone can account for. The Nurse being consulted by Juliet in this emergency, and not being moved by either passion or principle, considers very literally what course would be most expedient under all the circumstances; and, since Romeo is “as good as dead,” advises her to marry Paris. Juliet’s reply to this advice comes like a flash of lightning —

Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!

.     .     .     . Go, counsellor,

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.

By the Friar’s advice, Juliet at length consents to marry Paris, and then Capulet is filled with impotent glee—being as absurd now in his joy as he lately was in his anger. When Juliet the next morning is found apparently dead, the lamentations of the several persons present (each of whom indulges his own proper emotions) are singularly in character. Capulet—the “rich” Capulet, as he is often styled in the play—bewails the loss of his “heir;” Lady Capulet mourns for her “only child;” Paris for his “love in death;” whilst the Nurse indulges her grief in boisterous and empty vociferation —

O wo! O woful, woful, woful day!

Most lamentable day! most woful day

That ever, ever I did yet behold!

O day! O day! O day! O hateful day.

The musicians who had come to play at the wedding are about to retire, when Peter enters and engages them in a quibbling conversation; and in the course of it recites the following verses, which are also made to inculcate the great sentiment of the play, the readiness with which the mind submits to passing influences:

When griping grief the heart doth wound,

And doleful dumps the mind oppress,

Then music, with her silver sound,

With speedy help doth lend redress.

The same idea pervades the scene in which the Apothecary is introduced. Romeo’s description of him is prefaced by this pertinent reflection:

O mischief! thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

The word “desperate” here refers to his own circumstances, but he immediately applies it to the Apothecary, and describes his desperate poverty: and hence infers his readiness to do a desperate deed:

Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,

And fear’st to die?

The next scene (Act 5th, Scene 2d) is a very short one, and is wholly occupied with a conversation between Friar Laurence and Friar John, in which the latter relates that he had failed to carry the letter to Romeo, as he had promised, because the “searchers of the town,” suspecting that he had been in a house where “the infectious pestilence did reign,” locked him up, etc. The “central idea” is found here also—in the allusion to the pestilence, and the alarm which the mere rumor of it inspires.

Dreams are several times introduced in the course of the play, and in every instance the dream is shaped either by some passing influence, or by a coming event, which thus “casts its shadow before.” In Mercutio’s description of Queen Mab, the “fairies’ midwife,” she is represented as “delivering” the dreamers of their various fancies. In the closing scene Balthazer tells the Friar that as he slept under a yew-tree he dreamt that his master (Romeo) and another fought, and that his master killed him; which was the fact. And this bearing in sleep, and dreaming of what is actually passing, is a phenomenon which, I presume, has happened to every one. Again, Romeo says, (Act 5th, Scene 1st,) “I dreamt my lady came and found me dead,” etc.—which afterward happened. In our day, this, I suppose, would be called clairvoyance.

But I must hasten to notice another point of view in which the subject is presented.

3. Didactic expositions of the theme.

With a mere reference to Montague’s description of his son’s humors, in the first scene, I pass to the following speech of Benvolio in the second scene:

Tut man! one fire burns out another’s burning,

One pain is lessened by another’s anguish;

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;

One desperate grief cure with another’s languish;

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.

And thus throughout the play one passion, sentiment, or whim, is constantly succeeding and driving out another.

Friar Laurence, as becomes his sacred character, preaches moderation wherever he appears, and constantly labors to restrain the headstrong passions of others. He first appears (Act 2d, Scene 3d) soliloquizing in his cell. After describing “flecked darkness” as reeling like a drunkard “from forth day’s path-way,” he falls into reflections on the constitution of nature. He finds a principle of good and a principle of evil in every thing that lives on the earth. And according to its fair use or abuse the one or the other of these principles prevails. Deliberation and reserve are inculcated; his mission is, to endeavor to stem the impetuous torrent that dashes around him. Thus when Romeo threatens to kill himself (Act 3d, Scene 3d) the friar paints his inconsiderate folly in most graphic and animated language.

What, rouse thee man! Thy Juliet is alive

For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;

There art thou happy; Tybalt would kill thee

But thou slewest Tybalt; there art thou happy too;

The law, that threatened death, becomes thy friend,

And turns it to exile; there art thou happy;

A pack of blessings lights upon thy back;

Happiness courts thee in her best array;

But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,

Thou poutest upon thy fortune and thy love;

Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

Very similar to this is his speech to the mourners over the body of Juliet, supposed by all but him to be dead.

The prince acts a similar part, and in the last scene, declares his determination to inquire into all the circumstances, “And know their spring, their head, their true descent,” before passing judgment; whereupon the friar recapitulates the whole story. As he tells nothing but what was known to the reader before, his long speech would seem to be superfluous; but does not the moral of the piece consist in this deliberate investigation after so much impulsive and inconsiderate conduct; and the final reconciliation of the rival houses, when grief has brought them to reflection?

If this imperfect sketch should induce the reader to take up Romeo and Juliet, and study it in the point of view I have indicated, he will find a thousand illustrations of the “central idea,” which it has been impossible, in this brief paper, to notice; and he will find a principle of order in this seeming chaos—that all these quibbles and conceits, these headlong passions, and conflicting emotions are made to harmonize and serve a common purpose.

JACOB’S LADDER.

———

E. J. EAMES.

———

Oh! beautiful ascending, and descending,

Were your bright footsteps ’twixt the earth and sky;

Celestial visitants, in love attending

On the tired trav’ler, to whose dreaming eye

Came radiant glimpses of that far Elysian,

Whose glories now are hid to mortal vision.

A gleam of pinions—solemn harmonies —

The stony pillow—the dim haunted sod —

And to the sleeper—what dread mysteries

Awe his high heart? How sinks the Voice of God

Deep in his soul! Yes, God in veiled glory

Appears, His “ancient cov’nant” to renew;

And angel-tongues record the sacred story

Which o’er the Patriarch such rich splendor threw!

But never more, as in the days departed,

Will ye return to gladden this dull earth:

What burning tears to human eyes have started

Since last ye moved ’mid forms of mortal birth.

And though no more, in glorious raiment clad,

May God, or angel-guest, to man appear,

Unseen they walk the world, and hov’ring near

Their spiritual presence makes earth’s children glad.

And still the mystic ladder is erected,

Whereon bright missioned spirits come and go —

Bearing unto the worn and world-dejected,

A precious balm for all life’s want and wo.

Still unto us high promises are given,

And holiest hopes, to lead our hearts to Heaven.

BASS AND BASS FISHING.

———

BY FRANK FORESTER.

———

THE STRIPED BASS. (Labrax Lineatus. Cuvier.)

ROCK FISH. Southern States and Delaware River.—BARRE FISH. St. Lawrence.

This noble fish, a member of a tribe known in almost every region of the globe, is, as an individual, peculiar to the waters of North America, not being found in any other part of the world; while his geographical range here, being very extensive, covers most if not all the rivers, bays, lagoons and beaches from the Capes of Florida to the Estuary of the St. Lawrence; in which great frith he is found, slightly modified from the Atlantic type, and known as the Barre Fish.

He must not be confounded with the Sea Bass, as he has been by Dr. Smith, the author of the Fishes of Massachusetts, who takes Dr. Mitchell severely to task for naming him Bodianus Mitchilli; accusing the Doctor of extreme arrogance and presumption in assuming the discovery and right of naming a fish, which he—Smith—alledges to be known to every fisherman and naturalist of every European coast; whereas, in reality, the fact is precisely as stated by Dr. Mitchell.

The Striped Bass is a very beautiful fish, of the order Acanthopterygii, or thorny finned fishes, and of the family Pereidæ; which may be distinguished from the soft finned tribes, by having the whole of the first dorsal fin supported by strong, sharp, spinous rays, by a single strong spine in front of the second dorsal, one in front of the ventrals, and three in front of the anal fin. The operculum, or gill-cover, has a serrated edge and two flat spines. Its dental system is very complete and formidable, on the maxillaries, palatine-bones, and tongue, as it is essentially a carnivorous fish, preying indiscriminately on most of the smaller finny inhabitants of the waters, as also on their spawn, and on some of the smaller crustaceæ, as crabs and shrimps.

In color he is bright and silvery, bluish brown, with copperish reflections on the back, and eight, or sometimes though rarely nine, parallel stripes of dark brownish purple—the fourth of these is ordinarily consentaneous with the lateral line, though sometimes the fifth. Those above it run from the head to the origin of the tail, and are by far the darkest; those below are fainter, and die away at about two-thirds the length of the belly.

The pectoral fins have sixteen rays, the ventrals one spinous and five soft rays, the anal three spinous and eleven soft rays, the first dorsal nine spinous, the second one spinous and twelve soft, the caudal seventeen soft rays.

The Sea Bass, which is of the same order and family, Pereidæ, is purely a sea fish, never entering estuaries or rivers, and never being taken in other than salt waters, on the outer bars and sea-banks, whereas the Striped Bass, like the Salmon, though salt water is necessary to him, in order to give vigor to his constitution, and perhaps to enable him to reproduce his species, is taken without distinction in the clear cold spring-waters of the river-heads, in the brackish slack-waters of the broad estuaries, in the strong, whirling salt eddies of sea-channels, such as Hellgate, and the inlets from the ocean to the inner bays, and lastly in the tumbling and flashing surfs on all the outer beaches, from those, I believe, of Hatterns, alone all the coasts north-eastward to those of Jersey and Long Island; on which they are taken with the squid and the seine from July to November, of rare excellence, and in great abundance.

The river runs of the Striped Bass are very singular, and though I will not say unaccountable—by no means accounted for. So soon as the Smelt, Shad, and Herring enter the river-mouths and estuaries, the Striped Bass is found following them; and in every different water it appears that he acts on a peculiar and instinctive principle. Where, when, or how he spawns no man knows or has written.

Our rivers he enters from the Delaware eastward from the first of March and later as the season offers, and makes up to the clear, cool spring-waters of the rivers near their heads. At that time he may be fished for, in the Delaware and in all the rivers in which the Shad run up and spawn, with shad-roe FATALLY.

In waters up which the Shad does not run this bait is useless.

Thus, for instance, at Macomb’s Dam, Kingsbridge, and all the Harlæm River and Hellgate, in the neighborhood of New York, shad-roe is useless; because the Shad do not spawn there, and the Bass know it. While in the Passaic, at Belleville Bridge and Acquanonck, up to both which places these fish run, there is a certainty of taking them with this bait, because Shad do spawn in the Passaic.

Therefore, in all rivers up which Shad run, the true and best bait for the Striped Bass is the shad-roe.

This must be prepared thus. The roe of the female fish—that is the hard roe—must be taken, cleaned, washed, and washed again, and then potted down with two ounces of salt to every half pound of roe, pressed close into a stone pot and hermetically sealed. After three months it will be fit for use; when it must be cut out of the pot like cheese, fastened on the hook in a small lump, and tied to it by a lapping of light-colored floss silk, or raveled hemp.

At this same time, in tideways such as Hellgate and the like, crab is the best and most killing bait on a line by rod and reel fishing, with weight enough to keep your crab within three inches of the bottom; thus you shall take abundance of moderate sized fishes—the best by all odds on the table—but if you aim at the thirty and forty pounders, you must take that hideous and disgusting fishy reptile, the real squid, armed with a strong cod-hook, on a heavy hempen line, trolled from the stern of a boat slowly pulled against stream.

The Bass will strike at a gaudy fly, or a spun minnow, at the latter every where, at the first seldom, and I believe casually; though if you do hook him look out, for he shall try your line, and strain your tackle to the utmost, and if you land even a three pounder on a single gut with fly or minnow trolled, you have done great work.

The favorite haunts of the Striped Bass, whence his provincial name of Rock Fish, are stony, gravelly, or rocky reefs, or sunken piers and dams which cause eddies, in the vicinity of which his prey are to be found darting about in the greatest abundance, and in such localities he is often taken with the rod and reel in great numbers, running from two and a half to seven pounds in weight, which is the best size for the table.

The Bass is a bold and fierce biter; and when he takes the bait he does it with a will, and there is no occasion for giving him line or time wherein to pouch the bait before striking, as you must do with the European Pike, and the American Pickerel and Mascalonge.

In the Harlæm river he is fished for with a stout rod and reel, a strong line of at least three hundred feet, and crab or shrimp bait, or sometimes a shiner or spearling hooked through the back-fin with a large-sized Limerick hook armed upon gimp. A sinker is used in this mode of fishing, and the bait should be suspended at some distance from the bottom, and allowed to swim about at his own sweet will.

When struck the Bass does not leap out of water, like the trout or salmon, but he is decidedly a run-away fish, taking twice as much line—pound weight for yard length—as the Salmon, and, though not so fierce or furious, requiring as much skill to handle. You must give him your line inch by inch, as sparingly as possible, heading him down stream if you can, and wearing him out always by concession and persuasion.

So much for him in the spring. How far he goes up the rivers in his spring run, we know not, nor presume to say. Killed he has been in October at Milford, Delaware, prime, and in good condition, but I think not running up to spawn himself, but rather to eat the roe of the shad which do run thitherward up to spawn.

After July and from thence to September they disappear from among us of the rivers, and during that period they are taken constantly by squidding, as it is called, that is to say, by using a large sized Limerick-hook, shanked with a piece of bright tin, mother-of-pearl, or ivory, attached to a long cod-line wound upon a card, in the rapid swirling eddies among rocks in the great outer tideways, and yet more readily in the wild, thundering surfs of the outside beaches. I have seen them taken thus off Shrewsbury Inlet, near Sandy-Hook, to the weight of sixty or seventy pounds; but it is a laborious, wet, and dirty toil, and cannot in anywise be regarded as a sport.

The line, without a rod, is whirled round the head, and the squid delivered, without a splash in the water, if it so may be, and then dragged in hand over hand, the fish striking with his whole power, and being mastered by main force.

Late in the autumn the Bass run in again, for what purpose we know not, save this, that the growth and comparative size of the fry as taken not justifying our believing that they breed in fresh rivers—we must consider them to be in pursuit of prey.

In the Delaware they are trolled for gnostically and rightfully, with a minnow, shiner, or young shad, baited on a double hook, armed on a treble gut with two swivels, a trolling-rod, and good Conroy’s reel—this is the true and scientific way of doing it.

The best rod for this sport is the regular trolling, or, as it is otherwise called, barbed rod. It should be twelve feet long, the butt of stout ash, the second and third joints of hickory, and the fourth of lance-wood. It should by no means have rings, but the new patent rail-road guides, five in number, exclusive of the funnel guide at the tip. It is a very good plan to have a double set of guides, on the opposite sides of the rod, for the stress is so great in this kind of fishing that in time the best rods will acquire a curvature, and lose their elasticity. This is easily counteracted by changing the line from side to side, and thus reversing the action.

The best trolling-rods are made by George Karr, of Grand Street, and Ben Welch, of Cherry St., New York.

The reel should be a simple one, large enough to contain one hundred yards of line.

This truly sporting mode of killing the Striped Bass is not used in New York, where, in fact, there are few fishermen, except fly fishermen—some very good, although, like angel visits—or pot fishermen.

There the crab and the shrimp, with a dobber, as the pot fishermen call it, is the weapon, and the best wielder of it is he who brings the most and heaviest fish to pot, with the most violence and the least skill.

The autumn being past, the Striped Bass retires for the winter to the mud-holes, which he loves, the soft, warm coves at the mouths of rivers and estuaries, wherein he lurks requiescent until spring again calls his prey into the rivers, and himself out of his lurking-places.

These be his times, his seasons, his baits, and his places; as to his local habitation, and the place where he deposits and brings up his children, nobody distinctly knowing, we shall be exceeding glad to receive facts whereon to constitute something approaching to that which is unwritten—the complete natural history of the Bass.

THE SMOKER.

———

BY THOMAS S. DONOHO.

———

[WITH AN ENGRAVING.]

I saw him after dinner,

And his face was like the sun,

When wearily he goes to rest,

His long day’s journey done.

The beef had made it hot,

And the wine had made it red,

And a cloud was all around it,

Like a curtain round a bed.

His chair was tilted back,

And his feet were on the wall,

And the sorrows of the world

Did not trouble him at all!

For though he toiled and puffed,

Like an engine, or a stove,

Yet smiled amid his labors

This “cloud-compelling Jove!”

Again I passed his dwelling,

In the darkness of the night;

And still I knew the Smoker,

Like a glow-worm, by his light.

His head was still thrown back,

And his feet were still on high,

And he had a most peculiar look

From out his half-shut eye.

’Twas morning; and I saw him,

This great Vesuvius man,

And o’er the news-full paper

His misty vision ran;

For still the fire was there,

And still the smoke was thick:

And I remembered me the tales,

Whose hero was—Old Nick!

I wondered if he slept?

Or ever went about?

Or was he only some machine —

For what? Ah, there’s the doubt!

Though puffing, always puffing,

He never seemed to go:

What good he did by staying there

Is more than yet I know.

A beggar-boy craved charity —

The Smoker “blessed his stars!”

And said, “he had no change to spare” —

Then sent for more cigars!

The patient wife at last complains;

He gruffly bids her cease:

“My home’s a bell; it’s very hard

I cannot smoke in peace!”

THE MAIDEN’S COMPLAINT AGAINST LOVE.

———

BY ENNA DUVAL.

———

Once, on a sunny day,

Love came to dwell with me,

I stroked his downy wings,

And gave him kisses free.

How joyous sped the hours,

While Love with me did stay;

The fluttering tiny thing,

Drove Care’s dark form away.

I laughed, I danced, I sang—

How mad and wild my glee,

While blesséd little Love

Dwelt willingly with me.

Alas! one gloomy morn,

The wicked, willful fay,

That I so fondly cherished,

Took wing and fled away.

I shed sad, bitter tears,

While Care looked on with scorn;

At last I sped to Venus,

To tell my grievous wrong.

The goddess frowned upon me,

And Psyche blushing wept,

When saucy little Cupid

My charges sad thus met.

“She wearied me with kisses,

And held me pris’ner fast,

Blame not, O mother Venus,

I broke her bonds at last.”

Dallas.         BRIGHTLY, SC.

“THE SMOKER.”

See Page 410.

GOLD FISH.

THE FINE ARTS.

Exhibition of Huntington’s Works.—One of the halls of the Art Union Building in New York, has been occupied for some time by an exhibition of the collected works of Mr. Huntington. They are about one hundred and twenty in number. Some of them are his very earliest efforts, necessarily crude, having been executed in his college days, when his incipient passion for art, interfered materially with his progress in the classics. But as the artist himself observes, “the early blundering attempts of beginners in art, are not as painful as those of musical performers, or as insipid as the stammerings of incipient poets. The lamest groupings of a young painter are often amusing, and sometimes show what Inman used to call ‘good intentions.’ ” It appears to us a very interesting feature in this exhibition, that we are able to trace the progress and development of Mr. Huntington’s talent. Thus we have “Ichabod Crane flogging a Scholar,” his first attempt at composition in 1834, which we may contrast with “Mercy’s Dream,” or the “Christiana and Children” the two paintings upon which his fame most securely rests. The gradual formation of his present pure style may be distinctly traced through his successive works.

We find in the collection more landscapes than we thought Mr. H. had painted, but he explains the matter by stating that during his early professional career, while engaged as an assistant to a portrait painter, “putting in back grounds,” he was seized upon by an enthusiastic speculator who was about to erect a city on the Hudson river, at Verplanck’s Point, then a wooded retreat of great beauty. This enthusiast was a generous lover of art, and kept Huntington during an entire summer, in that vicinity, taking views, and in his close study of nature was then fostered a love for landscape, which he has never forgotten. The artist himself says, of his subsequent works of this kind, that they will not bear the test of a close comparison with nature. They are rather hints and dreams of situations and effects, which he beseeches the visitor to look at lazily and listlessly, through the half-closed eye, and not to expect that truth and reality, which should be found in the works of the professed landscape painter. We cannot agree with the modest artist in his criticism upon himself—on the contrary, we think there is much of that marvelous force and brightness which rivets the attention to Cole’s paintings; of the freshness and atmosphere in which lie the fertile meadows—far stretching distances—the sturdy oaks and beeches, with rich masses of foliage, in Durand’s calm, expansive compositions, and all of the silvery lightness in moving clouds and transparent running brooks, which the veteran Doughty would magically call into being on the canvas.

We think the true passion of boyish love and first devotedness pervades all the occasional outbreaks which have led him from the dull routine of portraits to the green fields, the blue skies, and the silvery streams. The Rondout Scenes, painted three or four years after the modern Cecrops, would have carried art, learning, letters, and men to Verplanck’s Point, and the two elegant Ramapo views (most unfortunately not in the collection when we saw it, but in the possession of James Ross, Esq. of New Orleans) are living evidences of this. And then the “Moon Light and Fire Light,” drawn in an annual distribution of the Art Union, by the late much lamented Dr. James Milnor, is one of the most fanciful and artistic combinations of light and shade that could be imagined. Under these circumstances we will not allow Mr. Huntington to escape the charge of being a very admirable and forcible landscape painter.

But it is in historical and allegorical painting that Huntington has made the reputation which will live the longest; although he says, the class of pictures which were painted with the greatest interest are those which were meant to convey a moral lesson, and were ideally treated, such as the “Sacred Lesson,” “Alms Giving,” “Piety and Folly,” “Faith,” “Hope,” etc. This we can very easily imagine; for it must be to the spirit of a painter, like the enlargement of a caged bird, to escape the confines of buckram, broadcloth, and modern costume, and feel that “no pent up Utica” confines the powers, and they can range from the trammels of the real to the delicious abandon of the ideal. To transfer to canvas the feelings of our nature, and embody, as it were, the moral sentiments must indeed be a triumph to the artist, and we think it has been achieved by Huntington.

The picture which has acquired the most extended reputation for this artist, is by no means his best or even one of his best. It has become popularized by having been engraved for the American Art Union two years since, and is the “Signing of the Death Warrant of Lady Jane Grey.” We think it fortunate that the lovers of art in our country, who do not enjoy the privilege of visiting the large collections in our cities, are to have a better specimen of Huntington’s talent, and his peculiar ideality of composition in the engraving of his “Mercy’s Dream,” by the Philadelphia Art Union. This will, we think, be one of the most popular plates ever distributed.

To enter upon a critical analysis of Huntington’s style would be but a historical sketch of his artistic career; for his advancement in finish, and his impressiveness in composition, are marked and graded on each succeeding painting which he has started from the canvas. There is “no retiring ebb” to his genius—he always improves upon himself, as the result of close attention and indefatigable study. So happy is he in his historical, dramatic, and allegorical subjects, that they associate themselves with the very facts they intend to delineate, to the exclusion almost of the records of the past—his ideality takes the place of the written chronicle; and it seems as if the olden tradition glowed beneath his pencil. Huntington is as graphic on historic canvas, as Macaulay is on the historic page. We must accord to him a high rank, for he has merited it. In every department of his art, from the dull routine of portrait painting to the study of the Florentine Sybil, or to his latest inspirations, “St. John the Evangelist,” and the “Marys at the Sepulchre,” there is the same loveliness of composition, boldness of handling, and delicacy of conception.

We should feel great gratification in referring minutely to some of the more elaborate and important works in this collection, but our purpose, at the outset, was to make only a general notice, and call attention to the interesting fact, that nearly all Huntington’s works can now be seen in one gallery, collated as they have been from every quarter of the Union. The success which has attended the exhibitions of the labors of Alston, Inman and Huntington, will, we trust, lead to subsequent efforts among our other artists to get up corresponding displays of their works. By producing emulation it will have a good effect, and these galleries opened with such attractiveness, will lead to the formation of a taste for art, which will soon direct itself to the encouragement of artists through many private channels of munificence.

Death of James Thom.—On the 17th of April, James Thom, the sculptor, died in New York. He was emphatically a self-made man, and his “Tam O’Shanter and Souter Johnny” first raised him from his obscurity as an humble stone-cutter, to a rank among our sculptors. He had no previous education, and enjoyed no opportunity of studying schools or models. Thom first reached this country about 1836-7, in search of an agent, who had been sent here by the proprietors to exhibit his “Old Mortality” and “Tam O’Shanter;” Thom found the delinquent and obtained a portion of the money for which these works had been fraudulently sold. After remitting these proceeds to the just owners, he determined to remain in this country. His first efforts were directed to finding a free stone suited to his work, which he soon discovered at Little Falls. From this he made copies of his two most celebrated works. The Old Mortality Group is now placed opposite the entrance to Laurel Hill Cemetery, near Philadelphia, including the pious antiquarian Presbyterian, his rugged poney and the faithful likeness of Sir Walter Scott. The “Tam O’Shanter” is the property of Roswell L. Colt, Esq., Patterson, N. J. The statue of Burns, also from his chisel, was an excellent specimen of his skill.

Thom obtained an advantageous contract to perform the stone-cutting for Trinity Church, New York, and made a handsome profit from it, although he left the work before its completion, and retired to a farm in Rockland County. He has since occupied his time as an architect, more, however, for the filling up of his leisure hours, than for probability of profit, as none of his designs have even been executed. The genius of Thom was peculiar—his fame may rest safely upon “Old Mortality,” and “Tam O’Shanter,” though some of his busts and ornamental garden designs possessed great merit.

Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.—The spring exhibition of this society promises to be unusually attractive. The liberal prizes offered by the managers to induce competition, have awakened the spirit of not only our own, but foreign artists. We shall next month have an opportunity to notice these works in detail, and hope to find some home productions which will compare favorably with those received from abroad. Among the latter is a magnificent piece of coloring by Van Schendel of Brussels, representing Ahasuerus king of the Persians and Medes, in the midst of his gorgeous court, as described in the Book of Esther. Schotel of Medembled, Holland, has sent out two marine views, a department in which he is justly celebrated. One of these, entitled “Wrecking and Succor,” possesses much energy, and the other, “The Schelde by a fresh gale,” will be highly prized by all the lovers of art. There are also two works by Carl Hubner of Dusseldorf, called “The Recovery,” and “The Happy Moment,” which evince high artistic excellence. G. F. Diday of Bremen, has sent over two beautiful views of the High Alps in Switzerland, and J. Schoppe of Berlin, a scene descriptive of a Spanish comedy by Moneto, which he entitles Amphitrite and Donna Diana. All these, and others of minor excellence, will be noticed more fully hereafter.

The American Art Union.—The walls of the new gallery of this institution already present many beautiful specimens of art. A picture by Leutze, called the “Knight of Sayn and the Gnomes,” is particularly admired. The story, as described by G. G. Foster, Esq. in his spicy little paper, the Merchants’ Day Book, is of a knight who fell in love with a beautiful damsel, whose father would consent to the match only on condition that the lover would ride up the steep rocks on which his castle was built. This was clearly an impossible feat; but the king of the Gnomes came secretly and offered, if the knight of Sayn would fill up a silver mine that had been opened on his domain, to assist him in crossing safely the bridge of love. The action of the picture is at the moment that the knight rides over the last frightful fissure, upon a bridge composed of rocks, supported and held in their places beneath his charger’s hoofs, by the sturdy gnomes, while the king of the earth elfins stands proudly on the other side with his royal sceptre in his hand, to welcome his protégé safely over. Far above is the father’s castle, with the lady and her attendants, watching the dauntless rider and waving their scarfs over his head. The whole of this picturesque and charming scene is handled in the most admirable manner. The gnomes couching like little atlases, under the heavy rocks across which the knight is passing—the irresistible comicry of the burly gnome king—the fiery prancing war-horse—the knight himself, waving his cap gallantly to his mistress, while he sits his steed with the air of a perfect conqueror, each seems better than the other. The entire composition and action of the piece are spirited and graceful, while the happy choice of subject equally betrays the accomplished artist.

Henri Herz.—The celebrated pianist has finally settled for the rest of his days in Mexico. The supreme government has established a musical conservatory, at the head of which Mr. Herz has been placed, with a handsome salary.

Ives the Sculptor, since his return from Italy, has completed a plaster cast of Major General Scott, the mould of which he proposes to take with him when he again visits Italy, and reproduce the head in marble. The bust is true in its character, both in lineament and spirit, and is looked upon with universal approbation.

Power’s Statue of Eve.—It is stated that this statue, executed by Mr. Power for the Hon. William C. Preston, of South Carolina, has been lost by shipwreck on the coast of Spain. It had been generally conceded to be his chef d’oeuvre, and its loss is a real calamity, not only to the artist but the entire world of art. We trust sincerely that the original cast remains, from which a new statue may be produced.

“Mercy’s Dream.”—A copy from this original picture by Huntington has been executed by Mr. McMurtrie, of Philadelphia, with a general fidelity in tone, style, color, expression, and atmospheric effect, which is truly remarkable. This copy will constitute the first prize at the next drawing of the Art Union of Philadelphia, which will take place on the evening of the 31st of December, 1850.

Marti’s Opera Troup, from the Tacon Theatre, Havana, has recently been singing at Niblo’s Garden, in New York. Signor Salvi is acknowledged to be the only perfect tenor heard in this country since the days of Garcia. Signorina Steffanone, the new soprano, is also warmly praised. The orchestra is admirable, and all the appointments excellent.

EARLY ENGLISH POETS.

POEMS OF THOMAS CAREW.

In the history of early English literature, we find little mention made of the productions of Thomas Carew; “that sweet poet and most witty gentleman,” as he was quaintly styled by Sir William Davenant. With the exception of one or two of his songs, to be found in “The English Anthology,” we do not remember to have seen any mention made of his verses. This neglect cannot be accounted for by attributing it to his want of merit as a poet. The melody of his verse, the genuine spirit of poetry pervading his songs, and the happy conceits sparkling through them, entitle him to a position not many removes from that occupied by Sir John Suckling, whose sweet numbers and mellifluous verse are familiar to every lover of early English literature.

If the testimony of contemporaries is any test of poetic ability, the subject of our notice seems to have had his full share with the lighter poets and wits of his age.

Thomas Carew was descended from one of the first families in Gloucestershire, England; many of his ancestors having filled high and responsible stations in the preceding reigns of Mary, Elizabeth, and James I. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he did not remain to finish the usual collegiate course, having been expelled for some youthful indiscretion. He afterward made the tour of Europe, visiting some of the most polished courts, and perfecting himself in all those accomplishments then so necessary for the complete education of a courtier. On his return from his travels, his fine person and polished manners attracted the attention of Charles I., who gave him the appointment of gentleman of the privy chamber, and was in the habit of constant social intercourse, esteeming him one of the most polished gentlemen and refined wits of his court. By the poets of his day he was much respected, claiming Ben Jonson and Sir William Davenant among the most devoted of his friends, and the warmest admirers of his verse. It redounds, however, much more to his praise that he was intimate with the youthful Hyde, afterward so distinguished as Earl of Clarendon—who speaks highly “of his amiable qualities, and his talent for light poetry, of the amorous kind, in the elegance and fancy of which he had few superiors.” Carew died in the prime of life, some time in the year 1639, thus fortunately escaping the troubles that even then “were casting their dark shadows before,” and which eventually overwhelmed his royal master. The only edition of his poems ever published appeared in 1630, edited by himself; and it is from this work we propose to introduce to the reader’s attention a few of the most beautiful of his songs and fugitive pieces.

An earnest desire to rescue from oblivion the many beautiful thoughts and curious conceits pervading the verses of this poet, has induced the preparation of our article. These songs served to lighten the cares of the troublesome reign of Charles I., and, set to music, were the favorite melodies of his time. In an age when gallantry was the chief of virtues, and the smiles and encouragement of the gentler sex the sure reward that awaited every laudable undertaking. Carew seems to have devoted his talents to the ladies. In smooth and gentle verse he celebrated their varied charms—or in ardent strains declared his own impassioned admiration and love.

The cruel glances of the eyes of his mistress he deprecates in lines like these —

I’ll love no more those cruel eyes of hers,

Which, pleased or angered, still are murderers,

For if she dart, like lightning, through the air,

Her beams of wrath, she kills me with despair,

If she behold me with a pleasing eye,

I surfeit with excess of joy and die.

And he mourns in touching melancholy verse the death of the loved one, and in sweet strains laments

The purest soul, that e’er was sent

Into a clayey tenement,

Informed this dust, but the weak mould

Could the great guest no longer hold,

The substance was too pure, the flame

Too glorious, that hither came.

Does he celebrate the beauties of the natural world, he is sure to institute a comparison of those beauties with the charms of his mistress—and in his glowing language, “winter’s snow-white robes” “and blue-eyed spring” welcomed to the earth “by a choir of chirping minstrels” shrink into insignificance by the comparison. Does he pine away, banished from the presence of his mistress, he compares himself with happy conceit “to one far from the shore in a storm-beaten boat, where love is the pilot,”

but o’ercome with fear

Of her displeasure, dares not homeward steer.

Indeed, the warmth of his verse, and its flow of happy conceits, induced Sir William Davenant to call him “our English Anacreon”—but this perhaps is going too far; although adopting the words of Moore, applied to Anacreon, we might say of Carew—“That his descriptions are sometimes warm, but the warmth is in the ideas, not the words; he is often sportive, without being wanton, ardent, without being licentious.” Still, the distance between Carew and Anacreon is immeasurably great—the singular beauty of “The Tean Bard”—his copiousness of expression, his easy and joyous gayety—the enthusiasm of the grape pervading his songs,—has never yet been equaled by his numerous pretended imitators; who too often have sought in grossness of allusion, and the vulgar rant of intoxication, for sources of resemblance.

It is indeed to be regretted that among the poems of Carew there are many that might tinge the cheek of modesty, and repel every reader by their gross physical impurities—and those, too, containing in their grossness thoughts of most exquisite beauty. The existence of these impurities, however, was the fault more of the age than the poet—custom sanctioned, society relished the use of language and sentiment that now would be exceedingly abhorrent to “ears polite.”

The polished courtiers, the fair dames of the court of Charles, perceived nothing in these songs of Carew that could call the blush of shame to the cheek, or excite even an impure thought. But custom,

“That despot, whose behest each age obeys,”

has in this our day otherwise ordered; and the civilized world now believes with the poet Roscommon —

Immodest words admit of no defense,

A want of decency is want of sense.

My object in the preparation of this article being to rescue from oblivion some of the verses of this sweet poet, Carew, I propose to make such selections from his poems as shall prove, incontestably, his claim to a high rank among the earlier English poets.

We do not claim that the poems of Carew evince the highest order of poetic talent, but generous sentiment, and a glow of happy conceits running through, and sparkling in them, often exhibit unexpected beauties. To use the words of Dr. Johnson, applied to a poet of the same age and nation,

“If the conceits are sometimes far-fetched, they will be found oftentimes worth the carriage.”

It has been before remarked, that if the greatness of the poetic writers of this age seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises us—and noble sentiment and genuine wit will often be found buried beneath strange illustrations, and far-fetched conceits.

In Headley’s introduction to his “Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry,” he bestows unqualified praise upon the amatory poets, who flourished in the reign of Charles the First, giving a decided preference to the poetry of the age of Elizabeth and Charles over all that has been written since their day. And he considers the poets, the amatory poets of those reigns, as forming a constellation far superior in poetic lustre to any that have succeeded them.

This indeed is no faint praise, coming from so refined a critic; but with all due deference we cannot but agree with Drake, that it is for the most part too highly colored. The exquisite simplicity of style and thought, so attractive in the productions of our modern poets, will be looked for in vain in the verses of the poets of that early day; such simplicity being the result of systematic refinement, and the progress of language toward perfection.

But to return from this apparent digression; as the most beautiful pearls are often found in the roughest shells, so in the songs of Carew the reader will oftentimes be delighted to discover rare conceits, sparkling with wit, and genuine poetry, but incased in rough inharmonious verse.

But often, as in the beautiful lines to a primrose, Carew seems to break loose from the trammels that fettered the versification of his day, and in tuneful, and well measured song expresses so aptly the ideas of his muse, as to give peculiar softness to his rhyme.

That little song, To a Primrose, commencing,

Ask me why I bring you here

This firstling of the infant year.

And the one entitled The Compliment,

My dearest I shall grieve thee

When I swear, yet, sweet, believe me,

are almost equal in beauty to that exquisite song of Fletcher’s, commencing

Take, oh, take those lips away.

Or that complimentary song of Sir John Suckling’s, beginning

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,

No daisy bears comparison,

Who sees it, is undone

For streaks of red were mingled there

Such as are on a Catharine pear,

The side that’s next the sun.

In all the poetry of the age in which Carew flourished, there is to be found a straining after resemblances, and too often the sense is sacrificed in the effort; personification is too often used, without judgment, or taste. It is this fault which, more than any other, has called down upon the poets of the age in which Carew flourished, so much severe, and oftentimes unjust criticism.

But without offering these songs of Carew as models, without denying that according to the rigid canons of polished criticism, many glaring faults may be found in them, we still insist that their beauties are many, and to the eye, which brings not every thing to the narrow measure of a stern critic’s scrutiny, will more than compensate for unquestioned blemishes. The blemishes are the offspring of the distorted taste of the age in which our poet flourished—their beauties, the triumph of the poet’s genius over the difficulties in his pathway.

THE SPRING.

Now that the winter’s gone, the earth has lost

Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost

Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream

Upon the silver lake, or crystal stream;

But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,

And makes it tender, gives a sacred birth

To the dead swallow, wakes in hollow tree

The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble bee.

Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring

In triumph to the world, the youthful spring.

The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array,

Welcome the coming of the longed for May.

Now all things smile, only my love doth lower;

Nor hath the scalding noon-day sun the power

To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold

Her heart congealed, and makes her pity cold.

The ox which lately did for shelter fly

Into the stall; doth now securely lie

In open field, and love no more is made

By the fire-side; but in the cooler shade

Amyutas now doth with his Chloris sleep

Under a sycamore, and all things keep

Time with the season; only she doth carry

June in her eyes, her heart is January.

PERSUASION TO LOVE.

Think not, ’cause men flattering say

You’re fresh as April, sweet as May,

Bright as is the morning star,

That you are so; or though you are,

Be not therefore proud, and deem

All unworthy your esteem;

For being so, you lose the pleasure

Of being fair, since that rich treasure

Of rare beauty, and sweet feature,

Was bestowed on you by nature

To be enjoyed, and sure ’tis sin

There to be scarce, where she hath been

So prodigal of her best graces;

Thus common beauties, and mean faces

Shall have more pastime, and enjoy

The sport you loose by being coy.

Starve not yourself, because you may

Thereby make me pine away;

Nor let brittle beauty make

You, your wisest thoughts forsake.

For that lovely face will fail;

Beauty’s sweet, but beauty’s frail;

’Tis sooner past; ’tis sooner done

Than summer rain, or winter’s sun;

Most fleeting when it is most dear!

’Tis gone, while we but say ’tis here.

These curious locks, so aptly twined,

Whose every hair a soul doth bind,

Wilt change their auburn hue, and grow

White, and cold as winter’s snow.

That eye which now is Cupid’s nest,

Will prove his grave, and all the rest

Will follow, in the cheek then froze,

No lily shall be found, or rose.

And what will then become of all

Those who now you servants call?

Like swallow’s when your summer’s done

They’ll fly, and seek some warmer sun.

Remain still firm, be provident,

And think before the summer’s spent

Of following winter; like the ant

See plenty hoard for time of scant.

Cull out amongst the multitude

Of lovers, seeking to intrude

Into your favor, one that may

Last for an age, not for a day.

For when the storms of time have moved

Waves on that cheek, now so beloved,

When a fair lady’s face has pined,

And yellow spread, where red once shined,

When beauty, youth, and all sweets leave her.

Love may return, but lovers never.

And old folks say, there are no pains

Like itch of love, in aged veins.

Oh, love me then, and now begin it,

Let us not loose a precious minute,

For time and age will work that rack,

Which time or age shall ne’er call back.

The snake each year, fresh skin resumes,

And eagles, change their aged plumes.

The faded rose, each spring receives

A fresh red tincture on her leaves:

But if your beauties once decay,

They never know a second May.

LIPS AND EYES.

In Celia’s face, a question doth arise

Which are more beautiful, her lips or eyes;

We, said the eyes, send forth those pointed darts

Which pierce the hardest adamantine hearts

From us, replied the lips, proceed those blisses

Which lovers reap in kind words, and in kisses

Then wept the eyes, and from their springs did pour

Of liquid oriental pearls, a shower.

Whereat the lips moved with delight and pleasure,

In a sweet smile unlocked their pearly treasure;

And bade Love judge, whether did add more grace

Weeping, or smiling, to fair Celia’s face.

A BEAUTIFUL MISTRESS.

If when the sun at noon displays

His brighter rays,

Thou but appear

He then all pale with shame, and fear,

Quencheth his light,

Hides his dark brows, flies from thy sight

And grows more dim

Compared to thee, than stars to him,

If thou but show thy face again,

When darkness doth at midnight reign,

The darkness flies, and light is hurled

Round about the silent world.

THE PRIMROSE.

Ask me, why I send you here

This firstling of the infant year?

Ask me, why I send to you,

This primrose, all bepearled with dew?

I straight will whisper in your ears

The sweets of love are washed with tears.

Ask me, why this flower doth show

So yellow, green, and sickly too?

Ask me, why the stalk is weak,

And bending, yet it doth not break.

I must tell you, these discover

That doubts and fears beset your lover.

MURDERING BEAUTY.

I’ll gaze no more, on her bewitching face,

Since ruin harbors there, in every place;

For my enchanted soul, alike she drowns

With calms and tempests, of her smiles, and frowns.

I’ll love no more those cruel eyes of hers,

Which pleased or angered, still are murderers;

For if she dart (like lightning) through the air

Her beams of wrath, she kills me with despair;

If she behold me with a pleasing eye

I surfeit with excess of joy and die.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Lectures on Art and Poems. By Washington Allston. Edited by Richard H. Dana, Jr. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

The admirers of the greatest of American painters will need none of our advice to read this volume, placing as it does its accomplished author among the greatest of American writers. The Lectures are four long and elaborate essays on art; and they evince a depth and delicacy of insight, a concentrativeness and continuity of thought, a finely harmonized action of reason and imagination, and a command of subtle expression, which entitle them to a high rank among the best critical compositions of the century. The lectures treat of the highest and most exacting principles of creative art, and the passage from them to the poems is a hazardous descent. Though some of these poems have gleams of the author’s genius, they are generally characterized by a penury of imaginative expression which is painful to a reader fresh from the Lectures.

The merely literary reader will find much to delight him in the Lectures, even if he is indisposed to pay much attention to their profound discussion of principles. They contain many specimens of that word-painting which gave such popularity to Ruskin’s “Modern Painters.” The following passage on Vernet is one out of many splendid descriptions. “Now let us look at one of his Storms at Sea, when he wrought from his own mind. A dark, leaden atmosphere prepares us for something fearful; suddenly a scene of tumult, fierce, wild, disastrous, bursts upon us; and we feel the shock drive, as it were, every other thought from the mind; the terrible vision now seizes the imagination, filling it with sound and motion: we see the clouds fly, the furious waves one upon another dashing in conflict, and rolling, as if in wrath, toward the devoted ship; the wind blows from the canvas; we hear it roar through her shrouds; her masts bend like twigs, and her last forlorn hope, the close-reefed foresail, streams like a tattered flag; a terrible fascination still constrains us to look, and a dim, rocky shore looms on her lee; then comes the dreadful cry of ‘Breakers ahead!’ the crew stand appalled, and the master’s trumpet is soundless at his lips. This is the uproar of nature, and we feel it to be true; for here every line, every touch, has a meaning. The ragged clouds, the huddled waves, the prostrate ship, though forced by contrast into the sharpest angles, all agree, opposed as they seem, evolving harmony out of discord. And this is Genius, which no criticism can ever disprove.”

The criticisms in these lectures on Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Titian, Poussin, Claude, are as unrivaled for discrimination as appreciation. No one has a quicker and deeper eye to detect the excellencies of great works, and no one seizes with more fatal sagacity upon their defects. Everybody has seen copies of Raffaelle’s great picture of the Madonna di Sisto, but few have dared to express their dissatisfaction with the seemingly beautiful figure of St. Catharine. Allston says it is an “evident rescript from the Antique, with all the received lines of beauty, as laid down by the analyst—apparently faultless, yet without a single inflection which the mind can recognize as allied to our sympathies; and we turn from it coldly as from the work of an artificer, not of an Artist. But not so can we turn from the intense life, which seems almost to breathe upon us from the celestial group of the Virgin and her child, and from the Angels below; in these we have the evidence of the divine afflatus—of inspired Art.”

Among the aphorisms written by Allston on the walls of his studio, and published in the present volume, we extract the following:

“Some men make their ignorance the measure of excellence; these are, of course, very fastidious critics; for knowing little, they can find little to like.”

“A witch’s skiff cannot more easily sail in the teeth of the wind, than the human eye lie against fact; but the truth will oftener quiver through lips with a lie upon them.”

“The most common disguise of Envy is in the praise of what is subordinate.”

Southey’s Common-Place Book. Second Series. Special Collections. Edited by his Son-in-Law, John Wood Warter, B. D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 8vo.

This volume contains the extracts which Southey made from the world of books, relating to special subjects of study. The general topics under which the extracts are grouped, are Ecclesiasticals, the Age of Cromwell, Spanish and Portuguese Literature, the History of the Religious Orders, Orientaliana, American Tribes, Natural History, and Curious Facts. The range of reading that the volume indicates, considered in connection with the number of Southey’s original works, is sufficient to astound a regular book-cormorant, and places Southey fairly among the “laboring classes.” The present volume is more racy in its matter than the preceding, while it does not yield to it in the amount of curious information given. The following passage, taken from Percival Stockdale’s Memoirs, conveys a capital idea of an English military commander. “When Lord George Germains commanded the camp near Brompton, and at Chatham in 1757, Whitfield went to Chatham, sent his respects by Captain Smith to his lordship, and requested permission to preach in the camp. Lord George replied, ‘Make my compliments, Smith, to Mr. Whitfield, and tell him, from me, he may preach any thing to my soldiers that is not contrary to the articles of war.’ ” From the same book Southey extracts an equally edifying paragraph, relating to the view entertained of the Christian religion, by the English naval captain of that time. Percival was appointed chaplain to Capt. Ogle’s ship Resolution, but, he says, “the duty of clergyman was very seldom required of me. One day, however, when I met my naval commander in a street of Portsmouth, and paid my respects to him, he proposed that I should do my duty on the ensuing Sunday on board. I replied that it was my wish to receive such a command more frequently. At all events, replied he, I think it is right that these things should be done sometimes, as long as Christianity is on foot.” The simplicity with which religion is patronized in both of these instances, makes them richly humorous.

Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A New Edition. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 2 vols. 10mo.

This edition of Longfellow contains all his poems, and makes two finely printed volumes of some five hundred pages each, at about half the original price. In their present tasteful form they will doubtless have a large circulation, for their author is the most popular poet of the day on both sides of the Atlantic. His poems sell better in England than those of Tennyson, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Bailey or Milnes. This wide popularity he has fairly won by his merits, as he has not lacked carping critics or envious defamers to obstruct his path to success. The source of the fascination he holds equally over cultivated and uncultivated minds is partly owing to the fine humanity and sweetness of his spirit. Good nature is a portion of his genius; without this good nature, man, says Bacon, is but “a better kind of vermin;” but we are sorry to say that it is not a prominent characteristic of many minds largely gifted with the poetic faculty. Longfellow, in addition to this heartiness, full of seriousness which does not exclude cheer, has a broad and imaginative mind, which has assimilated and inwrought into its own substance the spirit of many literatures; and this gives a vital richness to his thought which no other contemporary poet but Tennyson can be said to possess. Probably few poets ever excelled him in the difficult art of preserving an equilibrium of ambition and capacity, so that nothing is attempted which is not satisfactorily performed. Many poets who aim higher than Longfellow, please less, because we are conscious of the stir and sting of great aspirations which are unaccompanied by sufficient imagination to give them adequate form and expression, and the result is that the mind is disturbed rather than exalted. In Longfellow aspiration and inspiration are perfectly harmonized.

The Angel World, and Other Poems. By Philip James Bailey, author of “Festus.” Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.

“Festus,” a monstrous agglomeration of irreconcilable opinions, lit up with fancy, and seasoned with warm sensations, was Mr. Bailey’s first bantling —

“Got while his soul did huddled notions try,

And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.”

“The Angel World” is his second product, the result of the slow gestation of many years, with fewer faults and fewer merits than “Festus”. Many persons who would hesitate in calling “Festus” a poem, discerned in it a chaos of poetical matter; and they supposed that the author’s unquestioned fertility would be forced into form when his powers matured. In “The Angel World” we find an approach to form with a decay of fertility. This seems to prove that anarchy is not so much the precursor of art as the destroyer of vitality, and that Bailey’s mind found in anarchy its fittest expression. There is not enough greatness in the man to make a great poem. Coleridge, in his remarks on Love’s Labor Lost, says that “true genius begins in generalizing and condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the seeds.” Bailey’s process is the reverse of this; he first expands, then condenses—and his expansion accordingly lacks substance, and his condensation richness. But though “The Angel World” is inferior to “Festus,” it still exhibits sufficient wealth of imagery to give it prominence among contemporary poems, and to exact the attention of all poetical readers. A poem which contains numerous thoughts as fine as the following cannot be justly condemned:

In one

A soul of lofty clearness, like a night

Of stars, wherein the memory of the day

Seems trembling through the meditative air.

The “other poems” which follow “The Angel World” are of various degrees of merit, indicating that the author is a man of moods, and is rapt or muddled, according as his sensibility rises or falls. A few of the poems are almost ecstatic, and equal the most striking passages in “Festus.”

The Ways of the Hour: A Tale. By the author of “The Spy,” “The Red Rover,” etc. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

Mr. Cooper is a philanthropist of a peculiar kind. He makes an inventory of popular errors and vices, some of them thoroughly inwoven in the affections or manners of the people, and then daringly drives at them with the whole might of his pen. We honor his courage, and sympathize with his hatred of cant, even when we are disposed to doubt his judgment, and to regret his fretful way of presenting his opinions. Opposition seems to have deepened some of his dislikes into antipathies, and a man with antipathies is always unreasonable even in his assaults upon error and vice. There is one thing, however, for which Mr. Cooper cannot be too highly praised, and that is, his keen perception of the real faults which, in a democracy, should come under the lash of the moralist and the satirist. Far from pandering to popular delusions, he expends all his force in exposing and attacking them. The present novel is full of thrusts at the political bubbles of New York, some of which really subside into their “elemental suds” under his treatment. The general object of the novel is to exhibit the injustice which results from our system of trials by jury—an injustice which Mr. Cooper thinks is the necessary consequence of that system in a democracy. This we deem a monstrous paradox, though the story which illustrates it is ingenious and interesting, and will well repay perusal.

Gallery of Illustrious Americans. Brady & D’Avignon, New York, 1850.

Daguerreotypes by Brady—Engraved by D’Avignon, with Biographical Notices by C. Edwards Lester, assisted by other literary men. This is announced by the publishers of this work, and is sufficient alone to recommend it. It will be a noble Gallery when completed, if carried out as commenced. Two numbers are before us. The first number contains a fine portrait of Gen. Taylor, with a short clear notice of his life. The second number has a striking life-like head of Mr. Calhoun, which is particularly valuable now, that we are all called upon as countrymen to mourn the death of this great and good man. The biographical notice of Mr. Calhoun is well written and interesting.

We have but one fault to find with this work. The interior of the cover is used as a sort of journal—“Fly Leaf of Art and Criticism,” as it is called, but its piquant notices, and clever short articles of poetry and prose are too valuable to be thus thrown away on a mere cover. However, it proves that the liberal publishers wish to make their work as attractive as possible.

Posthumous Works of the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D. D., L.L.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. Vol. 9.

This volume of Chalmers is as valuable as any in the series, and, to us, the most interesting of the whole. It contains Prelections on Butler’s Analogy, Paley’s Evidences of Christianity, and Hill’s Lectures in Divinity, and affords some test of the great clergyman’s real merit in the science of theology. Although the volume does not place Chalmers in the first class of theological thinkers, it indicates sufficient originality, independence and force of thought to give him a high position in the second class.

Downing Street. (Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. 3.) By Thomas Carlyle. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We do not see as these pamphlets decrease in impudence and raciness as the author proceeds; they are among the most exhilarating of contemporary publications, and however mad in parts, are calculated to give a sharp shock to English dogmatism, if they do not succeed in ameliorating English institutions. In “Downing Street” Carlyle makes an assault on the executive department of the English government. The attack has more reason in it than the substitute proposed for the present system. In speaking of the inadequacy of Parliamentary government to obtain the best men for rulers, he refers to Robert Burns, the noblest soul of his time in England, and yet one for whom the government could find no fitter employment than to gauge ale. “And so,” remarks Carlyle, “like Apollo taken for a Neatherd, and perhaps for none of the best on the Admetus establishment, this new Norse Thor had to put up with what was going; to gauge ale, and be thankful, pouring his celestial sun-light through Scottish song-writing—the narrowest chink ever offered to a thunder-god before! And the measure Pitt, and his Dundasses and red-tape phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think of) did not in the least know or understand—the impious, god-forgetting mortals—that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were pleased to send such, were the one salvation for the world, and for them, and all of us. No; ‘they had done very well without’ such; did not see the use of such; ‘went along very well’ without such; well presided over by singular Heroic Intellect called George the Third; and the Thunder-god, as was rather fit for him, departed early, still in the noon of life, somewhat weary of gauging ale!”

King René’s Daughter: a Danish Lyrical Drama. By Henrik Hertz. Translated by Theodore Martin. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 16mo.

This drama cannot boast any remarkable imaginative power, but it is still a most exquisite creation, conceived in the spirit of the finest human sympathy, and purifying the mind which it seemingly enters merely to please. We trust that the American, as well as the English public will, in the translator’s words, have the taste to “appreciate a drama which owes its effect solely to the simplicity of its structure, the ideal beauty of its central character, and the atmosphere of poetry and old romance by which it is pervaded.” Iolanthe, the character thus indicated, has a clear and vital sweetness at the heart of her being, which wins every reader’s affection. The genius of the author may be likened to the nightingale in his own lyric —

The eagle we tell

By his sweep full well,

As proudly afar in the clouds he soars,

And the nightingale,

By the trilling wail

Her throat in the dewy May-time pours.

The Petrel, or Love on the Ocean, by Sir Ameral Fisher. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson.

This is one of the most spirited sea novels that we have read since Cooper witched the world with his Red Rover. It is full of intense interest throughout, and must find a wide sale among all lovers of nautical adventure. The heroine, Norah, is a beautifully drawn character, as is also the bold, dashing Herbert, her lover. The attack upon the pirates has all the freshness and daring of Tom Cringle’s Log.

Sketches of Minnesota, the New England of the West. With Incidents of Travel in that Territory during the Summer of 1849. By E. S. Seymour. With a Map. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is an useful book, making no pretensions to elegance of style or vividness of description, but giving the history and topography of Minnesota, its past and present condition, in a plain, dogged way. To those interested in the subject, the book will reward perusal, but we can hardly commend it as having any charm for the common reader.

The Life of John Calvin, Compiled from Authentic Sources, and Particularly from his Correspondence. By Thomas H. Dyer. With a Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

Here we have, for the first time, a biography of Calvin, based on original materials, and written by one who does not belong to the Calvinistical sect. The volume is well written, is laden with important information, and is exceedingly impartial. The digests given of Calvin’s works in the order of their composition, and the copious extracts from his private correspondence, conduct us close to the character of the man. The real greatness of Calvin is more apparent in this work than in any we have seen written by professed followers of his creed. The chapters relating to Servetus have a dramatic interest as well as a religious significance. It may be generally said in praise of the volume, that no one who has not read it, is entitled to give a confident opinion of the character of its subject.

EDITOR’S TABLE.

FASHIONS FOR THE MONTH.

Evening Dresses.—Blue satin robe, trimmed with six flounces, disposed in threes, and raised with bouquets of blue tinted feathers. Low body; in three pieces, with a point; berthe of two rows of lace; a bouquet of three marabouts on the body; marabouts in the hair. Robe of white moire, plain skirt: tunic of crape lisse, descending a little lower than the knee, open in front, rounded at bottom, and trimmed all round with a small wreath of roses; low body, with a point; crape berthe, rounded in front, trimmed all round with a wreath, to match that on the skirt; a bouquet in front; a coronet of roses in the hair.

A dinner dress, much in favor, is a robe of pink and white glacé taffetas. The front of the skirt is trimmed with small ruches of narrow pink and white ribbon, interlaced one with the other, forming an échelle of narrow pompons wreaths. This trimming is carried up each side of the body, which opens square à la Louis XV, and tied in front with Montespan bows in pink and white ribbon; the same kind of bow fastens up the pagodes sleeves, which are trimmed with a double wreath of ribbons; from the edge of the sleeve a double row of lace falls over the naked arm. A lace, half the width, trims the top of the body above the ruche. A rose is placed on the side of the head, or a little puff of pink gauze ribbon, or a bouquet of marabouts on one side, and long ends of ribbon on the other.

Before we have done speaking of fashions, we must mention some coiffures. Nothing can be prettier than the evening coiffures now worn; they are made of blonde and flowers, feathers, and rich materials; the small oriental turbans of gold or silver tissue, indeed every thing that is rich and elegant, is employed for these parures. We have also seen some charming little caps, the coquetry and caprice of which makes the wearer indisputably pretty. The little Marie Stuart, descending slightly over the forehead, rounding over the bandeaux, and edged with a very light and narrow ruche of blonde; over the crown a long barbe of blonde. The width of ribbon forms a bow, the ends falling on each side of the neck. On each side of the bandeaux these barbes are slightly raised, with a bouquet of roses or heath, or a chou of ribbon, in the middle of which a large diamond pin is placed. The same style of cap, made entirely of pink or blue gauze ribbon, edged with a very narrow and light blonde, slightly fulled, produces a coiffure which is extremely becoming; a triple ribbon, which on either side, in guise of a barbe, descends gradually upon the neck, is fastened behind the ear with a rose without leaves. La Mode.

J. M. Legare.—The sketches of Mr. Legare, “Life on the Prairies of the Farthest West,” which appeared in the April and May numbers, of Graham, were written for us some two years since, and are no evidence of the maturity of style, since acquired by this elegant writer—ably as they were written. We hope soon, to lay before our readers a series of articles from his pen, which place Mr. Legare in the front rank of the contributors to Graham. South Carolina, with three able writers, Legare, Simms, and Godman, is ably represented in “Graham.”

T. A. Godman.—Our readers will gladly welcome back to our pages the accomplished editor of the Laurensville (S. C.) Herald, whose admirable sea story of “The Slaver,” was so warmly received by them two years since. An article from his pen will appear in the next number, entitled “For’ard and Aft.” It is written with great power, and must add to the high reputation of its author. If the Herald is not one of the most popular newspapers of South Carolina, it will not be the fault of Mr. Godman. He brings to his task a mind thoroughly educated, a nervous style, and a fine imagination, and writes with the power of genius unmistakable. We shall be glad to hear from him frequently.

Cool Impudence.—The 309th number of “The Living Age,” contains an article from “Howitt’s Journal,” entitled “Three Pictures, Sunrise—Noonday—Night.” In the last December number of Graham’s Magazine our readers will find the original. The writer of the article says:

“Mrs. Howitt, or whoever attends to that journal, has not done quite the proper thing—having left out many of the paragraphs in my piece, and married together sentences which were not intended for matrimony, and moreover, and what is quite too bad, she, or he, or it, has taken a liberty quite unpardonable, in leaving out of the piece the place where the scene, if it may be so called, is laid, Broadway, New York, etc., obviously intending that it shall not appear the work of an American. In a matter so light as this, of course one can but laugh—if it were a production of more moment, one might still laugh, but would still have to remember how outrageously Mrs. H. came down on the American who ventured to translate and publish one of Miss Bremer’s works.”

It is not necessary to comment on this piece of British impudence.

The Gold Fish.—A new artist, Henry A. Stevens, Esq., furnishes “Graham” this month with a spice of his quality, in “The Gold Fish”—the first of a series of drawings illustrative of Natural History, very pointedly discussed. The sketches in pen and ink, from writers of fine satirical powers, which will hereafter accompany these drawings, will undoubtedly prove quite attractive thus illustrated.

Messrs. Lindsay & Blackiston, have in press, and will publish during the summer, “The Broken Bracelet and Other Poems,” by Mrs. Esling, formerly Miss Waterman, who is well known to many of our old subscribers, by the beautiful poems she formerly contributed to the Casket, and afterward to Graham’s Magazine.

We have received from Messrs. Long & Brother, just as we are going to press, a romance by W. Harrison Ainsworth, entitled “Windsor Castle,” which we shall refer to again.

THE MELODIES OF MANY LANDS.

WRITTEN BY

CHARLES JEFFERIES,

COMPOSED BY

CHARLES W. GLOVER.

Presented by Lee & Walker, 120 Walnut Street.

The melodies of many lands

Ere-while have charm’d my ear,

Yet

there’s but one among them all

Which still my heart holds dear;

I heard it first from lips I loved,

My tears it then beguiled,

It was the song my mother sang,

When I was but a child.

It was the song my mother sang,

When I was but a child.

Its words, I will remember now,

Were fraught with precepts old;

And every line a maxim held

Of far more worth than gold;

A lesson ’twas, though simply taught,

That cannot pass away;

It is my guiding star by night,

My comfort in the day.

It told me in the hour of need,

To seek a solace there,

Where only stricken hearts could find,

Meet answer to their prayer;

Ah much I owe that gentle voice,

Whose words my tears beguiled;

That song of songs my mother sang,

When I was but a child.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious type-setting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for preparation of the eBook.

page 353, first filled by Boccacio. ==> first filled by Boccaccio.

page 354, “Lesciate ogni speranza ==> “Lasciate ogni speranza
page 354, speranza voi ch’ intrate.” ==> speranza voi ch’ entrate.”

page 371, as the Rock of Gibralter ==> as the Rock of Gibraltar
page 378, against the mantle-piece, ==> against the mantel-piece,
page 382, “Ada’s pompous apostacy ==> “Ada’s pompous apostasy
page 390, Cowper; but Shelly, Keats, ==> Cowper; but Shelley, Keats,
page 391, an unwordly degree of purity ==> an unworldly degree of purity
page 393, how warily must it ==> how wearily must it
page 397, the accomodation of invalids. ==> the accommodation of invalids.

page 399, hand accidently touched ==> hand accidentally touched
page 404, Paganinni or Ole Bull had ==> Paganini or Ole Bull had
page 412, chef d’ouvre, and its ==> chef d’oeuvre, and its
page 417, than to guage ale. ==> than to gauge ale.

page 417, going; to guage ale, and ==> going; to gauge ale, and
page 417, weary of guaging ale ==> weary of gauging ale
page 417, Drama. By Henrick Hertz. ==> Drama. By Henrik Hertz.

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Table of Contents

- DANTE’S DIVINA COMMEDIA.

- THE GOLD-SEEKER.

- CLIFDON.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- BIRD-NOTES.

- THE DAWN OF THE HUNDRED DAYS.

- SYMBOLS.

- SONNET. TO SHIRLEY.

- THE FIRST LOVE OF ADA SOMERS.

- CHAPTER II.

- THE SECOND LOVE OF ADA SOMERS.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- NARCISSOS.

- TO ARCTURUS.

- TRAVELING A TOUCHSTONE.

- MARY.

- THE POET COWPER.

- EVENING.

- THE QUEEN OF THE WOODS.

- SCENE ON THE OHIO.

- THE LADY OF THE ROCK.

- CHAPTER XV.

- CHAPTER XVI.

- CHAPTER XVII.

- CHAPTER XVIII.

- CHAPTER XIX.

- THE JOLLY RIDE.

- BALLADS OF THE CAMPAIGN IN MEXICO. NO. V.

- SHAKSPEARE.

- JACOB’S LADDER.

- BASS AND BASS FISHING.

- THE STRIPED BASS. (Labrax Lineatus. Cuvier.)

- THE SMOKER.

- THE MAIDEN’S COMPLAINT AGAINST LOVE.

- THE FINE ARTS.

- EARLY ENGLISH POETS.

- REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

- EDITOR’S TABLE.

- FASHIONS FOR THE MONTH.

- THE MELODIES OF MANY LANDS.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE