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                           GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
               Vol. XXXVII.      Sept, 1850.      No. 3.


                           Table of Contents

                    Fiction, Literature and Articles

          Shakspeare—Analysis of Macbeth
          Pedro de Padilh (continued)
          A Visit to Staten Island
          Woodlawn: or the Other Side of the Medal
          “What Can Woman Do?”
          The Bride of the Battle
          Doctrine of Form
          Coquet _versus_ Coquette
          The Genius of Byron
          Rail and Rail Shooting
          The Fine Arts
          Mandan Indians
          Review of New Books

                       Poetry, Music and Fashion

          Ode
          Lines in Memory of My Lost Child
          Evening
          The Wasted Heart
          A Health to My Brother
          On a Portrait of Cromwell
          A Sea-Side Reverie
          Audubon’s Blindness
          Sonnets
          On the Death of General Taylor
          “Psyche Loves Me.”
          To the Lost One
          Outward Bound
          He Comes Not
          The Bright New Moon of Love
          Barcarole
          Le Follet

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

                 *        *        *        *        *

                           GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

        Vol. XXXVII.     PHILADELPHIA, September, 1850.     No. 3.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                              SHAKSPEARE.


                          ANALYSIS OF MACBETH.


                         BY HENRY C. MOORHEAD.


The reader who has not considered the subject in Ulrici’s point of view,
will, perhaps, scarcely be prepared, at first sight, to believe that the
two plays of Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice, have the same
“ground-idea;” that both are, throughout, imbued with the same
sentiment, yet he will readily perceive the similarity of the leading
incidents of these plays. Shylock insists on the literal terms of his
bond, and “stands for judgment,” according to the strict law of Venice.
He is entitled to a pound of flesh; “the law allows it, and the court
awards it;” but his bond gives him no drop of blood, and neither more
nor less than just a pound. Thus the _letter of the law_, on which he
has so sternly insisted, serves in the end to defeat him. In like manner
Macbeth relies with fatal confidence on the predictions of the weird
sisters, that “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth;” and that he
“shall never vanquished be till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane.” The
predictions are more _literally_ fulfilled than he anticipated, and that
very strictness of interpretation makes them worthless.

Now it is from these incidents—both of the same import—that the
respective themes of these plays are drawn; hence those themes are
substantially the same, and may be thus expressed:

_The relation of form to substance—of the letter to the spirit—of the
real to the ideal._ But the different aspects in which this idea is
presented are multiform; as empty, superfluous words; ambiguities,
equivocations, irony, riddles, formality, prescription, superstition;
witches, ghosts, dreams, omens, etc., etc.

The reason and the propriety of the introduction of the witches in
Macbeth, has often been a subject of speculation. It may be remarked in
general, that Shakspeare always follows very closely the original story
on which his plot is founded. The question as to any given circumstance,
therefore, generally is rather why he has _retained_ than why he has
_introduced_ it. In the history of Macbeth, as he read it in the old
chronicles, he found the weird sisters, and also their _equivocal
predictions_; and it was upon these predictions as a “ground-idea,” (as
has already been observed,) that he constructed the play. The witches,
therefore, were not introduced for the sake of the play, but it might
rather be said the play was written for the sake of the witches.


                                 ACT I.

The prevailing modification of the theme, in the early part of the play,
is “the ambiguity of appearances.” The 1st scene merely introduces the
witches, who are themselves _ambiguous_, and so is their language; “fair
is foul, and foul is fair.” They appear amidst thunder and lightning,
and a hurly-burly of empty words.

In the 2d Scene a bleeding soldier enters, and gives an account of the
battle, and of the achievements of Macbeth and Banquo. Mark how he
dwells on the _doubtful aspect_ of the fight:

              “Doubtfully it stood;
        As two spent swimmers that do cling together,
        And choke their art.”

He represents fortune as smiling at first on Macdonwald’s cause; but
brave Macbeth, “disdaining fortune,” soon turned the tide of victory.
But another revulsion follows, “and from the spring whence comfort
seemed to come, discomfort flows.” The Norweyan lord suddenly renews the
assault, but victory at last falls on Macbeth and Banquo. Ross now
enters and describes the fight, dwelling in like manner on the
_uncertainty_ which attended it; and Duncan, declaring that the Thane of
Cawdor shall no more _deceive_ him, orders his execution. It is worthy
of remark also, that the view here presented of Macbeth’s character is
purely _formal_ or _sensual_. Physical strength and bull-dog courage are
alone spoken of. Swords “smoking with bloody execution,” “reeking
wounds,” and “heads fixed on battlements,” compose the staple of his
eulogy.

_Scene_ 3d—Enter the three witches. There is an idle repetition of
words. The offense of the sailor’s wife is visited upon her husband, who
is, however, to encounter only the _appearance_, not the _reality_ of
destruction. A certain _combination of numbers_ completes the charm.

Macbeth and Banquo now encounter the weird sisters on the heath.
Macbeth’s exclamations relate chiefly to the _ambiguity_ of their
_appearance_. He says, they “look not like the inhabitants of the earth,
and yet are on it.” They “_seem_ to understand me.”

                    They should be women,
        And yet their beards forbid me to interpret
        That they are so.

The witches then salute Macbeth in terms which are to him
_incomprehensible_. They call him Thane of Cawdor, which he is, but does
not know it. They also salute Banquo in ambiguous language: “Lesser than
Macbeth and greater.” “Not so happy, yet much happier,” etc., etc.

The witches now “melt into the wind;” upon which Banquo says,

        The earth hath _bubbles_ as the water has,
        And these are of them.

Ross and Angus now enter and salute Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor, who,
finding the prediction of the witches verified in this particular, asks
Banquo whether he does not hope his children shall be kings. Banquo’s
answer points to the _ambiguity_ of appearances,

                        That trysted home,
        Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
        Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But ’tis strange;
        And oftentimes to win us to our harm,
        The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
        Win us with honest trifles to betray us
        In deepest consequence.

Macbeth falls into meditation on the subject; thinks this “supernatural
soliciting” cannot be ill, because it has already given him earnest of
success; cannot be good, because it breeds horrid suggestions in his
mind. The appearances are _ambiguous_ and bewilder him. Banquo,
observing his abstraction, remarks that new honors come upon him like
“strange garments,” wanting the _formality_ of use to make them sit
easy.

The next Scene, (the 4th) though a short one, contains several very
pointed references to the central idea. Malcolm reports to Duncan that
Cawdor, when led to execution, had frankly confessed his treasons;
whereupon Duncan says,

                              There’s no art
        To find the mind’s construction in the face;
        He was a gentleman on whom I built
        An absolute trust.

This reflection is commonplace enough in itself, but is rendered
eminently striking by his cordial reception of Macbeth the next moment;
he hails as his deliverer, and enthrones in his heart, the man who is
already meditating his destruction, and that very night murders him in
his sleep. Thus precept and example concur in teaching the _uncertainty
of appearances_. Again Duncan says:

                              My _plenteous joys_,
        Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves
        In _drops of sorrow_.

He then declares his intention to confer _appropriate_ honors on all
deservers, and renews his expressions of confidence in Macbeth.

The subject is now presented in a slightly different aspect. Whereas the
ambiguity of form or appearance has heretofore been insisted on, the
leading idea is now the agreement of form with substance; the
correspondence of appearances with the reality.

Macbeth writes to his wife, informing her of what has happened, that she
may not “lose the dues of rejoicing,” but be able to conform to their
new circumstances. Her reflections on the occasion abound with
illustrations of the theme. She fears his nature; it is too full of the
milk of human kindness to “catch the nearest way.” He cannot rid himself
of what she considers mere ceremonious scruples; “what he would highly
that he would holily;” whilst she thinks only of the end they aim at,
she apprehends that he will stand upon _the manner_ of reaching it. An
attendant now informs her of Duncan’s unexpected approach; and she falls
into a soliloquy which is singularly adapted to the theme. The “hoarse
raven;” the invocation to night; her wish to be unsexed, and that her
milk might be turned to gall, etc., etc. When Macbeth arrives, she says
to him:

        Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men
        May read strange matters; _To beguile the time_,
        _Look like the time_; bear welcome in your eye,
        Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,
        But be the serpent under it.

In the next scene she practices that dissimulation which she has
reproached Macbeth for wanting. Her reception of Duncan is full of
ceremony and professions of duty.

The 7th Scene opens with the great soliloquy of Macbeth, “If it were
done, when ’tis done,” etc. He dwells on the _incongruity_ of his
killing Duncan, who is there in double trust; “First as I am his kinsman
and his subject; then as his host.” Duncan, too, “has borne his
faculties so meek;” has been “so clear in his great office;” “he has
honored me of late;” and “I have bought golden opinions from all sorts
of people.” He resolves at last that he will proceed no further in the
business. Lady Macbeth now enters to “chastise him with the valor of her
tongue.” In the course of the argument that ensues, Macbeth shows _his_
regard for _appearances_ by saying:

        I dare do all that may become a man,
        Who dares do more is none.

whilst she shows _her_ respect for the strictness of the letter by
declaring that _had she so sworn_ as he has done to this, she would,
whilst her babe was smiling in her face, have “plucked her nipple from
his boneless gums,” and dashed his brains out. She then proposes to
drench the attendants with wine, and smear them with Duncan’s blood, so
that suspicion may fall on them; also, “we will make our griefs and
clamor roar upon his death.” And here the first act ends with these
words:

        Away and mock the time with fairest show;
        False face must hide what the false heart doth know.


                                ACT II.

In the 2d Act the same idea of _correspondence_ is pursued, and the
propensity of the imagination to embody ideas which press upon the mind
is dwelt upon.

In the first scene Banquo, when ordering the light to be removed, says:
“Night’s candles are all out; there’s husbandry in Heaven.” This
imagery, no doubt, very naturally suggests itself; but herein lies the
peculiar art of these plays; there is seldom any thing forced or
strained in the narrative or sentiment, the events and reflections fall
in naturally and gracefully; and yet the same general idea is always
kept in the foreground.

Macbeth tells Banquo if he will co-operate with him it shall be to his
honor; the latter intimates his fear of losing the _substance_ by
grasping at the _shadow_; “So I lose none in seeking to augment it,”
etc. Then comes the fearful soliloquy of Macbeth on the air-drawn
dagger. So intensely does the bloody business “inform to his mind,” that
his very thoughts cast a shadow, and the object of his meditation stands
pictured before him. All the imagery of the speech also embodies the
central idea.

The next scene (the 2d) is full of horrible imaginings. So fearful are
the workings of Macbeth’s conscience, that, in spite of his guilt, we
pity as much as we abhor him; and all these exclamations of remorse and
horror allude so plainly to the theme that I need not dwell on them.
Lady Macbeth is seldom troubled with scruples, but takes “the nearest
way” to her purpose. Thus she says,

                      The sleeping and the dead,
        Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood
        That fears a painted devil.

Yet even her stern nature, which bore down all real obstacles, yielded
to the merely formal circumstance that Duncan resembled her father as he
slept. This is, perhaps, the only amiable sentiment she utters, and it
is of a _superstitious_ character, however commendable.

The 3d Scene opens with the humorous soliloquy of the Porter, who
imagines himself porter of hell-gate, and gives each new comer an
_appropriate_ reception, but soon finds that the place is _too cold_ for
the purpose. His remarks on the effects of drink will not bear
quotation, but are as much to the main purpose as any other passage of
the play. When the murder of Duncan is announced, Lady Macbeth continues
her formal part by _fainting_. This scene and the next are much occupied
with accounts of omens and prodigies in connection with the murder of
Duncan. In a superstitious age men were prone to believe and to imagine
such things; and the relation of these events to the theme depends on
that _literal, unspiritual_ tendency of mind which has led mankind under
different circumstances to the making of graven images, to the worship
of stocks and stones, to the belief in dreams and omens, and to every
form of _superstition_.


                                ACT III.

In the first scene of this act Macbeth dwells on the worthlessness of
the mere title which he has won, “To be thus is nothing, but to be
_safely_ thus.” Then, too, the succession was promised to the issue of
Banquo, leaving a barren sceptre in the hands of Macbeth. He resolves to
have the substantial prize for which he had “filed his mind,” and
therefore plans the destruction of Banquo and Fleance. In the
conversation with the murderers whom he engages for that purpose, the
theme is curiously illustrated. In reply to Macbeth’s question as to
their readiness to revenge an injury, they say, “We are men, my lord.”

        _Macbeth._ Ay, in the catalogue, you go for men
        As hounds, and grey-hounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
        Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clep’d
        All by the name of dogs; the valued file
        Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
        The house-keeper, the hunter, every one
        According to the gift which bounteous nature
        Hath in him closed.

The _ambiguity_ of the general name is remedied by the _specific_
description. The name is _formal_, the description _substantial_.

In the next Scene (the 2d) both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth continue their
reflections on the insecurity of their usurped honors: “We have scotched
the snake, not killed it.” She exhorts him to “sleek o’er his rugged
look;” and he refuses to explain his purposes as to Banquo, bidding her
be innocent of the knowledge till she can applaud the deed; thus sparing
her conscience the _formal_ guilt of the murder. His invocation to night
and darkness, at the end of this scene, is very similar to that of Lady
Macbeth, on a similar occasion, before referred to.

In the 3d Scene the murderers, whilst waiting the approach of Banquo,
justify to themselves the deed they are about to commit, by pleading the
orders of Macbeth. The deed is his; they are the mere instruments of his
will. The allusion to the fading light; “the west yet glimmers with some
streaks of day,” seems to refer to the near approach of Banquo’s end; as
the extinguishment of the light does to the simultaneous extinguishment
of his life, immediately afterward.

The next is the Banquet Scene. It opens with _formal ceremony_. The
murderers then inform Macbeth that they have executed his will on
Banquo. Macbeth expresses surprise and regret at Banquo’s absence, but
in the midst of his hypocritical professions, his excited imagination
_embodies_ the description which has just been given him by the
murderers, and the ghost of Banquo, “with twenty trenched gashes on its
head,” rises and shakes its gory locks at him. The whole scene abounds
with illustrations of the theme. Macbeth endeavors to shelter himself
under the _letter of the law_, when he exclaims, “thou canst not say I
did it!” He thinks that after a man has been regularly murdered, he
should stay in his grave; he declares his readiness to encounter any
_substantial_ foe—the rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros, or the
Hyrcan tiger; it is the “horrible _shadow_” that blanches his cheek with
fear. After the guests have retired, he falls into a superstitious train
of reflection, in which he expresses his belief in augurs, etc. He
declares his intention to revisit the weird sisters; he is fast becoming
as formal and as reckless of consequences as his wife; he speaks of his
qualms of conscience as the “_initiate_ fear that wants hard use;” and,
as if he now passively allowed himself to be borne onward by the tide of
events, says he has strange things in his head, “which must be _acted_
e’er they may be _scanned_.”

Scene 5th. This is another witch scene. Hecate declares her intention to
raise up artificial sprites for the purpose of deluding Macbeth, and
drawing him on to his confusion, thus preparing the way for the
ambiguous predictions.

In the 6th Scene, the relation between the letter and the spirit is
exhibited in the _ironical_ speech of Lennox, and in the King of
England’s regard for the “dues of birth.”

        Things have been strangely born; the gracious Duncan
        Was pitied of Macbeth; marry, he was dead;
        And the right valiant Banquo walked too late,
        Whom you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed,
        For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.
        Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous
        It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain,
        To kill their gracious father? damned fact!
        How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight,
        In pious rage, the two delinquents tear,
        That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?
        Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely, too;
        For ’twould have angered any heart alive
        To hear the men deny it. etc. etc.


                                ACT IV.

Scene 1st. Here we have the witches boiling their cauldron. It is
composed of various and contradictory materials;

        Black spirits and white,
        Red spirits and gray.

And so truth and falsehood are mingled in the promises to Macbeth which
immediately follow; and which are kept literally to the ear, but broken
fatally to the hope.

In the 2d Scene, the falsehood or ambiguity of _appearances_ is
illustrated in Lady Macduff’s complaint of her husband’s desertion,
which she attributes to fear and want of love; whilst Ross exhorts her
to confide in his fidelity and wisdom, though she may not be able to
understand his present conduct:

                        As for your husband,
        He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows
        The fits o’ the season.

Of her son, she says, “Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless;” and
immediately after tells him that his father’s dead; and, according to
her understanding of the matter, so he was; not _literally_ but
_substantially_, as their guardian and protector. The boy denies it,
because he does not see the appropriate _effect_. “If he were dead,
you’d weep for him; if you would not, it were a good sign that I should
quickly have a new father.” Whatever may be the merit of this dialogue
between Lady Macduff and her son, in other respects it serves at least
to illustrate the theme. The same idea of ambiguity is now applied to
the relation between cause and effect, when a messenger enters, warns
her of the near approach of danger, and urges her to fly. Her first
exclamation is, “I have done no harm.” But she immediately adds,

                            I remember now
        I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
        Is often laudable; to do good sometime
        Accounted dangerous folly.

The first part of the next scene (the 3d) is wholly occupied with the
idea of _ambiguous appearances_. Macduff arrives at the court of
England, and tenders his services to Malcolm, who, fearing that he is an
emissary of Macbeth, mistrusts him. He plays off false appearances upon
Macduff by slandering himself, thus bringing out Macduff’s true
disposition. A doctor now enters and introduces the idea of _causeless
effect_, telling how the king, with a mere touch, has healed the “evil.”
Ross, having just arrived from Scotland, describes the dreadful state of
the country, dwelling chiefly on the circumstance that the people have
become so _used_ to horrors, that they have almost ceased to note them.
He tells Macduff that his wife and children are “well,” purposely using
an ambiguous phrase, which Macduff understands literally, though Ross
means that they are at peace in their graves. When at length he comes to
reveal the truth, he begs Macduff not to confound the _relator_ with the
_author_ of the mischief. “Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,”
etc. Then tells him that his wife and children have been savagely
slaughtered; whereupon Macduff pulls his hat upon his brows, and Malcolm
begs him to “give sorrow words”—distinguishing justly between the
clamorous _show_ of grief and its silent _reality_. The _substance_ of
Ross’s words have struck Macduff, but in the agony of the moment he
cannot comprehend their _detail_. “My wife killed, too;” “Did you say
all?” He has not caught the _form_ of the expression though its _spirit_
has pierced his soul. There are few passages in Shakspeare more
affecting than this, or in which the “ground-idea” is more steadily kept
in view.

        O, I could play the woman with mine eyes,
        And braggart with my tongue,

exclaims Macduff; but he refrains from all _show_ of grief, and all
_profession_ of courage, and prays Heaven only to bring the fiend of
Scotland and himself “front to front.”


                                 ACT V.

In the first scene of this act the _apparent_ and the _real_ are
inexplicably mingled together. Lady Macbeth “receives, at once, the
benefit of sleep, and does the effects of watching,” which the doctor
pronounces “a great perturbation in nature.” Her eyes are open, but
their _sense_ is shut; and she _seems_ to wash her hands. Though she is
now under the dominion of an awakened conscience, the _formality_ of her
nature still displays itself. “Fie, my lord, fie!” she exclaims, “a
soldier, and afeard? _What need we fear who knows it, when none can call
our power to account?_” The Doctor, however, is cautious about drawing
conclusions even from _such_ appearances, and remarks that he has known
those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their
beds. The reader will readily perceive other illustrations of the theme
in this scene, in which for the first time Lady Macbeth appears stripped
of the mask of ceremony. We are permitted to see the workings of her
mind, and the beating of her heart, when her conscience is emancipated
from the control of her formal habits and her stern will.

The next scene, which is a very short one, contains several allusions to
the _unsubstantial_ nature of Macbeth’s power.

        Those he commands move only in command,
        Nothing in love, etc.

In the 3d Scene Macbeth still relies on the promises of the weird
sisters. He interprets the _look_ of the “cream-faced loon” as
indicative of alarming news; and then falls into that memorable train of
reflection on his “way of life,” and the _emptiness_ of all his
honors—which everybody knows by heart and can at once apply to the
theme. In his answer to the Doctor, who tells him of Lady Macbeth’s
“thick-coming fancies,” the remedies he proposes, are, it will be
observed, adapted to the _unsubstantial_ character of the disease; the
troubles of the brain are to be “razed out,” and the stuffed bosom
cleansed with “some sweet oblivious antidote.” On the other hand, when
he asks the Doctor to “scour the English hence,” he suggests the use of
rhubarb, or senna, which, indeed, at first sight, strikes one as very
_appropriate_ remedies.

In the 4th Scene, the soldiers are made to hew down boughs in Birnam
wood, in order to conceal their numbers; thus giving a _literal_
construction to the language of the weird sisters.

Scene 5th. Macbeth now trusts to the strength of his castle, and
_proclaims_ his confidence by ordering his banners to be hung on the
outward walls. When he hears the cry of women, he comments on the
_effect of custom_.

        I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
     .      .      .      .      .      .      .
        Direness, _familiar_ to my slaughterous thoughts,
        Can not once start.

When told of the queen’s death, he says it is _unseasonable_: “she
should have died hereafter;” and his reflections on life have the same
relation to the theme as those on his “way of life” in Scene 3d.

                          It is a tale
        Told by an idiot, _full of sound and fury_,
        _Signifying nothing_.

He is now told that Birnam wood is coming to Dunsinane; and the rock on
which he has heretofore stood so firmly begins to crumble beneath his
feet. He begins to pall in resolution, and to “doubt the equivocation of
the fiend, that _lies like truth_.”

Scene 6th contains less than a dozen lines. The soldiers throw away
their leafy screens, and show their true strength.

In the next and last scene the remaining promise of the weird sisters is
literally kept to the ear, but “broken to the hope”—for it turns out
that Macduff was _not_ of woman born. The force of professional habit
appears in old Siward’s conduct on hearing of the death of his son. “Had
he his hurts before?” he asks; and, being satisfied on that point,
ceases to mourn for him. Finally, _ceremony_ is employed by Malcolm in
rewarding _substantial merit_; his thanes and kinsmen are created earls;
and all other proper forms observed “in measure, time, and place.”

The reader will readily perceive that different aspects of the theme
predominate in the several stages of the play; and if these stages seem
somewhat irregular, it must be borne in mind that the present division
into acts and scenes was not the work of Shakspeare, but of his editors.

In Macbeth we see a perpetual conflict between the _real_ nature of man,
and the _assumed_ character of the usurper. He is “full o’ the milk of
human kindness;” loves truth and sincerity; and sets a high value on the
good opinions and the sincere friendship of others. But he is also
ambitious; he is urged forward by the demoniac spirit of his wife, and
entangled in the snare of the weird sisters. Under these influences he
endeavors to play the part of a remorseless tyrant; but his kindlier
nature is constantly breaking out; and though he strives so hard to
maintain his _assumed_ character, that he at length refuses to “scan”
his deeds until they have been “acted,” yet we find him in the height of
his power mournfully regretting his own blood-guiltiness, and the
_hollow-heartedness_ of all around him.

But there is nothing of this _spirituality_ in the character of Lady
Macbeth. Her ambition is satisfied with the _name_ of queen, and she
cares not whether the obedience of her followers is constrained or
voluntary, whether their love is feigned or real. Remorse has no power
over her except when she is asleep; and even old Shylock—whose whole
character, as has been well said, is a _dead letter_—might, perhaps,
betray similar emotions, if one could see him thus off his guard.

If the reader of this play should ever be tempted to the commission of
crime for the sake of ambition, let him remember the air-drawn dagger,
and the ghost of Banquo; if in danger of being seduced by the specious
appearance of vice, let him remember the equivocation of the fiends; if
lured by the hope that success will gild o’er the offense and “trammel
up the consequence,” let him think of Macbeth’s withered heart after he
had won the crown and sceptre; and finally, if he imagine that he can so
school his passions and harden his nature that remorse will have no
power over him, let him contemplate Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep.
Whereever he turns, he will find, in all the incidents of this play, the
same great lesson, that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth
life.”

                 *        *        *        *        *




                                  ODE.


                           BY R. H. STODDARD.


          The days are growing chill, the Summer stands
          Drooping, like Niobe with clasped hands,
          Mute o’er the faded flowers, her children lost,
          Slain by the arrows of the early frost!
          The clouded Heaven above is pale and gray,
            The misty Earth below is wan and drear,
          And baying Winds chase all the leaves away,
            As cruel hounds pursue the trembling deer,
          And in the nipping morns, the ice around,
        Lieth like Autumn’s gage defiant on the ground!

          My heart is sick within me, I have toiled
            In iron poverty and hopeless tears,
            Tugging in fetters at the oar for years;
          And wrestling in the ring of Life have soiled
          My robes with dust, and strained my sinews sore;
          I have no strength to struggle any more!
          And what if I should perish?—none would miss
          So strange a dreamer in a world like this—
          Whate’er our beauty, worth, or loving powers,
            We live, we strive, we die, and are forgot;
          We are no more regarded than the flowers;
            And death and darkness is our destined lot!
          One bud from off the tree of Earth is naught,
          One crude fruit from the ripening bough of Thought,
          The hinds will ne’er lament, in harvest-time,
        The bud, the fruit that fell and wasted in its prime!

          Away with Action! ’tis the ban of Time,
            The curse that clung to us from Eden’s gate;
          We toil, and strain and tug from youth’s fair prime,
            And drag a chain for years, a weary weight!
          Away with Action and Laborious Life;
              They were not made for man,
                  In Nature’s plan,
          For man is made for quiet, not for strife.
          The pearl is shaped serenely in its shell
            In the still waters of the ocean deep;
          The buried seed begins to pulp and swell
            In Earth’s warm bosom in profoundest sleep;
          And, sweeter far than all, the bridal rose
          Flushes to fullness in a soft repose.
          Let others gather honey in the world,
            And hoard it in their cells until they die;
            I am content in dreaminess to lie,
              Sipping, in summer hours,
              My wants from fading flowers,
        An Epicurean till my wings are furled!

          What happy hours! what happy, happy days
            I spent when I was young, a careless boy;
            Oblivious of the world—its wo or joy—
          I lived for song, and dreamed of budding bays!
          I thought when I was dead, if not before—
            (I hoped before!)—to have a noble name
          To leave my eager foot-prints on the shore
            And rear my statue in the halls of Fame!—
          I pondered o’er the Poets dead of old,
            Their memories living in the minds of men;—
          I knew they were but men of mortal mould,
            They won their crowns, and I might win again.
          I drank delicious vintage from their pages,
          Flasks of Parnassian nectar, stored for ages;
          My soul was flushed within me, maddened, fired,
          I leaped impassioned, like a seer inspired;
          I lived, and would have died for Poesy,
              In youth’s divine emotion—
              A stream that sought its ocean;
                A Time that longed to be
        Engulfed, and swallowed in a calm Eternity!

          Had I a realm in some enchanted zone,
          Some fadeless summer-land, I’d dwell alone,
          Far from the little world, luxurious, free,
          And woo the dainty damsel Poesy!
          I’d loll on downy couches all the day,
          And dream the heavy-wingéd hours away:
          Reading my antique books, or framing songs,
          Whose choiceness to an earlier age belongs,
          Or else a loving maid, in gentle fear,
          Would steal to me, from her pavilion near,
          And kneel before me with a cup of wine,
            Three centuries old, and I would sip and taste,
          With long-delaying lips a draught divine;
          And, peering o’er the brim in her blue eyes
          Slow-misting, and voluptuous, she would rise,
            And stoop to me, and I would clasp her waist,
          And kiss her mouth, and shake her hanging curls—
        And in her coy despite undo her zone of pearls!

          Oh, Poesy! my spirits crownéd queen,
          I would that thou couldst in the flesh be seen
          The shape of perfect loveliness thou art
          Enshrined within the chambers of my heart!
          I would build thee a palace, richer far
            Than princely Aladeen’s renowned of old;
            Its walls and columns of the massiest gold,
          And every gem encrusting it a star!
          Thy throne should be an Alp, o’ercanopied
          With rainbows, and a shielded Moon o’erhead;
          Thy coffers should o’erflow, and mock the Ind,
            Whose boasted wealth would dwindle into naught
            The rich-ored driftings of the streams of Thought
          Washed lucidly from cloven peaks of Mind!—
          And I would bring to thee the daintiest things
          That grow beneath the summer of thy wings;—
          Wine from the Grecian vineyards, pressed with care,
          Brimming in cups antique, and goblets rare,
          And sweeter honey than the singing bees
          Of Helios ever gathered on the leas
          Olympian, distilled from asphodels,
          Whose lucent nectar truckles from their cells!
          And luscious fruitage of enchanted trees,
          The peerless apples of the Hesperides,
          Stolen by Fancy from the guardant Fates,
          Served, by a Nubian slave, on golden plates!
          And I would hang around thee day and night,
            Nor ever heed, or know the night from day;
          If Time had wings, I should not see his flight,
            Or feel his shadow in my sunny way!
          Forgetful of the world, I’d stand apart,
            And gaze on thee unseen, and touch my lute,
          Sweet-voiced, a type and image of my heart,
            Whose trembling chords will never more be mute;
          And Joy and Grief would mingle in my theme,
          A swan and shadow floating down a stream!
          And when thou didst in soft disdain, or mirth,
          Descend thy throne and walk the common earth,
          I would, in brave array, precede thee round,
            With pomp and pageantry and music sweet,
          And spread my shining mantle on the ground,
        For fear the dust should soil thy golden-sandaled feet!

          Away! away! the days are dim and cold,
          The withered flowers are crumbling in the mould,
          The Heaven is gray and blank, the Earth is drear,
          And fallen leaves are heaped on Summer’s bier!
          Sweet songs are out of place, however sweet,
            When all things else are wrapt in funeral gloom,
          True Poets never pipe to dancing feet,
            But only elegies around a tomb!
          Away with fancy now, the Year demands
            A sterner chaplet, and a deeper lay,
          A wreath of cypress woven with pious hands,
                  A dirge for its decay!

                 *        *        *        *        *




                   LINES IN MEMORY OF MY LOST CHILD.


                         BY GEORGE D. PRENTICE.


         My child! my dear, lost child! a father’s heart,
         Touched by the holy wand of memory,
         Would in this hour of loneliness and gloom,
         When not a sound is borne upon the air,
         And not a star is visible in heaven,
         Hold sweet communion with thy soul.
                                         My boy!
         Thou wast most beautiful. I never looked
         On thee but with a heart of pride. Thy curls
         Fell o’er a brow of angel-loveliness,
         And thy dark eyes, dark as the midnight cloud,
         And soft as twilight waters, flashed and glowed
         In strange, wild beauty, yet thy tears were far
         More frequent than thy smiles—thy wail of pain
         Came oftener on our hearts than thy dear cry
         Of infant joyousness. Thy few brief months
         Were months of suffering; ay, thy cup of life
         Was bitter, bitter, but thou wast not doomed
         To drain it, for a God of mercy soon
         Let it pass from thee.
                               Oh! how well, my child,
         Do I remember that all mournful day,
         When thy young mother bore thy wasting form,
         With breaking heart and streaming eyes, afar,
         In the vain hope to save the dear young life
         To which the tendrils of her own were bound.
         With one wild pressure of thy little form
         To my sad bosom, with a frantic kiss
         Upon thy pallid lips, and a hot tear
         Wrung from a burning brain, I said farewell—
         Alas! my child, I never saw thee more.
         In a strange land, far from thy own dear home,
         But with the holy ministries of love
         Around thy couch, thy little being passed,
         Like the sweet perfume of a bright young rose,
         To mingle with the skies from whence it came.
         Oh! in that hour, my child, thy lost of earth,
         Did not a thought of thy poor father’s love
         Soften the anguish of thy parting soul,
         And were not thy dear little arms outstretched
         To meet his fond caress!
                                 Thou sleepest, child,
         Where the Missouri rolls its wild, dark waves,
         And I have never gazed upon thy grave.
         No tears of deep affection ever blend
         With the soft dews and gentle rains that fall
         Upon the turf that lies above thy breast;
         But, oh! the spot is hallowed. There the Spring,
         The bright Spring, yearly throws her loveliest wreaths
         Of buds and blossoms—there, at morn and eve,
         The viewless spirit of the zephyr breathes
         Its holiest whispers in the springing grass
         As if communing with thee—there the birds
         Glance through the air like winged souls, and pour
         Their sweet, unearthly melodies—and there
         At the soft twilight hour young angels come
         To hover o’er the spot on silver wings,
         And mark it with their shining foot-prints.
                                            Thou
         Art gone, my child—a sweet and holy bud
         Is shaken from the rose-tree of our hopes;
         But yet we should not mourn. ’Tis joy to know
         That thou hast gone in thy young innocence
         And purity and beauty from a dark,
         Ungentle world, where many snares beset
         The path of manhood. Ay, ’tis joy to know
         That the Eolian lyre of thy young soul
         Gives out its music in the Eden clime,
         Unvisited by earth’s cold, bitter winds,
         Its poison-dews, its fogs, its winter rains,
         Its tempests and its lightnings.
                                    My sweet child,
         Thou art no more a blossom of the earth,
         But, oh! the thought of thee is yet a spell
         On our sad spirits. ’Tis a lovely flower
         On memory’s lonely stream, a holy star
         In retrospection’s sky, a rainbow-gleam
         Upon the tempest-clouds of life. Our hearts,
         Our stricken hearts, lean to thee, love, and thus
         They lean to heaven, for thou art there. Yes, thou
         And thy young sister are in heaven, while we
         Are lingering on the earth’s cold desert. Come,
         Ye two sweet cherubs of God’s Paradise,
         Who wander side by side, and hand in hand,
         Among the Amaranthine flowers that bloom
         Beside the living waters—come, oh come,
         Sometimes upon your bright and snowy wings,
         In the deep watches of the silent night,
         And breathe into our souls the holy words
         That ye have heard the angels speak in heaven.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                           PEDRO DE PADILH.


                           BY J. M. LEGARE.


                      (_Continued from page 97._)

                         Spain, and Tercera.  }
                                AD. 1583.     }

If the weekly mails brought me the Spirit of the Times instead of the
Literary World, or in other words, I inclined to a sporting habit of
speech, I would “lay an even wager” that not one of Graham’s readers has
formed a correct idea of the personal appearance of Hilo de Ladron, from
the foregoing account of that unscrupulous young gentleman’s
proceedings. I say nothing of his morals, but refer merely to the
harmony between features and character which Nature tries hard, and
generally with success, to maintain, and which constitutes the main prop
of the science of physiognomy. But no lawgiver allows more frequent
exceptions to established rules than Nature; and thus, instead of being
slouchy and red-haired, or big-whiskered and ferocious, Señor de Ladron,
seated on the bows of one of De Chaste’s caravels, full sail for
Tercera, belied his ill-name by the delicate beauty of his face and
person. I use the word beauty, because his straight features, smooth
skin and well-shaped hands, were feminine properties not usually looked
for in male attire, and in company such as the owner was keeping. The
French men-at-arms were well enough, but I would not fancy sleeping a
night in the room with the thick-set Walloon standing next; people with
such faces, coarse, crafty about the eyes and treacherous at the
mouth—by the way, his laugh, always of an evil sort, was twofold, from
a seam in the upper lip reaching half-way up the cheek, and exposing the
teeth and gums at every contraction of the muscles thereabouts—should
be called by names to correspond, and this man’s, Wolfang, showed
remarkable foresight in his parents or sponsors. This face, which had
not its duplicate any where in ill-looks, would be recognizable as that
of an old acquaintance, if muffling, and false-hair and whiskers,
frequently changed while begging an alms of Doña Hermosa, had not
destroyed all identity with his natural features as now seen, for
Wolfang was one with the free-captain who lived at the expense of that
estimable if injudicious lady, until Don Peter turned him loose upon the
world again. It was reasonable, under the circumstances, he should bear
no great love for the truth-loving knight, and it was probably this
feeling in common, accidentally communicated, which had first drawn Hilo
and himself together. Don Hilo having inherited most of his father’s
hate to the latter’s half-brother; not that he could lay claim to much
personal cause for antipathy, having seen Sir Pedro but twice in his
life, and one of those when little more than an infant, but it came
quite easy to this chip-of-the-block to bear malice. With some grains of
redeeming quality, it must be allowed, for he was not wanting in that
sort of curious courtesy, common to all Spaniards I believe, which makes
taking off his hat with a _buènos nòches_ imperative on the very man who
carries his hand from his sombrero to his dagger, to plunge the last
under your shoulder blade the moment your back is turned. Friendship, in
its usual acceptation, had little to do with the league existing between
these worthies, and no small amount of self-interest must have been
requisite to keep two such sweet dispositions from open rupture;
however, they contrived to get along well enough, by each playing a part
designed to dupe the other, although, with less success perhaps than the
self esteem of each caused him to imagine. Capt. Carlo, ready, cunning
in counsel, and cringing like a tiger ready to seize his keeper’s hand
in his jaws, but fearing the short Roman sword in its clutch, followed
the guidance of his junior, half through a brute instinct of
inferiority, of which he himself was ignorant, and half for the
furtherance of certain plans of his own, which will appear at intervals
upon the surface of this narrative; but on the whole the pair were not
ill-matched, their main characteristics uniting harmoniously enough, by
a rule which more resembles dove-tailing in carpentry, than welding in
iron-work, the joint being tight and fast so long as force is applied in
one way, but easily dislocated by a lateral blow. Thus Wolfang scoffed
at every thing holy or otherwise, seldom neglected a chance of shedding
blood, when not withheld by manifest interest or personal risk; for the
fellow was a coward in the depth of his heart, just as any other savage
beast is, frightened by a parasol flirted in a child’s hand, but leaping
unhesitatingly upon an unwary man, and in his thirst for gain, played
any part however vile by which a _maravedi_ might be dishonestly got.
Don Hilo, to give the scapegrace his due, was murderous only in the heat
of passion, and somewhat overawed his profane comrade by the resolute
devotion he chose to entertain for certain saints in succession, it
being a freak of his to hold in disgrace or honor, as the case might be,
the celestial patron invoked prior to his last piece of rascality.
Moreover the lad had the indefinable sense of pride, much as he lacked
cause, which, I verily believe, constitutes the third element of Spanish
blood and gives a dignified fold even to the dirty serape of the Mexican
half-breed; and this pride kept his fingers from small pilferings if not
from wholesale swindling; a turn of virtue which must have afforded high
satisfaction to a certain alert fosterer of little errors, who has never
been slow to avail himself of the like since the time of Adam and Eden.
Even in general quickness of temper there was difference in kind, that
of Capt. Carlo settling commonly into a smouldering fire incapable of
being extinguished by any kindness whatever, and blown by the breath of
opportunity into an instant flame; while Hilo’s, on the contrary, more
dangerous and violent at its outbreak, was often succeeded by a reckless
sort of recompense for injury done, which showed the boy had something
of a soul left in his handsome carcase; but I am constrained to say as a
set-off to this tolerable trait, it was only when the hurt or insult was
avenged to his mind, a better spirit possessed him, for, if baffled at
first, the aggriever had need to do as Bruce did, lose his trail in a
running water.

I like to gossip confidentially now and then about matters which
indirectly affect my characters, and so don’t mind mentioning a
circumstance or two occurring in the early acquaintance of Capt. Carlo
and Señor De Ladron, not noticed by historians of the time. The captain,
it seems, after relinquishing in a highly praiseworthy manner, his
annuity drawn from the unconscious countess, when no longer able to
retain it, betook himself to the capital, where, falling in with the
señor, the two soon came to understand each other’s projects, so far as
it was good for either to do. Hilo made no secret of his hate for Doña
Viola, whom he regarded as an incumbrance and interloper, but for whom
he would long since have received an estate of more doubloons’ worth
than he had ever possessed cobrès. The joint sagacity of the fathers and
their notaries having been exhausted in drawing up a contract so
stringent that nothing short of total forfeiture of the twin estates to
the benefit of one of the infant parties, could release the other. No
one knew what bond of union existed between the worse than dissolute
half-brother of Sir Pedro, and so honorable a knight as Inique, but the
contract stood fast on parchment, and the admirable wisdom of its
conditions was shown in due season, when Viola, living at ease in her
father’s house, grew up with a love amounting to mania for the handsome
cavalier she regarded as her rightful husband, and whose vices she knew
little of, until any thing like a just estimate of their enormity had
become impossible to her biased mind. On the other side, Hilo, cursing
in his heart Inique and his worthy father as founders of the scheme
which his magnificent pride prevented his profiting by, even with the
temptation of a twofold fortune attached, because it took the form of
compulsory action in an affair it suited his humor to decide for
himself, ransacked his brain to drive into outraged vindication of her
woman’s dignity the innocent girl who stood between him and his claim.
The poor little thing, without proper guidance or information in her own
concerns, surmised nothing of the true state of the case, but
affectionate and trustful to a fault, continued to love the young roué,
long after his dislike found stronger expression than in words, with a
docile patience and hopefulness for his reform, capable of touching any
heart less villainous at the core. For the girl was no fool, I would
have it clearly understood, weak as her affection for this Hilo might
argue her; error in judgment, to which we are all subject, not
necessarily indicating habitual silliness, least of all in one
circumstanced as Doña Viola. This helpless child our worthy pair found
it to their mutual interest to persecute, or fancied it so, and played
very readily into each other’s hands; for Capt. Carlo had got it into
his ugly head that such a prize (he was thinking of her money) was
fitter for a manly-looking fellow like himself, with a beard to rub a
soft cheek against, than for a stick of a lad whose weakly mustache
broke the back-bone of the oaths he swore through it.

This was the wording of the meditation which occupied Don Wolfang’s
brain while on his way to make himself known to his intended wife; not
that Hilo would have refused his friend an introduction, he would have
been only too gratified to present a Hottentot, if by so doing he could
have caused her a pang of shame; but the captain, acting with unusual
caution, chose to be independent of his hot-headed associate, perhaps
fearing the latter might insist upon more than his legal share of the
spoils, or from a natural aversion to working, except in the dark.
Whatever his reasons, its cool impudence tempts me from my resolution of
only hinting at these villainies, to give some account of the
proceeding.

One night the house of Doña Viola was attacked by a gang of robbers,
who, having no fear of police before their eyes in Philip the Second’s
time, seemed every moment on the point of breaking in. Within was
neither garrison nor protector worth the name, for the virtuous duenna,
who was the young lady’s present guardian and companion, only rocked
herself to and fro in a garment more snowy than becoming, and lamented
her hard (approaching) fate with such heartfelt _ay-de-mì’s_, that it
was evident nothing but the hope of ultimate rescue prevented her false
hair (in which, for better self-deception, she slept) being plucked out
by the roots. Moreover, the butler was busied in secreting the family
plate, and a few little properties of his own, and the men-servants,
with Spanish devotion, found occupation enough in quieting the maids and
supplicating the saints; no doubt they would have fought, too, the race
being noted for pluck—but there was no one to lead them on. At this
opportune moment, who should appear before the terror-stricken ladies
but Capt. Wolfang Carlo, all ruffles, ribbon-knots and rings, like a gay
cavalier returning from some late merry-making, flying sword-in-hand to
the rescue of besieged innocence. How he got in was a mystery; I suppose
by dint of valor, for, as the number of the assailants was diminished by
one on his entrance, it is more than likely one at least of the robbers
was run through the body by this paladin, and the breach the former made
turned to account by the latter.

When the party outside had been routed, which was accomplished
immediately on the captain’s sallying forth at the head of the revived
household,

“Sir,” said Doña Viola, to the disinterested hero who stood regarding
her with a smile, as one should say, “look at me! Danger cannot shake my
nerves: I am quite in my clement in it; it is just such a protector you
need,” but which reminded for all that of the supple waving of a cat’s
tail just before the animal springs. “Sir, if my father, Don Augustino,
were present, he would know better how to thank you than I.”

“Oh,” interrupted her deliverer, with more truth than was common in his
speech, and bowing low, partly because he designed to be exceedingly
polite, and partly to hide his rectangular grin, “I am delighted to find
he is not, Doña Viola.”

“I understand your noble motives, señor, and by your calling me by name,
you probably know Señor Inique also.”

“Intimately,” said the unblushing vagabond; “we were comrades in arms
against the Moors in the last war; and but that my mother’s being a
Portuguese induces a reasonable distaste to waging war on one’s own
kindred, we would have been lying side by side in Portugal, at this very
hour. We disagree, perhaps, in this little matter, but there is no
ill-feeling between us; and you may imagine, señora, the haste I made to
snatch my distinguished friend’s daughter from such pressing danger.”

“Señor,” cried the lady at this, simply, “the house and all it contains
is yours. (Capt. Carlo wished it was.) Command me; you have only to make
known your wishes.”

Saying this, she left the room to order refreshments for her guest. Don
Wolfang, in high feather at his success, and looking upon a part of the
Doña’s property as his own in right of salvage, which saved any scruples
arising in his tender conscience, pocketed a few valuables lying about,
and assumed the bearing of a Rico, occupying four chairs with his burly
person, for the better, that is, more truthful enactment of the
character in hand. In which easy attitude he lolled until the tray, with
its choice eatables, arrived; and it was while on the point of putting
into his mouth a pâté-de-fois-gras (I use the word generally, as
designating something good; but did you ever hear Dr. C. talk of _real_
pâtés) that—

But what happened I must begin in a different manner to relate, or the
moral of this episode will be lost.

I have said Doña Viola was no fool, and here I intend bringing forward
proof of my position. No one would have supposed any thing like nerve
existed in so delicate a creature, unless they had seen her descending
the stairs with a light in one hand, and a great sword, too stiff for
her to draw, in the other, to rally the servants, while that timid old
soul, her duenna, was creeping under the bed above as fast as a sudden
weakness in her ancient knees would allow. The girl was brimfull of
character, and made a worse impression on her first appearance, because
fevered and crushed in spirit by the final wickedness of her betrothed
husband, and its likely consequences; possibly the fever which afterward
brought her to death’s door, had begun to show itself already in
unnatural excitement of the brain, for it is not easy otherwise to
reconcile the crazy eagerness she showed with her usual modesty.

But this is straying from the truffle-eating captain. Poor, simple,
lamb-like captain! what could have induced him to pull off his leathern
doublet and mask under the eyes of a girl not out of her teens, to be
sure, but whose Gallician blood was all afire while watching from a dark
window what was passing beneath. I am filled with pity and admiration
for Doña Viola, when I think how, with one protector leagues away in
Portugal, and the other up stairs, making her toilette to appear
becoming in the eyes of this prince who had come to their rescue, she
traversed the whole house, accompanied by a desperado whose only
restraint lay in the greatness of his hopes dependent in part on present
good conduct. She was a little fluttered, and ready to faint with fear,
as any other woman short of a novel heroine would have been, but for all
that she spoke so connectedly, and showed such faith in the captain’s
will and ability to protect her, that it never entered his slow,
Netherlandish brain, the figure before him was possessed of no more
vitality in itself than an electro-magnetized body, or that she had
noticed without start or scream his left, jetty whisker slip down far
enough to expose the scrubby red growth underneath. Still less did it
occur to him as a remote possibility, the idea of taking him, Captain
Wolfang Carlo, fairly in the trap, could be occupying her head at the
very moment he talked of “his dear friend, Don Augustino, her father;”
and when one servant went up with the tray, a second went out with a
summons to the Hermandad.

So Capt. Carlo was on the point (as I have said) of putting a pâté into
his capacious mouth, when there came a rapping at the street-door, such
as only the Hermandad made, it being the custom of the holy brotherhood
to give due notice of their arrival on such occasions, lest one of
themselves should prove to be the culprit. The captain knew to a stroke
what mercy _he_ would be likely to receive if arrested, and alert enough
when danger pressed, clapped a couple of goblets in his pockets, and in
the same instant seized by the throat the tray-bearer, (who had his hand
already on the latch,) so that the poor simpleton had not breath enough
in his body to whisper, when his assailant threw him into the corner
limp as a bundle of rags.

The former had not perambulated the house without using his eyes, and
knew the shortest way to the leads, where he dodged the Hermandad until
an opportunity presented itself for making good his descent, the citizen
police probably being not wide awake at two o’clock in the morning.

That estimable youth, Hilo, was highly amused when the adventure reached
his ears, and in his customary reckless speech gave his Flemish
associate to understand he was not wise beyond his years, and had quite
overshot his aim by too much caution; nothing could have caused himself
more pleasure than to be rid of that (what I don’t choose to write in
Spanish or English,) who had cheated him out of his estate by her artful
behavior. And he would not mind settling a round sum out of the to be
recovered fortune on Wolfang, provided he could contrive to enter the
house a second time, without so much useless stir; but our prudent
friend had the Hermandad in too vivid remembrance, and excused himself,
suggesting, however, a scheme no less rascally, which all readers of
this true history know already to have been carried out to its full
extent.

To return to the caravel; some one was talking of Neptune.

“What a clatter about your Neptune,” cried a soldier, peevishly, “I wish
I’d never heard the name, and had stayed where I was. Here we are
pitched from one storm into another, and land just in sight. I’m sick of
it.”

“La casa quemada, acudir con el agua!” put in Hilo, who was swinging his
legs over the bowsprit, and did not trouble himself to take his eyes
from the blue land ahead.

“What does he say?” demanded the Frenchman, eagerly, looking
suspiciously about.

“He says your house is burnt, and you run for the water,” exclaimed
Wolfang, with a short chuckle.

“Ha!” retorted the other, setting down a steel cap he was polishing, to
gesticulate and call attention to Hilo with his forefinger. “Look here,
comrades, here’s a man to talk to another as if he had never made any
blunders he would like to take back. But this kind of talking behind
you, is the way with all these cowardly Spaniards.”

Hilo turned his head just sufficiently to send a glance at the irascible
speaker from his wicked black eyes. “Take care!” it said.

“Take care!” repeated the Netherlander, warningly, this time translating
the look. “You’re a born fool, Jean, to tempt the devil in him.”

“Fool!” cried Jean. “Who meddled with him first? He kicked my casque out
of his way yesterday, and set me to work cleaning and straightening it
out this morning. As to running for water when it’s too late, he’ll
think so too some day when Señor Inique catches him, and he gets down on
his knees to beg for life, or the Marquis of Villenos’s friends corner
him. He needn’t think he’s thought less a villain by us Frenchmen than
by his own countryfolks.”

Here the man-at-arms stopped to take breath and glower at Señor De
Ladron, who lifting in his feet, walked coolly over, opposite the first,
saying, with a smile on his face, “Come, come, there is no use in
comrades quarreling. Do you suppose I knew it was your casque? Give me
your hand, and let’s make it up.”

The soldier looked down distrustfully at his slight enemy, but not being
able to make up his mind what to do at this unexpected proposal,
hesitatingly laid his broad palm in Hilo’s.

“That’s as it should be,” said a shrunken little cannonier, perched on
his gun. “Hey! I remember how we shook hands all round at St.
German-en-Laye. You see, we had been fighting like mad at Montcontour,
and when one cools it isn’t pleasant to think you’ve knocked on the head
your old chum at bird-nesting, and the like, only because he differs
from you a little when grown up.”

“So you fetch water!” interrupted Hilo, mockingly, half to the speaker
and half to Jean, whose fingers suddenly wrenched back forced him to
stamp and foam with rage and pain while struggling to loosen the iron
hold of the speaker.

“Sacrè! Devil!” he stammered, “let go; my wrist is out of joint.”

“It will be worse for you if you don’t recant,” muttered our Don,
speaking faster than before, and holding a dagger to the side of his
throat.

“Stop!” cried two or three men-at-arms, springing up, “that is not fair
play. We are Frenchmen, not cut-throats, here.” Capt. Carlo merely
grinned in his usual agreeable fashion.

“Don’t bite!” cried Hilo fiercely to his prisoner, drawing back his hand
to strike. And, perhaps, as that amiable young gentleman was in no wise
particular in such matters, and took no heed of the interruption, Hilo’s
hand might have been the last bit of flesh held between the Frenchman’s
teeth for evermore, (as the raven would say.) But the officer on duty
came down the deck at this crisis, demanding the cause of the
disturbance.

“Ha! _you_, sir?” he cried, directly he caught sight of the chief actor,
as if he might have guessed as much. “I order you under arrest. Give up
your dagger.”

Señor de Ladron faced his superior with an audacious smile, saying, “You
jest?”

“Noose that rope,” ordered the lieutenant, purple with fury. “Close
around, men; we will hang up this mutineer without trial.”

“’Pshaw!” answered our scapegrace, throwing his weapon overboard. “What
a stir about a trifle, Señor mine. Better do this than hang.”

So Don Hilo de Ladron, when the island of Tercera lay close under the
bows of the fleet, sat in the hold with irons around his ankles, and
there probably would have remained, in obscurity, until the vessel
returned to France, had not his fast friend, the captain, contrived to
say a word or two to Commander De Chaste in person, while that brave
knight was reviewing his forces on shipboard preparatory to landing.

“Who are you?” asked the commander, looking from a bit of paper he now
twisted between his fingers to the bearer. “I have seen your face
before.”

“Your excellency must be mistaken,” returned the unblushing Wolfang, who
nevertheless remembered perfectly the gold piece the knight once put in
the mouth of a holy war soldier without arms or feet, if appearances
were true.

“Well,” interrupted De Chaste, “this scrawl tells me your friend was not
materially to blame in the affair, his honor being concerned in
repelling the charges.”

“True to a letter,” replied Wolfang, bowing low, as usual, to hide his
unprepossessing grin. “Besides, the officer on duty owed the poor young
gentleman a grudge.”

“That has nothing to do with it, sir. A man’s honor is his best
possession, and needs unsleeping guardianship; but this taking its
vindication into his own hands, must not be allowed in the service.
However, the error is one on the side of right, and let him behave well
in the field and we will pass over his indiscretion. We want every brave
man we can get,” he added, turning to one of his officers.

“But, M. de Commandant,” objected the gentleman addressed, “is it likely
a renegade like this fellow should prove a good soldier, or even be
really possessed of ordinary honor!”

“How!” cried De Chaste, quickly. “I did not think the ranks of our
little army contained any such. Is he a Spaniard, M. de Haye?”

“Yes, and guilty of every manner of crime.”

“Ha! Well, he must remain as he is until we find time to look into his
case. How is it, Mr. What’s-your-name, Carlo, you suppressed his place
of birth?”

“His mother was a French lady, Monseigneur, and fighting for one’s
mother country is as good, any day, as fighting for a father’s.”

“True, in a measure, sir,” returned the knight. “What’s the prisoner’s
name?”

“Hilo de Ladron.” This was said in no unusual tone, yet it seemed
singularly to catch the commander’s attention, for he eyed the speaker
keenly and then fell into a fit of musing, which lasted while he paced
the deck between the officers of his suite. “M. de Haye,” he said at
last, pausing before that officer and looking up, “you may be mistaken
in your charges. They are grave ones and should be advanced when they
can be examined at leisure, not at a hurried moment like this. I have
need of every man in our too feeble squadron, and will take it upon
myself to entrust the restoration of his character to M. de Ladron
himself for the present.”

The gentleman addressed bowed, shrugged his shoulders, as well as a
Frenchman could in a steel cuirass, and there the matter dropped.

Hilo laughed when the captain told him the favorable result of his
application, and professed equal curiosity as to the commander’s
motives—professions which honest Wolfang received as attempts to impose
on his credulity—(he was probably touchy on the subject since his
introduction to Doña Viola)—with less justice than usual, however, as
Hilo, for a wonder, was telling the truth.

About this time the Sieur Cusson returned in his sloop from
reconnoitering the island, and his report being that the Spanish
squadron had not yet arrived, the little armament of De Chaste ran
gallantly into the harbor, and came to anchor amidst a great firing of
cannon and arquebuses from the Portuguese, who liked expending powder in
this way much better than in front of an enemy, and besides, had lived
in such daily dread of the descent of the Spanish fleet, that they could
not sufficiently viva their delight at finding out who the new comers
really were. The Viceroy, de Torrevedros, himself, came down to the
water side to receive the commander, and made such a brave appearance in
his embroidered surcoat and gilded harness, surrounded by other
cavaliers equally well dressed, that the Frenchmen, walking with
unsteady legs after their twenty-four days of stormy weather on
shipboard, and in shabby doublets, presented nothing very imposing in
their march through the streets.

But if the Portuguese gentlemen, riding on either hand, could scarce
suppress their mirth at the ill looks of their allies, the ladies were
anxious to propitiate men who would prove their main defence, and threw
down showers of all sorts of gay flowers from the windows and balconies;
some of the young señoritas even meeting the procession at unexpected
corners, and flinging orange water into the knight’s face, who would
have been more gratified by the ablution (it being a hot June day) had
not the thought of his best ruff growing limper at each sprinkling
interfered with the enjoyment.

“Better smell of gunpowder.” he said shortly, to a French gentleman from
the court, whose nose was audibly expressing its delight at the fine
perfume.

But the satisfaction of the Portuguese was as nothing compared with the
joy of a few hundred Frenchmen, a remnant of the Strossy expedition of
the year before, who had lost all hope of ever leaving the Azores again,
and, having little money at the first, had been treated with any thing
but hospitality by their unwilling hosts. These poor fellows mixed with
the crowd in the streets, kept the commandant’s company in sight, and
running into the quarters assigned the latter, met them with such antics
and embraces as caused the Gallic army to suppose at first that they had
fallen into an ambuscade of madmen. Their two captains gave De Chaste a
full narration of their sufferings, which was impartial in the main, and
tended very little to elevate the Portuguese residents in the eyes of
their audience, whose fancy for that people was not great from the
beginning.

“Sirs,” replied the commandant at the end, with his customary high-toned
suavity, looking around him, “we must only remember this is done at the
will of our queen, and act as loyal gentlemen should. For my part, I
will be content with brown bread and water and living in the open air,
as we are all accustomed to, to have the satisfaction of defeating the
landing of so good a soldier as the Marquis of Santa-Cruz, and to-morrow
I will examine in person the accessible points of the island, which are
only three in number.”

“Three!” cried Capt. Baptista, an Italian, one of the Strossy fugitives,
“there are thirty! He must have been a rank liar, who told you so, M. le
Commandant.”

“That can hardly be,” returned De Chaste, gravely, “for it was the king
of Portugal himself who gave the information.”

“Oh, if it comes to that one had best bite his tongue,” grumbled the
Italian to De Haye, who stood next him. “But a parrot’s word is no
better than a magpie’s, and so our general will find out.”

                                                  [_To be continued._

                 *        *        *        *        *




                       A VISIT TO STATEN ISLAND.


                        BY MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.


I have always had an especial fondness for islands. When, in earlier
days, Fancy fashioned some favorite abode, it was often in the
aspiration of Moore, “Oh! had we some green little Isle of our own!” I
am inclined to think there is something in Nature to sanction this
preference. Perhaps the safety of an insular situation from border
inroad, and the wild foray, might have given it pre-eminence in feudal
or barbarous times. A strange illusion seemed to linger around it, in
days of yore: “We, islanders,” said Camden, “are lunares—or the moon’s
men.”

The tuneful king of Israel considered the praise of the Creator
incomplete, until “the multitude of the Isles,” should swell that
chorus. The islands are required to “keep silence,” when an eloquent
prophet was about to declare a message from Jehovah. The apostle, to
whom the dread future unveiled itself, “was in the island that is called
Patmos,” when he saw in a vision the “the heavens wrapped together like
a scroll, and the dead, small and great, stand before God.”

Heathen mythology sang to her disciples of the “isles of the blessed.”
Classic Greece fixed the birth-place of her deity of the seven-stringed
lyre in wave-girdled Delphos, and bade her most beautiful goddess from
the foam of the sea.

Modern Poetry has not forgotten to invoke the island-spirits. Shakspeare
lifts the magic wand of Prospero in a strange, wild isle, full of

        “Sweet sounds and airs that give delight, and hurt not.”

He makes another less lofty character propose “to sow the kernels of a
broken islet in the sea, that they may bring forth more islands.” The
patriotism of Milton beheld in his own native clime, the chief favorite
of Neptune:

                                    “this isle,
        The greatest and the best of all the main,
        He quarters to his blue-haired deities.”

The Bard of the Seasons still further glorified it, as the

        “Island of bliss amid the subject seas.”

It is as easy as it would be tautological to multiply suffrages in
praise of insular regions. Still less necessary is it to bespeak popular
favor for the island that gives this sketch a subject and a name.

The Dutch settlers of Staten Island seem to have regarded it with an
enthusiasm quite in contrast with their usual phlegmatic temperament.
Scarcely a century after its occupation by them, the patient and
true-hearted Huguenots came to solace the woes of their exile amid its
sheltering shades. The armies of Great Britain held it in possession
during the whole of our revolutionary contest; and even the indurating
influences of war did not render them insensible to its surpassing
loveliness.

In later times, the States of New York and New Jersey have contended for
its jurisdiction with the warmth of lovers, and the jealousy of rivals.
The latter approaches with extended arms, as if to enfold it in an
earnest embrace, its bright shores curving closely around the coveted
treasure; but the Empire State, upon whose waters it reposes “as a star
on the breast of the billow,” has bound the gem to her bosom forever.

Yet neither the taciturn Hollander, nor the mournful alien from France,
nor the warring Saxon, nor the native-born American, yearned over it
with such intense affection as the poor red man, its earliest lord. He
longed to rear his cone-roofed cabin upon its sunny <DW72>s, and to sweep
with light canoe into its quiet coves, as his fathers had done of old.
Forced by his pale-faced and powerful brother to yield this dearest
birthright, he sold for as poor a compensation as the hunter-patriarch,
then repented, retracted, reclaimed, re-sold, contended, and vanished
like the smoke-wreath among the hills that he loved. Still, he cast the
Parthian arrow, and the forests where he lingered and lay in ambush were
crimsoned with blood.

Still, his parting sigh, wreathed itself into a name of blessing.
“_Monocnong_,” or the Enchanted Woods, was the epithet he bestowed upon
his beloved and forsaken heritage. In the bitterness of parting, he said
that no noxious reptile had ever been found there, till the white man,
like a wily serpent, coiled himself amid its shades.

                     MONOCNONG.

        Gem of the Bay! enchased in waves of light,
          That ’neath the sunbeam rear a diamond crest,
        But to the wrathful spirit of the night
          Turn unsubdued, with thunder in their breast—
        Fair Isle! where beauty lingereth as a dower
          O’er rock and roof, and densely-wooded dell,
        And in the bosom of the autumnal flower
          Foiling the frost-king in its quiet cell,
        The Indian hunter of the olden time
          Saw thee with love, and on his wandering way
        Staid the keen bow, at morning’s earliest prime,
          A name of blessing on thy head to lay—
        Baptism of tears! it liveth on thy shore,
        Though he, the exiled one, returneth never more.

The sail from the city of New York to Staten Island is delightful. The
bay sparkled in the broad sunbeam; six miles of diamonds set in
turquoise and amethyst. We land, and are borne rapidly along, amid
tasteful abodes imbosomed in trees and shrubbery, and adorned with
flowers. We pass also the Hospital, a spacious building, where many beds
and pillows spread in the open air for purification, denote that disease
and death have given a ghastly welcome to some mournful emigrants. Often
are we reminded, amid the most luxuriant scenery, that even “in the
garden there is a sepulchre.”

New Brighton, as seen from the water, is like a cluster of palaces.
Large and well arranged boarding-houses furnish accommodations to
numerous strangers, who seek in summer the invigorating atmosphere of
this island. Among these, the Pavilion and Belmont are conspicuous.

In descriptive writing, I had formerly a fastidious delicacy about using
the names of individuals. When in Europe, I was so fearful of drawing
the curtain from the sanctuary of the hearth-stone, as to fail in a free
tribute for the most liberal and changeless hospitality. Time, which is
wont to destroy undue sensibility on many subjects, has led me to deem
this an error. So I will here avoid it, and say with equal frankness and
gratitude that those who, like myself, are admitted as guests at the
elegant island-residence of George Griffin, Esq., and to share the
intellectual society of his warm-hearted and right-minded home-circle,
will never lose the pleasant memory of such a privilege.

Among the fine views in this vicinity, that from the Telegraph Station
is especially magnificent. I shall not attempt to describe it, not being
willing to sustain or inflict the disappointment that must inevitably be
the result. Let all who have opportunity see it as often as possible.
They can never tire of it. Among the many interesting objects that there
rivet the gaze, there will often be descried passing through the
Narrows, that highway of nations, some white-winged wanderer of the
deep, voyaging to foreign shores. Within her how many hearts are faint
with the pangs of separation! How many buoyed up with the vain
fluttering of curiosity to visit stranger lands. Adventurous ones! ye
know not yet the extent of the penalty ye must pay for this shadowy
good. Tempests without, misgivings within, yearnings after your distant
dear ones, sickness—that shall make this “round world, and all it doth
inherit,” a blank, and a mockery—longings to set foot once more on
solid earth, which have no parallel, save the wail of the weaned child
for its mother.

Many, and of almost endless variety, are the pleasant drives that will
solicit you. The Clove Road, the Quarantine, the lovely, secluded grove,
with the townships of Richmond, Stapleton, Castleton, Tompkinsville,
Clifton, etc. are among them. Seldom, in a circumference of a few miles,
are such contrasts of scenery displayed. At one point you fancy yourself
in the Isle of Wight, then you are reminded of the Vale of Tempo, and
the fabled gardens of the Hesperides. Fair, sunny lawns—deep, solemn
forests, the resounding wheels of mechanical industry, alternate like a
dream, with clusters of humble cottages, the heavy ricks of the
agriculturist, and rude, gray rocks, from whose solitary heights, you
talk only with Ocean, while he answers in thunder.

In our exploring excursions, we often admired, amid its fringed margin
of trees, a circular expanse of water, from whence ice is obtained for
the use of the residents, and which bears the appellation of

                       SYLVAN LAKE.

          Imbosomed deep in cedars, lonely lake!
            Thy solemn neighbors that in silence dwell,
          Save when to searching winds they answer make,
            Then closer scan thee, in thy guarded cell,
          No rippling keel hath vexed thee from thy birth,
            No fisher’s net thy cloistered musing broke,
          Nor aught that holds communion with the earth
            Thy sky-wrapt spirit to emotion woke,
          For thou from man wert fain to hide away,
            Nursing a vestal purity of thought,
          And only when stern Winter’s tyrant sway
            A seal of terror on thy heart had wrought,
          Gave him one icy gift, then turned away,
        Unto the pure-eyed heavens, in penitence to pray.

There are several pleasantly situated churches on Staten Island. The
small one at Clifton, with its dark grained arches of oak, strongly
resembles those of the mother land. An ancient, low-browed one, at
Richmond, was built and endowed by Queen Anne, in 1714. Around it sleep
the dead, with their simple memorials. The sacred music that varied the
worship, was sweet and touching, and conducted almost entirely by the
seven daughters of its worthy and venerable clergyman, Dr. David Moore,
a son of the former bishop of Virginia. He has also charge of another
church, at Port Richmond. There we attended divine worship, one
cloudless autumnal Sunday, not deeming the distance of thirteen miles,
going and returning, as any obstacle. It was a simple edifice, on a
green <DW72>, that stretched downward to meet the sea. In his discourse,
the white-haired pastor reminded his flock that for twice twenty years
he had urged them to accept the invitations of the gospel, on that very
spot, where the voice of his sainted father had been also uplifted,
beseeching them to be reconciled to God. Earnest zeal gave eloquence to
his words; and when they ceased, the solemn organ did its best to uplift
the listening soul in praise.

At the close of the service many lingered in the church-yard, to
exchange kind greetings with their revered guide. Old and young pressed
near to take his hand, while with affectionate cordiality he asked of
their welfare, as a father among his children. It was patriarchal and
beautiful. Religion in its pageantry and pomp hath nothing like it.

A boat, with its flashing oars, bore a portion of the worshipers to
their homes on the opposite shore. But on the rocks beneath us sat some
listless fishermen, idling away the hours of the consecrated day. Ah!
have ye not missed salvation’s priceless pearl? The wondrous glory of
the setting sun, as we pursued our homeward way, and the tranquil
meditations arising from the simplicity of devotion, made this a Sabbath
to be much remembered.

We were interested more than once in attending divine service in the
chapel of the Sailor’s Snug Harbor—a noble building, the gift of
private munificence, where the bronzed features and neat, tranquil
appearance of these favored sons of the sea, spoke at once of past
hardships upon the briny wave and of the unbroken comfort of their
present state of repose.

The cliffs and vales of this enchanted island are crowned with the
elegant mansions of the merchant princes. Among them are those of the
brothers Nesmyth, Mr. Anthon, Mr. Aspinwall, Mr. Morgan, and others,
that I greatly admired, without knowing the names of their occupants.
That of Mr. Comstock exhibits a model of perfect taste. All the
appointments within—the pictures, vases, and furniture of white and
gold, bespeak Parisian elegance, while the grounds and conservatory are
attractive; and in the centre of a rich area of turf, a dial points out
the hours to which beauty and fragrance give wings.

The residence of Mr. Jones, at “The Cedars,” has a very extensive
prospect, and is embellished by highly cultivated gardens of several
acres, loaded with fruits and flowers; and also, by an interesting
apiary, aviary, and poultry establishment, where hundreds of domestic
fowls, of the finest varieties, revel in prosperity.

The habitation of George Griswold, Esq. is princely, and of a truly
magnificent location. While in an unfinished state, the prospect from
the windows excited the following effusion:

            GRISWOLD HILL.

  Earth, sea and sky, in richest robes arrayed,
  Wide spreads the glorious panorama round,
  Charming the gazer’s eye. O’er wind-swept height,
  Villa, and spire, and ocean’s glorious blue
  Floats the mild, westering sun. Fast by our side
  Frowns Fort Knyphausen, whence, in olden time,
  The whiskered Hessian, bought with British gold,
  Aimed at my country’s heart. Wild cedars wrap
  Its ruined base, stretching their arras dark
  O’er mound and mouldering bastion.
                                   With what grace
  New Jersey’s shores expand. Hillock and grove,
  Hamlet and town, and lithe promontory,
  Engird this islet, as a mother clasps
  Some beauteous daughter. Still, opposing straits,
  With their strong line of indentations, mar
  The entire embrace.
                    Broad spreads the billowy bay,
  Forever peopled by the gliding sail,
  From the slight speck where the rude fisher toils,
  To forms that, like a mountain, tread the wave,
  Or those that, moved by latent fires, compel
  The awe-struck flood.
                     Lo! from his northern home,
  The bold, unswerving Hudson. He hath burst
  The barrier of his palisades, to look
  On this strange scene of beauty, and to swell
  With lordly tribute what he scans with pride.
    Behold the peerless city, lifting high
  Its hallowed spires, and fringed with bristling masts,
  In whose strong breast beat half a million hearts,
  Instinct with hurrying life. The gray-haired sires
  Remember well, how the dank waters crept
  Where now, in queenly pomp, her court she holds.
    Next gleams that Isle, whose long-drawn line of coast
  Is loved by Ceres. On its western heights
  Towereth a busy mart, and ’neath its wing,
  One, whose pure domes are wrapped in sacred shade,
  Silent, yet populous. Through its still gates
  Pass on the unreturning denizens.
  Oh, Greenwood! loveliest spot for last repose,
  When the stern pilgrimage of life is o’er,
  Even thy dim outline through the haze is dear.
    Onward, by Coney Island’s silvery reef,
  To where, between its lowly valves of sand,
  Opes the Highway of Nations. Through it flows
  The commerce of the world. The Mother Realm
  Sends on its tides her countless embassies;
  Bright France invokes the potency of steam
  To wing her message; from his ice-clad pines
  The Scandinavian, the grave, turbaned Turk,
  The Greek mercurial, even the hermit-sons
  Of sage Confucius, like the sea-bird, spread
  Fleet pinions toward this city of the west,
  That like a money-changer for the earth
  Sits ’neath her temple-dome.
                             Yon ocean-gate,
  With telegraphic touch, doth chronicle
  The rushing tide of sea-worn emigrants,
  Who reach the land that gives the stranger bread,
  Perchance a grave. And he who ventureth forth,
  The willing prisoner of some white-winged ship,
  To seek Hygeia o’er the wave, or test
  What spells do linger round those classic climes
  That woke his boyhood’s dream, fails not his heart
  As the blest hills of Neversink withdraw
  Their misty guardianship?
                          Speech may not tell—
  For well I know its poverty to paint
  The rapture, when the homeward glance descries,
  That native land, whose countless novelties,
  And forms of unimagined life, eclipse
  The worn-out wonders of an Older World,
  That, with its ghostly finger, only points
  To things that were.
                      Oh! great and solemn Deep,
  Profound magician of the musing thought,
  Release my strain, that to the beauteous Isle
  Which hath so long enchained me, thanks may flow,
  Warm, though inadequate.
                         The changeful hand
  Of Autumn sheds o’er forest, copse, and grove,
  In gorgeous hues, the symbol of decay;
  But here and there some fondly lingering flower,
  Sweet resonance of Summer, cheers the rocks
  Where warm suns latest smile.
                              Oh, fairest Isle!
  I grieve to say farewell. Still for the sake
  Of those I love, and for the memories dear,
  And sacred hospitalities that cling
  Around the mansion, whence my steps depart,
  Peace be within the palace-domes that crest
  Thy sea-girt hills, and ’neath the cottage roofs
  That nestle ’mid thy dells. For when I dream
  Of some blest Eden that survived the fall,
  That dream shall be of thee.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                                EVENING.


                 Shades of Evening! ye remind me
                   Of my own declining sun,
                 And of scenes I’ll leave behind me
                   When my sands of life are run!

                 Should that change come ere to-morrow,
                   Grant that I may sink to rest,
                 And from Virtue’s glory borrow
                   Hues to make my Evening blest.
                                           J. HUNT, JR.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                               WOODLAWN:


                    OR THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MEDAL.


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


              ’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.
                                                 Campbell.

“What are you thinking of so intently, Annie?” asked Kate Leslie, of her
cousin. “You have not spoken for the last half hour.”

Annie roused herself and answered with a smile, “Only of last night’s
Opera. Nothing very important, you see.”

“And what of the Opera?” pursued Kate. “Come, I should like to hear a
genuine, unsophisticated opinion of our most fashionable city
amusement.”

“I was thinking less of the music, Kate!” returned Annie, “than of the
audience.”

“And of the audience?” persisted Kate.

“Well, Kate, if you will have it, I was only thinking how happy and gay
they all looked. What a different world it was from any I had ever seen
before; and thinking what a difference of fate there was between those
elegant-looking girls who sat opposite, and myself.”

“Ah! the Hautons, they are fortune’s favorites indeed. They have every
thing, fortune, family, fashion—and elegant, high-bred looking things
they are. They called yesterday and left a card for you; but Mrs. Hauton
told mamma last night that they were moving out to Woodlawn, and hoped
we would return the visit there. I should like it of all things, for the
place is magnificent, and I am told they entertain delightfully. We have
always visited in the city, but have never before been invited out of
town. As soon as Mrs. Hauton is settled there, I presume we shall hear
from her. Fanny Elliot spent a week with them last summer, and she said
it was a continued round of dinner and evening-parties all the time.
Beside invited guests, they have always preparations made for unexpected
company. The table is laid every day as for a dinner-party, with silver,
and I don’t know how many men in attendance. And then they have a
billiard-room and library, and green-house and horses—and all in the
handsomest style.”

“And an opera-box in town,” said Annie, with something that approached a
sigh.

“Oh, yes, an opera-box, and every thing else you can think of. They live
in the city in the winter, and their parties are always the most elegant
of the season. The girls dress exquisitely, too. They import most of
their things; and, in short, I don’t know any one I’d rather be than one
of those Hautons.”

Annie, who lived in the quiet little village of C——, where her father,
the principal lawyer in the place, could just manage to maintain his
family in a plain, comfortable, but rather homespun way, was rather
dazzled by this picture of the Hautons; and her heart quite died within
her at the idea of paying a visit among such grand people. She looked
upon Kate’s fearlessness on the subject with some surprise. But then
Kate, she remembered, was “used to such people.” But how should she, a
little village-girl, appear among these fashionables. Then her dress,
(that first thought among women,) she almost hoped Mrs. Hauton would
forget to follow up her invitation.

A few days after, however, Kate entered the room, saying, “Here is a
note from Mrs. Hauton, Annie, as I expected. She wishes us to pass a few
days at Woodlawn. Mamma desired me to show it to you before she answered
it. So what do you say?”

“Just what you do, of course,” replied Annie. “They are almost strangers
to me, you know; so you must decide for us both. I am ready to accept or
refuse—”

“Oh, my dear,” interrupted Kate, quickly, “I would not have you refuse
on any account. I am particularly glad, for your sake, that the
invitation should have come while you are with us. Indeed, Annie, I
consider you quite in luck that we are asked just at this time.”

“How long are we to stay?” inquired Annie.

“We are invited from Monday to Wednesday, in English style,” replied
Kate, “which I like. Of all things I hate that indefinite period of ‘as
long as you find it agreeable,’ when half your time is spent in trying
to find out how long you are expected to remain, and your hostess is
equally occupied in endeavoring to ascertain when you mean to go.”

Annie’s eyes dilated with surprise at this definition of city
hospitality, which sounded to her fresh country ears and primitive ideas
as somewhat remarkable, but concluding that her cousin was in jest, she
smiled as she said,

“Is it usual to fix a time for your friends’ departure as it is for
their coming, Kate?”

“No,” answered Kate. “I wish it were. It would not, then, be such a
formidable matter to ask them.”

“Are you in earnest?” asked Annie, looking up surprised.

“To be sure I am,” replied Kate. “You don’t know what a bore it is to
have a place near the city, Annie, and to have people coming forever,
without an idea when they are going.”

“Then why do you ask them at all, if you don’t want them?” inquired
Annie.

“Oh, because you _must_,” said Kate. “Some expect it, to others you owe
civilities; and its all very well if the time of their going was only
fixed. Two or three days for people you don’t care for, and who don’t
care for you, is long enough.”

“Plenty, I should think,” answered Annie, emphatically. “And I should
not think, Kate, there was any danger of guests under such circumstances
remaining longer.”

“Much you know of it, my dear!” said Kate, in a droll tone of despair.
“The less you care for them, and the greater the bores, the longer they
stay. But papa and mamma have such old-fashioned notions of hospitality,
that they wont adopt this new style of naming the days of the
invitation. The Hautons understand the matter better.”

“Come, Annie,” said Kate, the next day, “as we are to breakfast at
Woodlawn, we shall have no time to do any thing in the morning, so we
may as well pack our trunk now. I suppose you’ll ride out in your gray
barège,” she continued, as she opened the wardrobe to take down some of
her own and her cousin’s dresses.

Now as this gray barège was one of Annie’s two best dresses, and which
she was accustomed to think quite full dress, she hesitated, and said,
with some surprise,

“My gray barège for the morning?”

“Yes, it will do very well,” continued Kate, supposing her hesitation
proceeded from diffidence as to its being too plain. “The simpler a
breakfast-dress the better; and gray is always a good _unnoticeable_
color.”

Annie almost gasped. If she was to begin with her barège for breakfast,
what should she do for dinner. But Kate proceeded with,

“Take the sleeves out of your book-muslin, Annie, and that will do for
dinner. You are always safe in white, and I suppose they will supply us
with Camelias from the green-house for our heads.”

“Book-muslins, short sleeves, and Camelia’s for dinner.” Annie’s heart
beat high between expectation and fear. She almost wished the visit
over, and yet would not have given it up for the world.

Monday morning arrived, and an hour’s drive brought them to Woodlawn.
And as they drove up through the beautiful avenues of elms, and stopped
before a very large, handsome house, which commanded a beautiful lawn,
Annie felt that the place quite equalled her expectations.

Mrs. Hauton received them with great politeness, made a slight apology
for her “lazy girls,” who were not yet down, and showed them into the
breakfast-room before the young ladies made their appearance.

They came gliding in presently, looking very elegant and high-bred,
dressed in the finest white lawn negligées, with the prettiest little
thread-lace caps on their heads; their whole toilet exquisitely fine,
simple, and _recherché_, so that poor Annie felt at once the value and
consolation of the expression, “_unnoticeable_,” that Kate had applied
to her barège, and which had rather astonished her at the time.

They did not seem to feel called upon to apologize for their not being
ready to receive their guests, but only found it “very warm,” asked at
what time they left the city, and were quite shocked at the early hour
they mentioned, and thought it “must have been very disagreeable,” and
it was evident from their manner that they would not have risen so early
to come and see them.

The conversation became general, if that can be called conversation
which consisted of some remarks upon the long-continued drought from
Mrs. Hauton, with rejoinders as to the heat and dust of the city, from
Mrs. Leslie. Mr. Leslie inquired something about the state of the crops
of Mr. Hauton, and Mr. Hauton asked a question or two about the new
rail-road. The young ladies kept up a little scattering small-talk,
consisting chiefly of questions as to who had left town, and who
remained yet in the city, and where the Leslies were going, etc., all of
which Annie would have thought very dull, if she had not been too much
oppressed by the novelty and elegance of every thing around her to dare
to think at all.

After breakfast a walk was proposed through the garden, and Mrs. Hauton,
with Mrs. Leslie, walking on before, the young ladies followed. Mrs.
Hauton commenced a long story about her head gardener, who had behaved,
she said, “very ungratefully in leaving her for a place where he could
get higher wages, when she had dismissed the man she had, to take him,
because he had offered to come on lower terms, and after she had kept
him for a year, he had now left her, for the very wages she had given
her first man; but they are all so mercenary,” she concluded with
saying.

Annie could not help thinking that if a rich woman like Mrs. Hauton
thought so much of additional wages, it was not surprising that her
gardener, who probably had a family depending on him, did not value them
less; nor did she see the call upon his gratitude for having been
engaged at less than his worth.

Then Mrs. Hauton proceeded to tell Mrs. Leslie how many men they kept at
work on the place, and how much they gave them a day, and at what an
enormous cost they kept up the green-house, which “was, after all, of no
use to them, as they spent their winters in the city, and the girls had
more bouquets sent to them than they wanted.” And then followed her
complaints of the grapery, which were equally pathetic, and all was
excessively pompous and prosy.

Annie was in admiration of her aunt’s good breeding, which supplied her
with patience and attention, and suitable rejoinders to all Mrs.
Hauton’s enumeration of the calls on her purse, and the plagues of her
wealth. Indeed, Annie began rather to doubt whether her aunt could be as
tired as she at first thought she must be, she kept up the conversation
with so little appearance of effort. She did not herself listen to the
half of it, but whenever she did, she always found it was some long
story about the dairy-woman, who would do what she should not, or the
price of the luxuries by which they were surrounded, which Mrs. Hauton
seemed to think a great imposition that they could not have for nothing.

Meantime the Miss Hautons kept up a languid complaint of the heat, and
asked Kate if she did not find it “horrid.” And when Annie stopped to
look at some beautiful and rare flowers, and asked their name, they
replied they did not know, “the gardener could tell her,” and seemed
rather annoyed at her stopping in the sun to look at them, and wondered
at her curiosity about any thing so uninteresting. Annie was something
of a botanist, and would gladly have lingered over other plants that
were new to her, for the garden was under the highest cultivation; but
she saw that it was an interruption to the rest of the party, and they
sauntered on.

She could not help, however, pausing again with an exclamation of
delight before a moss rose-tree in full bearing, when Miss Hauton said,
somewhat sarcastically,

“You are quite an enthusiast in flowers, Miss Cameron.”

“I am very fond of them,” replied Annie, coloring at the tone in which
the remark was made; “Are not you?”

“No,” replied the young lady, carelessly, “I don’t care for them at all.
I like a bouquet well enough in the winter. It finishes one’s dress, but
I don’t see the use of them at all in summer.”

“Oh, I hate them,” added her sister, almost pettishly. “They are such a
plague. People who come out are always wanting some; and then the
gardener is to be sent for, and he always grumbles at cutting them, and
half the time he has not cord to tie them up, and papa sends me to the
house for some. If I had a place, I would not have a flower on it; but
mamma says the gardener has not any thing to do but to attend to the
garden, so she will have flowers.”

“Why, certainly, my dear,” said Mrs. Hauton, who caught this last
remark, “what should we pay Ralston such wages to do nothing. He gets
his money easy enough now. If he had merely the green-house to take care
of, I think it would be too bad.”

So flowers were cultivated, it seemed, chiefly that the gardener might
not gain his living without “the sweat of his brow.”

As they came within sight of the river, to which the lawn sloped, Annie
proposed that they should walk down to it; but the young ladies assured
her at once that she would find it “very disagreeable;” and asking if
they were not tired, turned their footsteps toward the house.

They returned to the drawing-room, and after a little dawdling
conversation, Miss Hauton took down her embroidery frame, and began to
sort worsteds, while Miss Fanny produced a purse and gold beads, of
which she offered to show Kate the stitch.

Kate congratulated herself in the depths of her heart, that she had had
foresight to arm herself with some needles and silk, and felt equal to
all the emergencies of the morning; but poor Annie, one of whose
accomplishments had not been to spend money and waste time in fancy
work, could only offer to assist Miss Hauton in winding worsteds, by way
of doing something.

Fortunately for Mrs. Leslie, Mrs. Hauton’s stream of talk was unceasing.
She told innumerable and interminable stories (at least so they seemed
to Annie) of the impositions of poor people; was very indignant at the
sums they were called upon to give, and highly excited at the prices
which were demanded of them, and which she thought people in more
moderate circumstance were not asked. But more indignant yet was she
when, on some occasions, they had not been treated with more prompt
attention, and had superior comforts to others who were not as rich as
themselves. She only, it seemed, expected to be put on a level with
poorer people when the paying was in question. She evidently had an idea
that the knowledge of her wealth was to procure her civilities which she
was very angry at being called upon to pay for.

Annie thought it the longest morning she had ever passed; and when the
servants announced the luncheon, she awoke as from a nightmare.

Gathering round the table, everybody ate, not from appetite, but ennui.
Mrs. Hauton continued her stream of talk, (for, apparently, she had no
sense of fatigue,) which now turned upon the hot-house and the price of
her forced fruits.

Another hour passed in the drawing-room, in the same way, and Annie
happening to be near a table, on which lay some books, took up a new
review in which she was soon absorbed. After reading a few pages she
(being the first person who had looked into it) was obliged to cut the
leaves, when she heard Miss Hauton say, in the same scornful tone in
which she had pronounced her an enthusiast in flowers,

“Miss Cameron is literary, I see;” and Annie, coloring, again dropped
the book, and returned to her wearisome place on the sofa.

Kate found to her great delight that company was expected to dinner, and
when the preparation-bell rang, the girls, almost in a state of
exhaustion, retired to dress.

“Kate,” exclaimed Annie, “I am almost dead. I don’t know what has tired
me so, but I feel as if I had been in an exhausted receiver.”

Kate laughed.

“You should have brought some work with you, Annie. If you had only been
counting stitches, as I have been, you don’t know what a support it
would have been to you under Mrs. Hauton’s talk. She is intolerable if
you listen to her—but that I did not do. However, take courage. The
Langtrees and Constants, and Merediths, are coming to dinner. Here, let
me put this wreath of honeysuckle in your hair. There, it’s very
becoming; only, Annie, you must not look so tired,” she continued,
laughing, “or I am afraid you’ll make no conquests. And Constant and
Meredith are coming with their sisters.”

After half an hour’s free and unconstrained chat, and conscious of a
pretty and becoming toilet, refreshed and invigorated for a new attempt
in society, Annie accompanied her aunt and cousin again to the
drawing-room.

The new comers had arrived; a stylish-looking set—the girls in full
dress, the young men so whiskered and mustachioed that Annie was
surprised to hear them speak English. They were received with great
animation by the Hautons, who seemed to belong to that class of young
ladies who never thoroughly wake but at the approach of a gentleman.

The young men glanced slightly at Annie, and Mr. Meredith even gave her
a second look. He thought her decidedly pretty, and a “new face,” which
was something; but after a remark or two, finding she “knew nobody,” and
did not belong to the clique, the trouble of finding topics of mutual
interest seemed greater than he thought her worth, and so he turned to
Miss Hauton; and Annie soon found herself dropped from a conversation
that consisted entirely of personal gossip.

“So, the wedding has come off at last,” said Susan Hauton to Mr.
Constant. “I hope the Gores are satisfied now. Were you there? How did
Mr. Langley look?”

“Resigned,” replied the young man, slightly shrugging his shoulders.

Susan laughed, though at what Annie could not very well perceive, and
continued with,

“And the bride—how did she look?”

“As brides always do—charmingly, of course,” he replied, languidly.
“You ladies, with your veils, and flowers, and flounces, may set nature
herself at defiance, and dare her to recognize you such as she made
you.”

“If Fanny Gore looked charming,” said Ellen Hauton, sarcastically, “I
think it might have puzzled more than dame Nature to recognize her. I
doubt whether Mr. Langley would have known her under such a new aspect.”

“I think we may give him credit for differing from others on that
point,” said Kate. “A woman has a right to be thought pretty once in her
life, and Cupid’s blind, fortunately.”

“Cupid may be, but Mr. Langley is not,” replied Miss Hauton, in the same
careless, sneering tone. “It’s a shameful take in.”

“A take in!” repeated Kate, with surprise.

“Yes, certainly,” replied Miss Hauton. “He did not want to marry her.”

“Then why did he?” asked Kate. “He was surely a free agent.”

“No, he was not,” persisted Miss Susan. “The Gores would have him; they
followed him up, and never let him alone until they got him.”

“Do you believe,” returned Kate, with some spirit, “that any man is to
be made to marry against his will? There’s no force can do it.”

“But the force of flattery,” said young Meredith; “is a very powerful
agent, Miss Leslie.”

“Then,” said Kate, laughing, “every match is a ‘take in,’ on that
ground. Is not every bride flattered till she feels as if she had
entered a new state of being? Is not every girl turned, for the time
being, into a beauty? Do you suppose any body ever yet fell in love on
the truth?”

“No, indeed,” replied the gentleman. “Truth’s kept where she should be,
at the ‘bottom of a well.’ A most ill-bred personage, not fit for ‘good
society,’ certainly.”

Then the conversation branched off to other matches, and to Annie’s
surprise she heard these high-bred, delicate looking girls, talk of
their friends making “dead sets” and “catches,” and of young men being
“taken in,” in a style that struck her as decidedly vulgar. Kate, to
turn the subject, asked Mr. Constant if he had been to the opera the
night before.

“I looked in,” he replied. “Vita was screaming away as usual.”

“Oh, is not she horrid?” exclaimed Miss Hauton.

“The opera’s a bore,” pursued her sister. “Caradori’s detestable and
Vita a horror. I hope they’ll get a new troupe next winter. I am sick of
this set.”

“I thought you were fond of the opera,” remarked Kate. “You are there
always.”

“Yes; we have a box, and one must go somewhere; but I was tired to death
before the season was half over. Here, Mr. Meredith, hold this silk for
me,” she continued, calling to the young gentleman, who was looking out
of the window, meditating the possibility of making his escape to the
refreshment of a cigar.

“That’s right, make him useful, Miss Hauton,” said Mr. Constant, as the
reluctant Meredith declared himself most happy and honored in being so
employed; but he set his back teeth firmly, and with difficulty
suppressed a yawn, which was evident in spite of his efforts to conquer
it. Miss Hauton’s animation, however, was more than a match for his
indifference. He was not to be let off. Young ladies, and high-bred ones
too, will sometimes pin young gentlemen, whether or no. It’s bad policy;
for Annie heard him say, as he afterward escaped and walked off the
piazza with his friend, and a cigar in his mouth,

“What bores these girls are, with their confounded worsteds and
nonsense.”

The evening passed in pretty much the same way. Much gossip, varied with
some very bad music, for Miss Hauton sang, and, like most amateurs,
would undertake more than she could execute. Annie thought of the
“screamer Vita” and that “horrid Caradori,” and wondered that ears that
were so delicate, so alive to the smallest fault in the music of others,
should have so little perception of their own sins of commission.

“Oh,” said Kate, as they retired to their room at night, “did not the
Hauton’s ‘Casta Diva’ set your teeth on edge? Such an absurdity, for a
girl like her to attempt what few professional persons can sing. You
look tired to death, Annie, and no wonder, for, between you and I, these
Hautons are very common girls. Strange! I’ve known them for years, and
yet never knew them before. Dress and distance make such a difference.”

“They seem to have so little enjoyment in anything,” remarked Annie.
“Every thing seems, in their phrase, ‘a bore.’ Now, to us in the
country, every thing is a pleasure. I suppose it is because we have so
little,” she continued, smiling, “that we must make the most of it.”

“Well,” said Kate, doubtfully, as if the idea was quite new to her, “is
not that better than to be weary with much?”

“And yet you would laugh at one of our little meetings,” replied Annie,
“where we talk of books, sing ballads, and sometimes dance after the
piano.”

“That is primitive, to be sure,” said Kate, with something of contempt
in her heart for such gothic amusements.

“It’s pleasant, at any rate,” thought Annie, as she laid her head on her
pillow and remembered, with infinite satisfaction, that she had only one
day more to stay among these very fine, very common people.

“And is it possible,” she thought, “that I should be such a fool as to
envy them because they looked gay and graceful across the opera house?
And half of the rest of them are, doubtless, no better. Oh for one
pleasant, spirited talk with Allan Fitzhugh.” And then her mind traveled
off to home and a certain clever young lawyer, and she fell asleep
dreaming she was in C——, and was once again a _belle_, (as one always
is in one’s dreams,) and awoke to another dull day of neglect and
commonplaces, to return home more disenchanted of the gay world and its
glitter, more thoroughly contented than she ever would have been with
her own intelligent and animated home, had she not passed three days at
Woodlawn, amid the dullness of wealth, unembellished by true refinement
or enlightened by a ray of wit.

But it was all right. To Annie had been given that which she most
appreciated; to the Hautons all that they were capable of enjoying.

Would either party have changed? No. The pity was mutual, the contempt
was mutual, and the satisfaction of both sides as complete as ever falls
to the lot of mortals. Annie had seen the other side of the medal, and
the Hautons did not know there was another side to be seen.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                           THE WASTED HEART.


                       BY MISS L. VIRGINIA SMITH.


         “The trees of the forest shall blossom again,
         The song-bird shall warble its soul-thrilling strain,
         But the heart Fate hath wasted no spring can restore,
         And its song shall be joyful—no more, never more.”

         A blush was deepening through the folded leaves
         Of that young, guileless heart, and far within
         Upon the altar of her soul a flame
         Like to an inspiration came; she _felt_
         That she had learned to love as e’en the heart
         Of woman seldom loves.
         She was an orphan child, and sorrow’s storm
         With bitter breath had swept her gentle soul;
         But that was past—and fresh in purity
         It reveled in a blissful consciousness—
         It _loved_, and _was beloved_.

         She _knew_ she loved—and when the twilight dim
         Stole on with balmy silence, she would list
         A coming step, whose music fall kept time
         To all the hurried throbbings of her heart,
         And when it stayed, a softened glance would seek
         Her drooping eye, whose deepest faith had poured
         Its dreamy worship forth so fearlessly;
         Eyes that to him alone were _never_ silent,
         Whose glances sometimes sought for his, and threw
         Their light far through his spirit, till it thrilled
         To music every tightened nerve that strung
         The living lyre of being.

         At such an hour his burning passion slept
         Before the portals of their azure heaven,
         Like to some wandering angel who has sunk
         To rest beside the glory-shadowed gate
         Of a lost Paradise; and when he bowed
         To press his lip upon the brow that lay
         Soft pillowed on his bosom, she would start
         Up from his half embrace, and then, to hide
         Her sweet confusion, turn aside to part
         With white and jeweled fingers, tremblingly,
         The rich, dark masses of his waving hair.
         Then joyous hopes came crowding brightly through
         Their dreaming souls, as did the evening stars
         Through the calm heaven above them, and the world
         Of happiness that lay upon their hearts
         Was silent all, for language had no words
         To shadow forth the fond imaginings,
         That made its very atmosphere a heaven
         Of dreamy, rich, voluptuous purity.
         An angel bowed before the mercy-seat
         Trusts not more purely in the changeless One
         To whom his prayer ascendeth, than did she
         The proud, bright being whom her deathless love
         Had made its idol-god—she could have laid
         Her soft white hand in his without one thought
         Except of love and trust, and bade him lead
         Her to the end of life’s bewildered maze,
         Blindfolded, while her heart on his would rest
         Without one care for Time, one lonely fear
         For that Eternity which mortals dread.
         Such, then, is _woman’s love_—and wo to him
         By whom her trusting nature is betrayed!
                                  ——
         A change—a fearful, sad and blighting change—
         Came o’er them—how or why it matters not—
         Enough to know it came—enough to _feel_
         That they shall meet as they have met, no more.
         Of him we speak not—we but know he lives;
         And she whose heart, whose very life was his,
         Could tell you nothing more.
         Lost—lost forever—and her life stood still,
         And gazed upon the future’s cold gray heaven,
         As if to catch one gleam of hope’s fair star—
         No hope was there for her—the hand of God
         Lay darkly in the cloud that shadowed it.
         A _never-ending, living death_ was hers,
         And one by one she saw her hopes expire,
         But shed no tear, because the fount was dry;
         Hers was a grief too strangely sad for tears.
         You heard no shriek of anguish as the tide
         Of cold and leaden loneliness swept in
         Upon her gentle bosom, though the fall
         Of earth upon the coffin of the loved
         And lost was not more fearful.
         She prayed for power to “_suffer and be still_.”
         And God was merciful—it came at last,
         As dreamless slumber to a heart that mourns.
         She smoothed her brow above a burning brain,
         Her eye was bright, and strangers never knew
         That all its brilliancy and light was drawn
         From out the funeral pyre of every hope
         That in an earlier, happier hour had glowed
         On passion’s hidden altar. Months rolled on,
         And when the softened color came again
         To cheek and lip, it was as palely bright
         As though from out a sleeping rose’s heart
         Its sweetest life had faded tranquilly.
         She mingled with the world—its gay saloons
         Gave back the echo of her joyous laugh;
         Her ruby lip, wreathed with its winning smile,
         Gently replied to gentler flatteries,
         And when her soul flowed forth upon the waves
         Of feeling in the charméd voice of song,
         You would have deemed that gushing melody
         The music of a purest, happiest heart,
         So bird-like was its very joyousness.
         And many envied that lone orphan girl
         Her light and happy spirit—oh! it was
         A bitter, burning mockery! when her life
         Was one continued struggle with itself
         To _seem_ what it could never _be_—to hide
         Its gnawing vulture ’neath a sunny smile—
         To crush the soul that panted to be free—
         And force her gasping heart to drink again
         The love that _fed upon itself_ and wore
         Her inner life away!
         They could not know her—could not understand
         How one could live, and smile, and _still be cursed_,
         Cursed with a “living judgment,” once to be
         Beloved—and then to be beloved no more,
         And _never to forget_. Her life was like
         Some pictured lily which the artist’s hand
         Gives its proportion—shades its virgin leaves
         With nature’s beauty—but the bee can find
         No banquet there—the breeze waft no perfume.
         The shadows of the tomb have lengthened o’er
         Her sky that blushes with the morn of life;
         Far on the inner shrine of Memory’s fane,
         Lie the cold ashes of her “wasted heart,”
         By burning sighs that sweep the darkened soul,
         By lava-drops wrung from a fevered brain,
         Or e’en the breath of God to be rekindled
         Never—no “_never more!_”
                                  ——
         And thus it is that _woman’s_ sacrifice
         Upon the altar of existence is
         (That pulse of life) her _warm_ and _loving heart_!
         Far other tongues beside the poet’s lyre
         There are to teach us that we often _do_
         But “let our young affections run to waste
         And water but the desert”—that we make
         An idol to ourselves—we bow before
         Its worshiped altar-stone, and even while
         Our incense-wreaths of adoration rise
         It crumbles down before that breath, a mass
         Of shining dust; we garner in our hearts
         A stream of love undying, but to pour
         Its freshness out at last upon a shrine
         Of gilded clay!
                        Our barque floats proudly on—
         The waves of Time may bear us calmly o’er
         This life’s deep under-current—but the tones
         Of love that woke the echoes of the Past
         Are stilled, or only murmur mournfully,
         “_No more—oh! never more!_”
         And other hearts who bow before the shrine
         Of young though shadowed beauty—can they know
         What is the idol that they seek to win?
         A _mind the monument_—a _form_ the _grave_—
         Where sleep the ashes of a “_wasted heart_!”

                 *        *        *        *        *




                        A HEALTH TO MY BROTHER.


                           BY R. PENN SMITH.


       Fill the bowl to the brim, there’s no use in complaining;
       We’ll drown the dark dream, while a care is remaining;
       And though the sad tear may embitter the wine,
       Drink half, never fear, the remainder is mine.

       True, others may drink in the lightness of soul,
       But the pleasure I think is the tear in the bowl;
       Then fill up the bowl with the roseate wine,
       And the tears of my soul shall there mingle with thine.

       And that being done, we will quaff it, my brother;
       Who drinks of the one should partake of the other.
       Thy head is now gray, and I follow with pain.—
       Pshaw! think of our day, and we’re children again.

       ’Tis folly to grieve that our life’s early vision
       Shone but to deceive, and then flit in derision.
       A fairy-like show, far too fragile to last;
       As bright as the rain-bow, and fading as fast.

       ’Tis folly to mourn that our hearts’ foolish kindness
       Received in return but deceit for their blindness;
       And vain to regret that false friends have all flown;
       Since fortune hath set, we can buffet alone.

       Then fill up the glass, there’s no use in repining
       That friends quickly leave us, when fortune’s declining—
       Let each drop a tear in the roseate bowl;
       A tear that’s sincere, and then pledge to the soul.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                          “WHAT CAN WOMAN DO?”


                    OR THE INFLUENCE OF AN EXAMPLE.


                           BY ALICE B. NEAL.


    Good, therefore, is the counsel of the Son of Sirach. “Show not
    thy valiantness in wine; for wine hath destroyed many.”
                                                     Jeremy Taylor.

“I am glad you admire my pretty cousin,” said Isabel Gray to a gentleman
seated near her. “She deserves all her good fortune, which is the
highest possible compliment when you see how devoted her husband is and
what a palace-like home he has given her.”

“It does, indeed, seem the very abode of taste and elegance,” and the
speaker looked around the luxurious apartment with undisguised
admiration.

The room, with its occupants, seemed, in the mellow light which came
from lotus shaped vases, like a fine old picture set in a gorgeous
frame. The curtains, falling in fluted folds, shut out the dreariness of
a chill November night—a glowing carpet, on whose velvet surface seemed
thrown the richest flowers and the most luscious fruits, in wild but
graceful confusion, muffled the tread of the well-trained servants. A
few rare pictures hung upon the walls, and a group of beautiful women
were conspicuous among the guests who this evening shared the
hospitality of the master of the mansion. The dessert had just been
placed upon the table—rare fruits were heaped in baskets of delicate
_Sèvres_, that looked _woven_ rather than moulded into their graceful
shapes; cones and pyramids of delicately tinted ices, and sparkling
bon-bons—in fine, all that could tempt the most fastidious appetite,
had been gathered together for this bridal feast.

Very happy was William Rushton that night, and how fondly he glanced, in
the pauses of conversation, toward his lovely wife, who, for the first
time, had assumed her place as mistress of all this elegance. But hers
was a subdued and quiet loveliness,

        “Not radiant to a _stranger’s_ eye,”

and many wondered that his choice should have fallen upon her, when
Isabel Gray seemed so much better suited to his well known
fastidiousness. Isabel had passed the season of early girlhood, yet her
clear brow was as smooth, and her complexion as glowing, as when she had
first entered society the belle of the season. Four winters had passed,
and, to the astonishment of many an acquaintance, she was still
unmarried; and now, as the bridemaid of the wealthy Mrs. Rushton, she
was once more the centre of fashion—the observed of all.

Glittering glasses, of fanciful shape and transparent as if they had
been the crystal goblets of Shiraz, were sparkling among the fruits and
flowers. Already they were foaming to the brim with wines, that might
have warmed the heart of the convivial Clarence himself, whose age was
the topic of discourse among the gentlemen and of comment to their
pretty listeners, who were well aware that added years would be no great
advantage to _them_ in the eyes of these boasting connoisseurs.

“No one can refuse that,” came to the ears of Isabel Gray, in the midst
of an animated conversation.

“The health of our fair hostess,” said her companion, by way of
explanation. “We are all friends, you know. Your glass, Miss Gray,” and
he motioned the attendant to fill it.

“Excuse me,” said she, in a quick, earnest voice, which drew the
attention of all. “I will drink to Lucy with all my heart, but in water,
if you please,” and she playfully filled the tall glass from a water
goblet near her.

“May I be permitted to follow Miss Gray’s example? She must not claim
all the honor of this new fashion,” and the speaker, a young man with a
fine though somewhat sad face, suited the action to the word.

Courtesy subdued the astonishment and remonstrances of the host and his
fashionable friends, and this strange freak of Miss Gray’s formed the
topic of conversation after the ladies withdrew.

“I do not think it a fancy—Isabel Gray always acts from principle,”
said one of the party, with whom she had been conversing; and Robert
Lewis, for so they called her supporter in this unparalleled refusal,
gayly declared himself bound, for that night at least, to drink nothing
but water, for her sake.

“Oh, Isabel, how could you do so?” said her cousin, as they re-entered
the drawingroom, and the ladies had dispersed in various groups to
examine and admire its decorations.

“Do what, dear Lucy?”

“Why, act in such a strange way. I never knew you to refuse wine before.
You might, at least, have touched the glass to your lips, as you always
have done. Mr. Rushton was too polite to remonstrate, but I saw he
looked terribly annoyed. He is so proud of his wines, too, and I wanted
him to like you so much. I would not have had it happen—oh, for any
thing,” and the little lady clasped her hands with a most tragical look
of distress.

“How very terrible! Is it such a mighty offense? But, seriously, it was
not a freak. I shall never take wine again.”

“And all my parties to attend? You will be talked about all winter. Why,
nothing is expected of a lady now-a-days but to sip the least possible
quantity; and, besides, champagne, you know, Isabel—champagne never
hurt any one.”

“I have seen too much of its ill effects to agree with you there, Lucy.
It has led to intemperance again and again. My heart has long condemned
the practice of convivial drinking, and I cannot countenance it even by
_seeming_ to join. Think of poor Talfourd—what made him a beggar and a
maniac! He was your husband’s college friend.”

“Oh, that is but one in a thousand; and, besides, what influence can you
possibly have. Who, think you, will be the better man for seeing you so
rude—I must say it—as to refuse to take wine with him?

“We none of us know the influence we exert—perhaps never will know it
in this world. But, still, the principle remains the same. To-night,
however, I had a definite object in my pointed refusal. Young Lewis has
recently made a resolution to avoid every thing that can lead him into
his one fault. Noble, generous to “the half of his kingdom”—highly
cultivated, and wealthy, he nearly shipwrecked his fortune when abroad,
brother tells me, by dissipation—the effect of this same warm-hearted,
generous nature. It is but very lately that he has seen what a moral and
mental ruin threatened him, and has resolved to gain a mastery over the
temptation. I knew of it by accident, and I should not tell it, even to
you, only that it may prevent his being rallied by Mr. Rushton or
yourself. To-night was his first trial. I saw the struggle between
custom, pride, and good resolutions. If he had yielded then, he would
have become disheartened on reflection, and, perhaps, abandoned his new
life altogether. I cannot tell—our fate in this world is decided by
such trivial events. At any rate, I have spared him one stroke—he will
be stronger next time to refuse for himself.”

“I should not have dreamed of all this! Why I thought it was only his
Parisian gallantry that made him join with you; but, then, if he has
once been dissipated, the case is hopeless.”

“Oh, no Lucy, not hopeless; when a strong judgment is once convinced, it
is the absence of reflection, or a little moral courage, at first, that
ruins so many.”

“Excellent, excellent,” cried the lively Mrs. Moore, who came up just in
time to hear Isabel’s closing sentence—“If Miss Gray is not turned
temperance lecturer! Come, ladies, let her have a numerous audience
while she is about it. Ah, I know you think to get into Father Mathew’s
good graces. Shall you call upon him when he arrives, and offer your
services as assistant?”

“We were discussing the possibility of entire reformation,” said Isabel,
calmly, quite unmoved by Mrs. Moore’s covert sarcasms, to the ladies who
now gathered round the lounge on which she sat. “The reformation of a
man who has been once intemperate, I mean.”

“Oh, intemperance is so shockingly vulgar, my dear,” quavered forth Mrs.
Bradford, the stately aunt of the hostess. “How can you talk about such
things. No, to be sure, when a man is once dissipated, you might as well
give him up. He’s lost to society, _that’s certain_; besides, we women
have nothing to do with it.”

“I beg your pardon, my dear madam, but I think we have a great deal to
do, though not in the way of assisting Father Matthew to address
Temperance Conventions, as Mrs. Moore kindly suggests. Moreover, I have
known a confirmed inebriate, so supposed, to give up all his old
associations, and become a useful and honorable member of society.”

“Tell us about it, please, Miss Gray,” urged Emily Bradford, deeply
interested. “There will be plenty of time before the gentlemen come in.”

And as the request was seconded by many voices, Isabel told her simple
tale.

[1]“There is no romance about it, Miss Emily; but you remember those
pretty habit shirts you admired so much last fall—and _you_ have seen
me wear them, Mrs. Moore. They were made by a woman—a _lady_ whom I
first saw years ago, when I passed my vacations at Milton, a little town
not far from Harrisburg. My Aunt Gray was very domestic, and thought it
no disgrace to the wife of a judge, and one of the most prominent men in
the state, to see after her own household.

“There was a piece of linen to be made up one vacation; and I remember
going into my aunt’s room and finding her surrounded by ‘sleeves and
gussets and bands’—cutting out and arranging them with the most
exemplary patience. ‘Pray, aunt, why do you bother yourself with such
things,’ I said, for I was full of boarding-school notions on the
dignity of _idleness_. ‘Why don’t you leave it for a seamstress.’

“‘If you will go with me this afternoon to see my seamstress, you will
find out. I should like you to see her.’ And that afternoon our walk
ended at a plain brown frame house, with nothing to relieve its
unsightliness but a luxuriant morning-glory vine, which covered one of
the lower windows.

“‘How is Mrs. Hall to-day?’ aunt said to a dirty little fellow who was
making sand pies on the front step.

“‘She’s in there,’ was all the answer we received, as he pointed toward
a door on the right of the little hall.

“‘Come in,’ said a faint and very gentle voice; and, at first, I could
hardly see who had spoken, the room was so shaded by the leafy curtain
which had interlaced its fragile stems over the front window. There was
a neat rag carpet on the floor; a few plain chairs, a table, and a
bureau, ranged round the room; but drawn near the window, so that the
light fell directly upon it, was a bed, covered by a well-worn
counterpane, though, like everything else, it was very neat and
clean—and here, supported in a sitting posture by pillows, was my
aunt’s seamstress. I do not think she had been naturally beautiful—but
her features, wasted by long illness, were very delicate, and her eyes
were large, and with the brilliancy you sometimes see in consumptives,
yet a look of inexpressible sadness. She was very pale in that soft
emerald light made by the foliage, and this was relieved by a faint
hectic that, if possible, increased the pallor. She smiled as she saw my
aunt, and welcomed us both very gratefully. As she held out her long
thin hand, you could see every blue vein distinctly. I noticed that she
wore a thimble, and around her, on the bed, were scattered bits of linen
and sewing implements. You cannot tell how strange it seemed to see her
take up a wristband and bend over it, setting stitch after stitch with
the regularity of an automaton, while she talked with us. She seemed
already dying, and this industry was almost painful to witness.

“I gathered from her conversation with my aunt,—while I looked on and
wondered,—that Mrs. Hall had long been a confirmed invalid. They even
spoke of a ruptured blood-vessel, from the effects of which she was now
suffering. She did not complain—there was not a single murmur at her
illness, or the hard fate that compelled her to work for her daily
bread. I never saw such perfect cheerfulness, and yet I knew, from the
contracted features and teasing cough, that she was suffering intensely.
The little savage we had seen on our arrival, proved to be the son of
her landlady, who was also her nurse and waiting-maid.

“I was very much interested, and, by the time we bade her good-bye, I
had sketched out quite a romance, in which I was sure she had been the
principal actor.

“‘Poor lady,’ said I, the instant we were out of the gate. ‘Why do you
let her work, aunt? Why don’t you take her home, you have so many vacant
rooms—or, at least, I should think, there were rich people enough in
Milton to support her entirely. She does not look fit to hold a needle.
Has she no children? and when did her husband die?—was she very
wealthy?’

“I poured out my questions so fast that aunt had no time to answer any
one of them, and I had been so much engaged, that I had not noticed a
man reeling along the side-walk toward us, until just in time to escape
the rude contact of his touch, from which I shrunk, almost shrieking.

“‘Who told you that Mrs. Hall was a widow, Isabel?’ said aunt, to divert
me from my mishap.

“‘Nobody; but I knew it at once, as soon as I looked at her; how lonely
she must be—and how terrible to see one’s best friend die, and know you
cannot call them back again.’

“‘Not half so dreadful, dear,’ answered she, very seriously, ‘as to live
on from day to day and see the gradual death of the soul, while the body
is unwasted. It would be a happy day for Mrs. Hall that made her a
widow, though she, poor thing, might not think so. That wretched
inebriate’—and she pointed to the man we had just met—‘is her husband;
and this is why she plies her needle when we would willingly save her
from all labor. She cannot bear that _he_ should be indebted to the
charity of strangers.’

“It was even so, for the poor fellow had reached the garden-gate, and
was staggering in.

“‘So he goes home to her day after day,’ continued aunt; ‘and so it has
been since a few years after their marriage. When I first came here, he
had a neat shop in the village, and was considered one of the most
promising young men in the neighborhood. Such an excellent workman—such
a clever fellow—so fond and proud of his wife; and everybody said that
Charlotte Adams had married ‘out of all trouble,’ in the country phrase.
Poor girl! she had only entered a sea of misfortunes—for, from the
death of her only child, a fine little fellow, they have been going
down. It is a common story. First, the shop was given up, and he worked
by the day; not long after, they moved to a smaller house, and sold most
of their furniture. It was then she first commenced sewing, and, with
all her industry she could scarcely get along. She could never deny him
money when she had it—and this, with his own earnings, were spent at
the tavern. She remonstrated in vain. He would promise to do better—in
his sober moments he was all contrition, and called himself a wretch to
grieve such a good wife. I do not believe she has ever reproached him,
save by a glance of sorrowful entreaty, such as I have often seen her
give when he entered as now he is going to her.

“‘She was never very well, and under repeated trials, and sorrow and
mortification, her health gave way. Many a time have I parted with her,
never expecting to see her alive again; but there is some concealed
principle of vitality which supports her. Perhaps it is the hope that
she will yet see her husband what he has been. I fear she hopes in vain,
for if there was ever a man given over to the demon of intemperance it
is James Hall. But it is for this reason that she refuses the assistance
of her acquaintances, and works on from day to day, sometimes as now
unable to leave her bed. Of course she is well paid, and has plenty of
work, for everybody pities her, and all admire the wonderful patience,
cheerfulness and industry which she exhibits. She never speaks to any
one, even to me, of her husband’s faults. If she ever mentions him it is
to say, ‘James has been such a good nurse this week—he has the kindest
heart in the world.’ ‘She is a heroine,’ exclaimed my aunt warmly. ‘The
best wife I ever knew—and if there is mercy in heaven, she will be
repaid for all she has suffered in this world.’

“‘Poor lady,’ I thought and said a hundred times that week. I suppose I
must have tired everybody with talking about Mrs. Hall.”

“And did you ever see her again—_did_ she die, Miss Gray?” asked Emily
Bradford, as Isabel paused in her narration.

“I told you she made those pretty habit shirts for me. They were not in
fashion in those days if you will recollect. The first summer after my
debut in society I passed at Milton. I never shall forget the second
evening of my visit. If you recollect, there was a great temperance
movement through all our towns and villages just about that time.
Reformed inebriates had become the apostles of temperance, and went from
village to village, rousing the inhabitants by their unlearned but
wonderful eloquence. Mass meetings were held in the town-ball at Milton
nightly, and by uncle’s invitation, for he went heart and hand with the
newly awakened spirit of reform, aunt and myself accompanied him to one
of these strange gatherings. It was with the greatest difficulty we
could get a seat. Rough laborers, with their wives and children, crowded
side by side with the _élite_ of the little place; boys of every age and
size filled up the interstices, with a strange variety of faces and
expressions. The speaker of the evening was introduced just as we
entered. He was tall, with a wan, haggard-looking face, and the most
brilliant, flashing eyes I ever saw. A few months ago he had been on
outcast from society, and now, with a frame weakened by past excesses,
but with a spirit as strong as that which animated the old reformers, he
stood forth, going as it were ‘from house to house, saying peace be unto
you.’ Peace which had fled from his own hearth when he gave way to
temptation, but which now returning urged him to bear glad tidings to
other homes.

“I never listened to such strange and thrilling eloquence. I have seen
Fanny Kemble as Portia plead with Shylock with all the energy of
justice, and the force of her passionate nature, but though that was
beyond my powers of conception, I was not moved as now. With what
touching pathos he recounted the sorrows, the wasting, mournful want
endured by the drunkard’s wife! The sickness of hope deferred and
crushed—the destruction of all happiness here, or hope of it hereafter!
It was what his own eyes had seen, his own acts had caused—and it was
the eloquence of simple truth. More than one thought of poor Mrs. Hall,
I am sure. As for myself, I know not when I have been so excited, and
after the exhausted speaker had concluded his thrilling appeal, and the
whole rude assembly joined in a song arranged to the plaintive air of
Auld Lang Syne—more like a triumphal chant it seemed, as it surged
through the room—I forgot all rules of form, and though I had sung
nothing but tame Italian _cavatinas_ for years, my voice rose with the
rest, forgetful of all but the scene around me.

“Scarce had the last strains died away, when through the crowded aisles,
passing the very seat we occupied, some one pressed forward with
trembling eagerness. At first I did not recognize him—but uncle started
and made way for him to the table in front of the speaker’s seat. A
confused murmur of voices ran through the room, as one and another saw
him grasp the printed pledge which was lying there, with the eagerness
of a dying man. The first name subscribed to the solemn promise of total
abstinence that night was James Hall. When it was announced by my uncle
himself, whose voice was fairly tremulous with pleasure, the effect was
electrical. The whole assembly rose, and the room rang with three cheers
from stentorian voices. All order was at an end. Men of all classes and
conditions pressed forward to take him by the hand, and more names were
affixed to the pledge that night than any one could have counted on.

“It was a proud tribute paid to woman’s influence, when James Hall
grasping the hand of the speaker ejaculated—‘Oh! it was the picture you
drew of what my poor wife has suffered. Heaven bless her! she has been
an angel to me—poor wretch that I am.’

“My aunt’s first impulse was to fly to Mrs. Hall with the good news, but
‘let him be the bearer of the glad tidings himself,’ she said afterward.
‘We will offer our congratulations to-morrow.’ And never were
congratulations more sincerely received than by that pale invalid,
trembling even yet with the fear that her great happiness was not real.”

“Oh! very well,” broke in Mrs. Bradford. “Quite a scene, my dear; you
should have been a novelist. But did he keep it?—_that’s_ the thing.”

“You would not ask, my dear madam,” answered Isabel, “if you could have
witnessed another ‘scene,’ as you term it, in which Mrs. Hall was an
actor.

“There is a pretty little cottage standing at the very foot of the lane
which leads to my uncle’s house. This has been built since that
memorable evening by Mr. Hall, now considered the best workman, and one
of the most respected men in Milton; and it was furnished by his wife’s
industry. Her health was restored as if by a miracle; it was indeed
such, but wrought by the returned industry, self-respect, and devotion
of her husband. My aunt and myself were her guests only a few months
ago, the evening of her removal to her new home.

“We entered before her little preparations were quite finished, and
found Mrs. Hall arranging some light window curtains for the prettily
furnished parlor, while a fine curly-haired, blue-eyed little fellow was
rolling on the carpet at her feet. She was still pale, and will never be
strong again, but a happier wife and mother this world cannot contain.
Her reward has been equal to her great self-sacrifice, and not only
this, but the example of her husband has reformed many of his old
associates, who at first jeered at him when he refused to join them.
There is not a bar now in all Milton, for one cannot be supported.”

More than one thoughtless girl in the little group clustered around
Isabel began, for the first time, to feel their responsibility as women,
when her little narrative was concluded. But the current of thought and
education is not so easily turned, and by the time the gentlemen entered
the room, most of them had forgotten every thing but a desire to
outshine each other in their good graces.

Emily Bradford alone remained in the shadow of a curtain, quiet and
apart; and as she stood there musing, her heart beat faster, it may be,
with an unacknowledged pang of jealousy as she saw Robert Lewis speaking
earnestly with Isabel.

“Heaven bless you, Miss Gray, I confess I wavered—you have made me
ashamed of my weakness; I will not mind their taunting now,” was all
that the grateful, warm-hearted man could say; and he knew by the
friendly clasp of Isabel’s hand that nothing more was needed. Who among
that group of noble and beautiful women had more reason for happiness
than Isabel Gray? Ah, my sisters, if you could but realise that all
beauty and grace are but talents entrusted to your keeping, and that the
happiness of many may rest upon the most trivial act, you would not use
that loveliness for an ignoble triumph, or so thoughtlessly tread the
path of daily life!

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Oh, Isabel,” said Lucy Rushton, bursting into her cousin’s room, some
two years from the scenes we have recorded, “what am I to do? Pray
advise me, for you always know every thing.”

“Not quite as wise as that, dear, but what am I to do for you?”

“Oh, Emily Bradford has been proposed for by young Lewis, and aunt, who
sees only his wealth and connections, is crazy for the match. Emily
really loves him devotedly; and what am I to do, knowing how near he
once came to downright intemperance? Is it my duty, or is it not, to
tell aunt? It has no effect on Emily, and, besides, he confessed it all
to her when he proposed.”

“And what does she say?”

“Why, it’s your fault, after all, for she quotes a story you told that
same night I heard about his folly. You told me that, too. Well, he
declares he has not drank a glass of wine since then, and never will
again. Particularly if he has Emily for his guiding angel, I suppose,
and all that sort of thing. And she believes him, of course.”

“Well, ‘of course’—don’t say it so despairingly; why not? I do, most
assuredly. I might perhaps have distrusted the reformation if it had
been solely on Emily’s account, a pledge made to gain her, but if I am
not very much mistaken, I think I can trace their attachment to that
same eventful night, but I am very certain he did not declare himself
until quite recently.”

“So I am to let Emily run the risk?”

“Yes, if she chooses it; though I do not think there is much. I should
have no hesitation to marry Lewis if I loved him. Emily is a thoughtful,
sensible girl. She does not act without judgment, and she is just the
woman to be the wife of an impulsive, generous man like Lewis.
Sufficient time has elapsed to try his principles, and her companionship
will strengthen them.”

And so it proved, for there are now few happier homes than the cheerful,
hospitable household over which Emily Lewis presides. Isabel Gray is
always a favorite guest, and Robert predicts that she will never marry.
It may prove so, for she is not of those who would sacrifice herself for
fortune, or give her hand to any man she did not thoroughly respect and
sympathise with, to escape that really very tolerable fate—becoming an
old maid.

-----

[1] The circumstances here related are substantially true.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                       ON A PORTRAIT OF CROMWELL.


                          BY JAMES T. FIELDS.


                “Paint me as I am,” said Cromwell,
                  Rough with age, and gashed with wars—
                “Show my visage as you find it—
                  Less than truth my soul abhors!”

                This was he whose mustering phalanx
                  Swept the foe at Marston Moor;
                This was he whose arm uplifted
                  From the dust the fainting poor.

                God had made his face uncomely—
                  “Paint me as I am,” he said,
                So he _lives_ upon the canvas
                  Whom they chronicled as _dead_!

                Simple justice he requested
                  At the artist’s glowing hands,
                “Simple justice!” from his ashes
                  Cries a voice that still commands.

                And, behold! the page of History,
                  Centuries dark with Cromwell’s name,
                Shines to-day with thrilling lustre
                  From the light of Cromwell’s fame!

                 *        *        *        *        *




                          A SEA-SIDE REVERIE.


                             BY ENNA DUVAL.


           These white-capped waves roll on with pride, as if
           The myth that ancient poësy did tell
           Were true, and they did bear upon their breasts
           King Néreus with state most royal. How
           They leap and toss aloft their snowy crests;
           And now a tumbling billow springing up
           In air, does dash and bound—another comes—
           Then playfully they meet, with bursting swell
           Dashing their spray-wreaths on the shelving shore,
           And quick the ripples hasten back, as if
           To join the Ocëanides wild glee.
           But when the beaming sunlight fades away
           And storm-clouds gather—then the rolling waves,
           Without a light, sweep on, and soon is heard
           The under-current’s deep and solemn tones,
           As on the shore it breaks.
                                     How like to life
           These ocean waves! When beaming with the rays
           Of sunny Joy, Youths cresting billows bound,
           Its frolick waves leap up with gleeful laugh,
           Glitt’ring with pleasure’s light; but lo! a cloud
           Obscures Life’s sky, and sorrow’s storm awakes,
           The heavy swell of grief comes rolling on,
           And all the sparkles of Life’s waves are gone!

                 *        *        *        *        *




                        THE BRIDE OF THE BATTLE.


                          A SOUTHERN NOVELET.


                          BY W. GILMORE SIMMS.


                      (_Concluded from page 91._)


                             CHAPTER VIII.

It was with feelings of a tumultuous satisfaction that Mat Dunbar found
himself in possession of this new prize. He at once conceived a new
sense of his power, and prepared to avail himself of all his advantages.
But we must suffer our friend Brough to become the narrator of this
portion of our history. Anxious about events, Coulter persuaded the old
African, nothing loth, to set forth on a scouting expedition to the
farmstead. Following his former footsteps, which had been hitherto
planted in security, the <DW64> made his way, an hour before daylight,
toward the cabin in which Mimy, and her companion Lizzy, a young girl of
sixteen, were housed. They, too, had been compelled to change their
abodes under the tory usurpation; and now occupied an ancient tenement
of logs, which in its time had gone through a curious history. It had
first been a hog-pen, next a hunter’s lodge; had stabled horses, and had
been made a temporary fortress during Indian warfare. It was ample in
its dimensions—made of heavy cypresses; but the clay which had filled
its interstices had fallen out; of the chimney nothing remained but the
fire-place; and one end of the cabin, from the decay of two or more of
its logs, had taken such on inclination downward, as to leave the
security which it offered of exceedingly dubious value. The <DW64> does
not much regard these things, however, and old Mimy enjoyed her sleeps
here quite as well as at her more comfortable kitchen. The place,
indeed, possessed some advantages under the peculiar circumstances. It
stood on the edge of a limestone sink-hole—one of those wonderful
natural cavities with which the country abounds. This was girdled by
cypresses and pines, and, fortunately for Brough, at this moment, when a
drought prevailed, entirely free from water. A <DW64> loves any thing,
perhaps, better than water—he would sooner bathe in the sun than in the
stream, and would rather wade through a forest full of snakes than
suffuse his epidermis unnecessarily with an element which no one will
insist was made for his uses. It was important that the sink-hole near
Mimy’s abode should be dry at this juncture, for it was here that Brough
found his hiding place. He could approach this place under cover of the
woods. There was an awkward interval of twelve or fifteen feet, it is
true, between this place and the hovel, which the inmates had stripped
of all its growth in the search for fuel, but a dusky form, on a dusky
night, careful to crawl over the space, might easily escape the casual
glance of a drowsy sentinel; and Brough was partisan enough to know that
the best caution implies occasional exposure. He was not unwilling to
incur the risk. We must not detail his progress. Enough that, by dint of
crouching, crawling, creeping, rolling and sliding, he had contrived to
bury himself, at length, under the wigwam, occupying the space, in part,
of a decayed log connected with the clayed chimney; and fitting himself
to the space in the log, from which he had scratched out the rotten
fragments, as snugly as if he were a part of it. Thus, with his head
toward the fire, looking within—his body hidden from those within by
the undecayed portions of the timber, with Mimy on his side of the
fire-place, squat upon the hearth, and busy with the _hominy_ pot,
Brough might carry on the most interesting conversation in the world, in
whispers, and occasionally be fed from the spoon of his spouse, or drink
from the calabash, without any innocent person suspecting his
propinquity. We will suppose him thus quietly ensconced, his old woman
beside him, and deeply buried in the domestic histories which he came to
hear. We must suppose all the preliminaries to be dispatched already,
which, in the case of an African _dramatis personæ_, are usually
wonderfully minute and copious.

“And dis <DW65>, Tory, he’s maussa yer for true?”

“I tell you, Brough, he’s desp’r’t bad! He tak’ ebbry ting for he’sef!
He sway (swears) ebbry ting for him—we <DW65>, de plantation, boss,
hog, hominy; and ef young misses no marry um—you yeddy? (hear)—he will
hang de maussa up to de sapling, same as you hang scarecrow in de
cornfiel’!”

Brough groaned in the bitterness of his spirit.

“Wha’ for do, Brough?”

“Who gwine say? I ’spec he mus fight for um yet. Mass Dick no chicken!
He gwine fight like de debbil, soon he get strong, ’fore dis ting gwine
happen. He hab sodger, and more for come. Parson ’Lijah gwine fight
too—and dis <DW65>’s gwine fight, sooner dan dis tory ride, whip and
spur, ober we plantation.”

“Why, wha’ you tink dese tory say to me, Brough?”

“Wha’ he say, woman?”

“He say he gwine gib me hundred lash ef I no get he breckkus (breakfast)
by day peep in de morning!”

“De tory wha’ put hick’ry ’pon your back, chicken, he hab answer to
Brough.”

“You will fight for me, Brough?”

“Wid gun and bagnet, my chicken.”

“Ah, I blieb you, Brough; you was always lub me wid you’ sperrit!”

“Enty you blieb? You will see some day! You got ’noder piece of bacon in
de pot, Mimy? Dis hom’ny ’mos’ too dry in de t’roat.”

“Leetle piece.”

“Gi’ me.”

His creature wants were accordingly supplied. We must not forget that
the dialogue was carried on in the intervals in which he paused from
eating the supper which, in anticipation of his coming, the old woman
had provided. Then followed the recapitulation of the narrative, details
being furnished which showed that Dunbar, desperate from opposition to
his will, had thrown off all the restraints of social fear and decency,
and was urging his measures against old Sabb and his daughter with
tyrannical severity. He had given the old man a sufficient taste of his
power, enough to make him dread the exercise of what remained. This
rendered him now, what he had never been before, the advocate himself
with his daughter in behalf of the loyalist. Sabb’s virtue was not of a
self-sacrificing nature. He was not a bad man—was rather what the world
esteems a good one. He was just, as well as he knew to be, in his
dealings with a neighbor; was not wanting in that charity, which, having
first ascertained its own excess of goods, gives a certain proportion to
the needy; he had offerings for the church, and solicited its prayers.
But he had not the courage and strength of character to be virtuous in
spite of circumstances. In plain language, he valued the securities and
enjoyments of his homestead, even at the peril of his daughter’s
happiness. He urged with tears and reproaches, that soon became
vehement, the suit of Dunbar as if it had been his own; and even his
good _vrow_, Minnecker Sabb, overwhelmed by his afflictions and her own,
joined somewhat in his entreaty. We may imagine poor Frederica’s
afflictions. She had not dared to reveal to either the secret of her
marriage with Coulter. She now dreaded its discovery, in regard to the
probable effect which it might have upon Dunbar. What limit would there
be to his fury and brutality, should the fact become known to him? How
measure his rage—how meet its excesses? She trembled as she reflected
upon the possibility of his making the discovery; and while inly
swearing eternal fidelity to her husband, she resolved still to keep her
secret close from all, looking to the chapter of providential events for
that hope which she had not the power to draw from any thing within
human probability. Her eyes naturally turned to her husband, first of
all mortal agents. But she had no voice which could reach to him—and
what was his condition? She conjectured the visits of old Brough to his
spouse, but with these she was prevented from all secret conference. Her
hope was, that Mimy, seeing and hearing for herself, would duly report
to the African; and he, she well knew, would keep nothing from her
husband. We have witnessed the conference between this venerable couple.
The result corresponded with the anticipations of Frederica. Brough
hurried back with his gloomy tidings to the place of hiding in the
swamp; and Coulter, still suffering somewhat from his wound, and
conscious of the inadequate force at his control, for the rescue of his
wife and people, was almost maddened by the intelligence. He looked
around upon his party, now increased to seven men, not including the
parson. But Elijah Fields was a host in himself. The men were also true
and capable—good riflemen, good scouts, and as fearless as they were
faithful. The troop under Dunbar consisted of eighteen men, all well
armed and mounted. The odds were great, but the despair of Richard
Coulter was prepared to overlook all inequalities. Nor was Fields
disposed to discourage him.

“There is no hope but in ourselves, Elijah,” was the remark of Coulter.

“Truly, and in God!” was the reply.

“We must make the effort.”

“Verily, we must.”

“We have seven men, not counting yourself, Elijah.”

“I too am a man, Richard;” said the other, calmly.

“A good man and a brave; do I not know it, Elijah? But we should not
expose you on ordinary occasions.”

“This is no ordinary occasion, Richard.”

“True, true! And you propose to go with us, Elijah?”

“No, Richard! I will go before you. I _must_ go to prevent outrage. I
must show to Dunbar that Frederica is your wife. It is my duty to
testify in this proceeding. I am the first witness.”

“But your peril, Elijah! He will become furious as a wild beast when he
hears. He will proceed to the most desperate excesses.”

“It will be for you to interpose at the proper moment. You must be at
hand. As for me, I doubt if there will be much if any peril. I will go
unarmed. Dunbar, while he knows that I am with you, does not know that I
have ever lifted weapon in the cause. He will probably respect my
profession. At all events, I _must_ interpose and save him from a great
sin, and a cruel and useless violence. When he knows that Frederica is
irrevocably married, he will probably give up the pursuit. If Brough’s
intelligence be true, he must know it now or never.”

“Be it so;” said Coulter. “And now that you have made your
determination, I will make mine. The odds are desperate, so desperate,
indeed, that I build my hope somewhat on that very fact. Dunbar knows my
feebleness, and does not fear me. I must effect a surprise. If we can do
this, with the first advantage, we will make a rush, and club rifles. Do
you go up in the dug-out, and alone, while we make a circuit by land. We
can be all ready in five minutes, and perhaps we should set out at
once.”

“Right!” answered the preacher; “but are you equal to the struggle,
Richard?”

The young man upheaved his powerful bulk, and leaping up to the bough
which spread over him, grasped the extended limb with a single hand, and
drew himself across it.

“Good!” was the reply. “But you are still stiff. I have seen you do it
much more easily. Still you will do, if you will only economise your
breath. There is one preparation first to be made, Richard. Call up the
men.”

They were summoned with a single, shrill whistle, and Coulter soon put
them in possession of the adventure that lay before them. It needed
neither argument nor entreaty to persuade them into a declaration of
readiness for the encounter. Their enthusiasm was grateful to their
leader whom they personally loved.

“And now, my brethren,” said Elijah Fields, “I am about to leave you,
and we are all about to engage in a work of peril. We know not what will
happen. We know not that we shall meet again. It is proper only that we
should confess our sins to God, and invoke his mercy and protection. My
brothers—let us pray!”

With these words, the party sunk upon their knees, Brough placing
himself behind Coulter. Fervent and simple was the prayer of the
preacher—inartificial but highly touching. Our space does not suffer us
to record it, or to describe the scene, so simple, yet so imposing. The
eyes of the rough men were moistened, their hearts softened, yet
strengthened. They rose firm and resolute to meet the worst issues of
life and death, and, embracing each of them in turn, Brough not
excepted, Elijah Fields led the way to the enemy, by embarking alone in
the canoe. Coulter, with his party, soon followed, taking the route
through the forest.


                              CHAPTER IX.

In the meantime, our captain of loyalists had gone forward in his
projects with a very free and fearless footstep. The course which he
pursued, in the present instance, is one of a thousand instances which
go to illustrate the perfect recklessness with which the British
conquerors, and their baser allies, regarded the claims of humanity,
where the interests, the rights, or the affections of the whig
inhabitants of South Carolina were concerned. Though resolutely rejected
by Frederica, Dunbar yet seemed determined to attach no importance to
her refusal, but, dispatching a messenger to the village of Orangeburg,
he brought from thence one Nicholas Veitch, a Scotch Presbyterian
parson, for the avowed object of officiating at his wedding rites. The
parson, who was a good man enough perhaps, was yet a weak and timid one,
wanting that courage which boldly flings itself between the victim and
his tyrant. He was brought into the Dutchman’s cottage, which Dunbar now
occupied. Thither also was Frederica brought, much against her will;
indeed, only under the coercive restraint of a couple of dragoons. Her
parents were neither of them present, and the following dialogue ensued
between Dunbar and herself; Veitch being the only witness.

“Here, Frederica,” said Dunbar, “you see the parson. He comes to marry
us. The consent of your parents has been already given, and it is
useless for you any longer to oppose your childish scruples to what is
now unavoidable. This day, I am resolved, that we are to be made man and
wife. Having the consent of your father and mother, there is no reason
for not having yours.”

“Where are they?” was the question of Frederica. Her face was very pale,
but her lips were firm, and her eyes gazed without faltering into those
of her oppressor.

“They will be present when the time comes. They will be present at the
ceremony.”

“Then they will never be present!” she answered, firmly.

“Beware, girl, how you provoke me! You little know the power I have to
punish—”

“You have no power upon my voice or my heart.”

“Ha!”

The preacher interposed, “My daughter be persuaded. The consent of your
parents should be enough to incline you to Captain Dunbar. They are
surely the best judges of what is good for their children.”

“I cannot and I will not marry with Captain Dunbar.”

“Beware, Frederica,” said Dunbar, in a voice studiously subdued, but
with great difficulty—the passion speaking out in his fiery looks, and
his frame that trembled with its emotions.

“‘Beware, Frederica!’ Of what should I beware? Your power? Your power
may kill me. It can scarcely go farther. Know, then, that I am prepared
to die sooner than marry you!”

Though dreadfully enraged, the manner of Dunbar was still carefully
subdued. His words were enunciated in tones of a laborious calm, as he
replied,

“You are mistaken in your notions of the extent of my power. It can
reach where you little imagine. But I do not desire to use it. I prefer
that you should give me your hand without restraint or coercion.”

“That I have told you is impossible.”

“Nay, it is not impossible.”

“Solemnly, on my knees, I assure you that never can I, or will I, while
I preserve my consciousness, consent to be your wife.”

The action was suited to the words. She sunk on her knees as she spoke,
and her hands were clasped and her eyes uplifted, as if taking a solemn
oath to heaven. Dunbar rushed furiously toward her.

“Girl!” he exclaimed, “will you drive me to madness. Will you compel me
to do what I would not!”

The preacher interposed. The manner of Dunbar was that of a man about to
strike his enemy. Even Frederica closed her eyes, expecting the blow.

“Let me endeavor to persuade the damsel, my brother,” was the suggestion
of Veitch. Dunbar turned away, and went toward the window, leaving the
field to the preacher. To all the entreaties of the latter Frederica
made the same reply.

“Though death stared me in the face, I should never marry that man!”

“Death shall stare you in the face,” was the fierce cry of Dunbar. “Nay,
you shall behold him in such terrors as you have never fancied yet, but
you shall be brought to know and to submit to my power. Ho, there!
Nesbitt, bring out the prisoner.”

This order naturally startled Frederica. She had continued kneeling. She
now rose to her feet. In the same moment Dunbar turned to where she
stood, full of fearful expectation, grasped her by the wrist, and
dragged her to the window. She raised her head, gave but one glance at
the scene before her, and fell back swooning. The cruel spectacle which
she had been made to witness, was that of her father, surrounded by a
guard, and the halter about his neck, waiting only the terrible word
from the ruffian in authority.

In that sight, the unhappy girl lost all consciousness. She would have
fallen upon the ground, but that the hand of Dunbar still grasped her
wrist. He now supported her in his arms.

“Marry us at once,” he cried to Veitch.

“But she can’t understand—she can’t answer,” replied the priest.

“That’s as it should be,” answered Dunbar, with a laugh; “silence always
gives consent.”

The reply seemed to be satisfactory, and Veitch actually stood forward
to officiate in the disgraceful ceremony, when a voice at the entrance
drew the attention of the parties within. It was that of Elijah Fields.
How he had made his way to the building without arrest or interruption
is only to be accounted for by his pacific progress—his being without
weapons, and his well-known priestly character. It may have been thought
by the troopers, knowing what was in hand, that he also had been sent
for; and probably something may be ascribed to the excitement of most of
the parties about the dwelling. At all events, Fields reached it without
interruption, and the first intimation that Dunbar had of his presence
was from his own lips.

“I forbid this proceeding in the name and by the authority of God,” was
the stern interruption. “The girl is already married!”


                               CHAPTER X.

Let us now retrace our steps and follow those of Richard Coulter and his
party. We have seen what has been the progress of Elijah Fields. The
route which he pursued was considerably longer than that of his
comrades; but the difference of time was fully equalized by the superior
and embarrassing caution which they were compelled to exercise. The
result was to bring them to the common centre at nearly the same moment,
though the policy of Coulter required a different course of conduct from
that of Fields. Long before he reached the neighborhood of old Sabb’s
farm, he had compelled his troopers to dismount, and hide their horses
in the forest. They then made their way forward on foot. Richard Coulter
was expert in all the arts of the partisan. Though eager to grapple with
his enemy, and impatient to ascertain and arrest the dangers of his
lovely wife, he yet made his approaches with a proper caution. The
denseness of the forest route enabled him easily to do so, and making a
considerable circuit, he drew nigh to the upper part of the farmstead,
in which stood the obscure out-house, which, when Dunbar had taken
possession of the mansion, he assigned to the aged couple. This he found
deserted. He little dreamed for what reason, or in what particular
emergency the old Dutchman stood at that very moment. Making another
circuit, he came upon a copse, in which four of Dunbar’s troopers were
grouped together in a state of fancied security. Their horses were
fastened in the woods, and they lay upon the ground, greedily interested
with a pack of greasy cards, which had gone through the campaign. The
favorite game of that day was _Old Sledge_, or _All Fours_, or _Seven
Up_; by all of which names it was indiscriminately known. Poker, and
Brag, and Loo, and Monte, and _Vingt’un_, were then unknown in that
region. These are all modern innovations, in the substitution of which
good morals have made few gains. Dragoons, in all countries, are
notoriously sad fellows, famous for swearing and gambling. Those of
Dunbar were no exception to the rule. Our tory captain freely indulged
them in the practice. He himself played with them when the humor suited.
The four upon whom Coulter came were not on duty, though they wore their
swords. Their holsters lay with their saddles across a neighboring log,
not far off, but not immediately within reach. Coulter saw his
opportunity; the temptation was great; but these were not exactly his
prey—not yet, at all events. To place one man, well armed with rifle
and pair of pistols, in a situation to cover the group at any moment,
and between them and the farmstead, was his plan; and this done, he
proceeded on his way. His policy was to make his first blow at the head
of the enemy—his very citadel—trusting somewhat to the scattered
condition of the party, and the natural effect of such an alarm to
scatter them the more. All this was managed with great prudence, and
with two more of his men set to watch over two other groups of the
dragoons, he pushed forward with the remaining four until he reached the
verge of the wood, just where it opened upon the settlement. Here he had
a full view of the spectacle—his own party unseen—and the prospect was
such as to compel his instant feeling of the necessity of early action.
It was at the moment which exhibited old Sabb in the hands of the
provost, his hands tied behind him, and the rope about his neck. Clymes,
the lieutenant of Dunbar, with drawn sword, was pacing between the
victim and the house. The old Dutchman stood between two subordinates,
waiting for the signal, while his wife, little dreaming of the scene in
progress, was kept out of sight at the bottom of the garden. Clymes and
the provost were at once marked out for the doom of the rifle, and the
_beads_ of two select shots were kept ready, and leveled at their heads.
But Dunbar must be the first victim—and where was he? Of the scene in
the house Coulter had not yet any inkling. But suddenly he beheld
Frederica at the window. He heard her shriek, and beheld her, as he
thought, drawn away from the spot. His excitement growing almost to
frenzy at this moment, he was about to give the signal, and follow the
first discharge of his rifles with a rush, when suddenly he saw his
associate, Elijah Fields, turn the corner of the house, and enter it
through the piazza. This enabled him to pause, and prevented a premature
development of his game. He waited for those events which it is not
denied that we shall see. Let us then return to the interior.

We must not forget the startling words with which Elijah Fields
interrupted the forced marriage of Frederica with her brutal persecutor.

“The girl is already married.”

Dunbar, still supporting her now quite lifeless in his arms, looked up
at the intruder in equal fury and surprise.

“Ha, villain!” was the exclamation of Dunbar, “you are here?”

“No villain, Captain Dunbar, but a servant of the Most High God!”

“Servant of the devil, rather! What brings you here—and what is it you
say?”

“I say that Frederica Sabb is already married, and her husband living!”

“Liar, that you are, you shall swing for this insolence.”

“I am no liar. I say that the girl is married, and I witnessed the
ceremony.”

“You did, did you?” was the speech of Dunbar, with a tremendous effort
of coolness, laying down the still lifeless form of Frederica as he
spoke; “and perhaps you performed the ceremony also, oh, worthy servant
of the Most High!”

“It was my lot to do so.”

“Grateful lot! And pray with whom did you unite the damsel?”

“With Richard Coulter, captain in the service of the State of South
Carolina.”

Though undoubtedly anticipating this very answer, Dunbar echoed the
annunciation with a fearful shriek, as, drawing his sword at the same
moment, he rushed upon the speaker. But his rage blinded him; and Elijah
Fields was one of the coolest of all mortals, particularly when greatly
excited. He met the assault of Dunbar with a fearful buffet of his fist,
which at once felled the assailant; but he rose in a moment, and with a
yell of fury he grappled with the preacher. They fell together, the
latter uppermost, and rolling his antagonist into the fire-place, where
he was at once half buried among the embers, and in a cloud of ashes. In
the struggle, however, Dunbar contrived to extricate a pistol from his
belt, and to fire it. Fields struggled up from his embrace, but a
torrent of blood poured from his side as he did so. He rushed toward the
window, grasped the sill in his hands, then yielded his hold, and sunk
down upon the floor, losing his consciousness in an uproar of shots and
shouts from without. In the next moment the swords of Coulter and Dunbar
were crossed over his prostrate body. The struggle was short and fierce.
It had nearly terminated fatally to Coulter, on his discovering the
still insensible form of Frederica in his way. In the endeavor to avoid
trampling upon her, he afforded an advantage to his enemy, which nothing
prevented him from employing to the utmost but the ashes with which his
eyes were still half blinded. As it was, he inflicted a severe cut upon
the shoulder of the partisan, which rendered his left arm temporarily
useless. But the latter recovered himself instantly. His blood was in
fearful violence. He raged like a _Birserker_ of the
Northmen—absolutely mocked the danger of his antagonist’s
weapon—thrust him back against the side of the house, and hewing him
almost down with one terrible blow upon the shoulder, with a mighty
thrust immediately after, he absolutely speared him against the wall,
the weapon passing through his body, and into the logs behind. For a
moment the eyes of the two glared deathfully upon each other. The sword
of Dunbar was still uplifted, and he seemed about to strike, when
suddenly the arm sunk powerless—the weapon fell from the nerveless
grasp—the eyes became fixed and glassy, even while gazing with tiger
appetite into those of the enemy—and, with a hoarse and stifling cry,
the captain of loyalists fell forward upon his conqueror, snapping, like
so much glass, the sword that was still fastened in his body.


                              CHAPTER XI.

We must briefly retrace our steps. We left Richard Coulter, in ambush,
having so placed his little detachments as to cover most of the groups
of dragoons—at least such as might be immediately troublesome. It was
with the greatest difficulty that he could restrain himself during the
interval which followed the entry of Elijah Fields into the house.
Nothing but his great confidence in the courage and fidelity of the
preacher could have reconciled him to forbearance, particularly as, at
the point which he occupied, he could know nothing of what was going on
within. Meanwhile, his eyes could not fail to see all the indignities to
which the poor old Dutchman was subjected. He heard his groans and
entreaties.

“I am a goot friend to King Tshorge! I was never wid de rebels. Why
would you do me so? Where is de captaine? I have said dat my darter
shall be his wife. Go bring him to me, and let him make me loose from de
rope. I’m a goot friend of King Tshorge!”

“Good friend or not,” said the brutal lieutenant, “you have to hang for
it, I reckon. We are better friends to King George than you. We fight
for him, and we want grants of land as well as other people.”

“Oh, mine Gott!”

Just then, faint sounds of the scuffle within the house, reached the
ears of those without. Clymes betrayed some uneasiness; and when the
sound of the pistol-shot was heard, he rushed forward to the dwelling.
But that signal of the strife was the signal for Coulter. He naturally
feared that his comrade had been shot down, and, in the some instant his
rifle gave the signal to his followers, wherever they had been placed in
ambush. Almost simultaneously the sharp cracks of the fatal weapon were
heard from four or five several quarters, followed by two or three
scattered pistol-shots. Coulter’s rifle dropt Clymes, just as he was
about to ascend the steps of the piazza. A second shot from one of his
companions tumbled the provost, having in charge old Sabb. His remaining
keeper let fall the rope and fled in terror, while the old Dutchman,
sinking to his knees, crawled rapidly to the opposite side of the tree
which had been chosen for his gallows, where he crouched closely,
covering his ears with his hands, as if, by shutting out the sounds, he
could shut out all danger from the shot. Here he was soon joined by
Brough, the African. The faithful slave bounded toward his master the
moment he was released, and hugging him first with a most rugged
embrace, he proceeded to undo the degrading halter from about his neck.
This done, he got the old man on his feet, placed him still further
amongst the shelter of the trees, and then hurried away to partake in
the struggle, for which he had provided himself with a grubbing hoe and
pistol. It is no part of our object to follow and watch his exploits;
nor do we need to report the several results of each ambush which had
been set. In that where we left the four gamblers busy at _Old Sledge_,
the proceeding had been most murderous. One of Coulter’s men had been an
old scout. Job Fisher was notorious for his stern deliberation and
method. He had not been content to pick his man, but continued to
revolve around the gamblers until he could range a couple of them, both
of whom fell under his first fire. Of the two others, one was shot down
by the companion of Fisher. The fourth took to his heels, but was
overtaken, and brained with the butt of the rifle. The scouts then
hurried to other parts of the farmstead, agreeable to previous
arrangement, where they gave assistance to their fellows. The history,
in short, was one of complete surprise and route—the dragoons were not
allowed to rally; nine of them were slain outright—not including the
captain; and the rest dispersed, to be picked up at a time of greater
leisure. At the moment when Coulter’s party were assembling at the
dwelling, Brough had succeeded in bringing the old couple together. Very
pitiful and touching was the spectacle of these two embracing with
groans, tears, and ejaculations—scarcely yet assured of their escape
from the hands of their hateful tyrant.

But our attention is required within the dwelling. Rapidly extricating
himself from the body of the loyalist captain, Coulter naturally turned
to look for Frederica. She was just recovering from her swoon. She had
fortunately been spared the sight of the conflict, although she
continued long afterward to assert that she had been conscious of it
all, though she had not been able to move a limb, or give utterance to a
single cry. Her eyes opened with a wild stare upon her husband, who
stooped fondly to her embrace. She knew him instantly—called his name
but once, but that with joyful accents, and again fainted. Her faculties
had received a terrible shock. Coulter himself felt like fainting. The
pain of his wounded arm was great, and he had lost a good deal of blood.
He felt that he could not long be certain of himself, and putting the
bugle to his lips, he sounded three times with all his vigor. As he did
so, he became conscious of a movement in the corner of the room. Turning
in this direction, he beheld, crouching into the smallest possible
compass, the preacher, Veitch. The miserable wretch was in a state of
complete stupor from his fright.

“Bring water!” said Coulter. But the fellow neither stirred nor spoke.
He clearly did not comprehend. In the next moment, however, the faithful
Brough made his appearance. His cries were those of joy and exultation,
dampened, however, as he beheld the condition of his young mistress.

“Fear nothing, Brough, she is not hurt—she has only fainted. But run
for your old mistress. Run, old boy, and bring water while you’re about
it. Run!”

“But you’ arm, Mass Dick—he da bleed! You hu’t?”

“Yes, a little—away!”

Brough was gone; and with a strange sickness of fear, Coulter turned to
the spot where Elijah Fields lay, to all appearance, dead. But he still
lived. Coulter tore away his clothes, which were saturated and already
stiff with blood, and discovered the bullet-wound in his left side,
well-directed, and ranging clear through the body. It needed no second
glance to see that the shot was mortal; and while Coulter was examining
it, the good preacher opened his eyes. They were full of intelligence,
and a pleasant smile was upon his lips.

“You have seen, Richard, the wound is fatal. I had a presentiment, when
we parted this morning, that such was to be the case. But I complain
not. Some victim perhaps was necessary, and I am not unwilling. But
Frederica?”

“She lives! She is here; unhurt but suffering.”

“Ah! that monster!”

By this time the old couple made their appearance, and Frederica was at
once removed to her own chamber. A few moments tendance sufficed to
revive her, and then, as if fearing that she had not heard the truth in
regard to Coulter, she insisted on going where he was. Meantime, Elijah
Fields had been removed to an adjoining apartment. He did not seem to
suffer. In the mortal nature of his hurt, his sensibilities seemed to be
greatly lessened. But his mind was calm and firm. He knew all around
him. His gaze was fondly shared between the young couple whom he had so
lately united.

“Love each other,” he said to them; “love each other—and forget not me.
I am leaving you—leaving you fast. It is presumption, perhaps, to say
that one does not fear to die—but I am resigned. I have taken
life—always in self-defense—still I have taken life! I would that I
had never done so. That makes me doubt. I feel the blood upon my head.
My hope is in the Lord Jesus. May his blood atone for that which I have
shed!”

His eyes closed. His lips moved, as it were, in silent prayer. Again he
looked out upon the two, who hung with streaming eyes above him. “Kiss
me, Richard—and you, Frederica—dear children—I have loved you always.
God be with you—and—me!” He was silent.

Our story here is ended. We need not follow Richard Coulter through the
remaining vicissitudes of the war. Enough that he continued to
distinguish himself, rising to the rank of major in the service of the
state. With the return of peace, he removed to the farm-house of his
wife’s parents. But for him, in all probability, the estate might have
been forfeited; and the great love which the good old Dutchman professed
for King George might have led to the transfer of his grant to some one
less devoted to the house of Hanover. It happened, only a few months
after the evacuation of Charleston by the British, that Felix Long, one
of the commissioners, was again on a visit to Orangeburg. It was at the
village, and a considerable number of persons had collected. Among them
was old Frederick Sabb and Major Coulter. Long approached the old man,
and, after the first salutation, said to him—“Well, Frederick, have we
any late news from goot King Tshorge?” The old Dutchman started as if he
had trodden upon an adder—gave a hasty glance of indignation to the
interrogator, and turned away ex-claiming—“D—n King Tshorge! I don’t
care dough I nebber more hears de name agen!”

                 *        *        *        *        *




                          AUDUBON’S BLINDNESS.


                           BY PARK BENJAMIN.


          John James Audubon, the great American naturalist, has
       entirely lost his sight.   _Newspaper Paragraph._

         Blind—blind! yes, blind—those eyes that loved to look
         On the bright pictures in great Nature’s book.
         Quenched is that visual glory which arrayed
         All the winged habitants of grove and glade,
         And hill and prairie, in a garb as fair
         As their own plumage stirred by golden air.

         Alas! no more can he behold the beam
         Of morning touch the meadow or the stream;
         No more the noontide’s rays pervade the scene,
         Nor evening’s shadows softly intervene,
         But on his sense funereal Night lets fall
         The moveless folds of her impervious pall.

         But he shall wake! and in a grander clime,
         With vales more lovely, mountains more sublime,
         There shall he view, without a film to hide,
         Delicious pastures, streams that softly glide,
         Groves clothed in living greenness, filled with plumes
         Bright as the dawn, and various as the blooms
         With which the early Summer decks his bowers—
         Gems all in motion, life-invested flowers.

         Fairer than those, albeit surpassing fair,
         His pencil painted with a skill so rare
         That they, whose feet have never trod the far
         And wondrous places where such creatures are,
         Know all their beauty with familiar love—
         From the stained oriole to the snow-white dove.

         Blind—blind! Alas! he is bereft of light
         Who gave such pleasure to the sense of sight.
         His eyes, that, like the sun, had power to vest
         All forms with color, are with darkness prest:
         Sealed with a gloom chaotic like the deep;
         Shut in by shadows like the realm of sleep.

         Yet ’tis not meet to mourn a loss so brief—
         A pain, to which time cannot yield relief—
         But which Eternity must banish soon,
         With beams more lustrous than the blaze of noon;
         Yet softer than the evening is or morn,
         When he to light immortal shall be born;
         And with a vision purified behold
         More than the prophets, priests and bards have told.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                                SONNETS.


                         BY MARY SPENSER PEASE.


                             LOVE’S SUNSET.

     As shadows lengthen with the day’s declining,
       Like troops of dusky spectres onward creeping,
     Weaving swart stripes amid the golden shining
       Where meadow, brook and moss-grown hill lie sleeping;
     With murky fingers Nature’s sweet book closing—
       Each bell and blossom and each three-leaved clover,
     With stealthy march the sun’s glad sway deposing,
       Till, widening, deepening, darkness shrouds earth over:
     So, thy declining love casts o’er my spirit
       Chill shadows, freezing all my soul’s warm giving,
     Chill shadows, deadening all my soul’s best merit,
       And making blackest night my brightest living:
     A long, long, fearful night—that knows no morning,
     Save in wild, glowing dreams, that speak thy love’s returning.


                            LOVE’S SUNRISE.

     As shadows vanish with the dawn’s advancing,
       Like things of evil fleeing from Truth’s whiteness,
     The mem’ry of their dark spell but enhancing
       The warmth and light of morning’s dewy brightness;
     Their chill power over—with a glad awaking
       Starts to new life each sleeping leaf and flower,
     Each bird and insect into wild song breaking—
       All Nature’s heart-pulse thrilleth to the hour:
     Thus, my life’s sun—its glory all pervading—
       Fuses my soul with daylight warm and tender;
     Thus, all strange fears, my spirit darkly shading—
       All doubtings flee from its excess of splendor:
     Thus, through my inmost heart—like joy-bells ringing—
     The birds and honey-bees of thy dear love come singing.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                           DOCTRINE OF FORM.


There is a connection natural and necessary between the forms and
essences of things; some law which compels figure and faculty into
correspondence; some tie which binds nature, function, and end to shape,
volume, and intrinsic arrangement.

That a wheel must be circular, a lever inflexible, and a screw, wedge
and inclined plane shall have a determinate form, is clearly a condition
of adaptation to use; and because in machinery the arrangement of inert
matter is thus essential to the action and aim of all contrivance and
mutual adjustment of parts, we are apt to think configuration entirely a
question of mechanical fitness, and indifferent to and independent of
structures having no such office. But it is not so. Facts beyond number
show that it has definite and fixed relation to substance universally,
without limitation to a particular kind or sphere of use, or manner or
purpose of being.

I. There are examples enough to prove that the fundamental law,
connecting shape and arrangement with function, is stronger in the vital
and spiritual than in the mechanical sphere, and even supercedes its
settled order and method. An instance of this overruling force:—The
elephant in general organization is a quadruped, eminently; but his
sagacity rises so high above the ordinary level of brutes as to require
the service of a proboscis, which is nearly equal in capabilities of use
to the human hand. Furnished with a sort of finger at the extremity of
this excellent instrument of prehension, he can draw a cork, lift a
shilling piece from the ground, or separate one blade of grass from a
number with dexterity and despatch. In this his eminence of intellect is
indicated, for external instruments are in accurate relation to internal
faculties, and considerable handicraft bespeaks a proportionately high
range of mental power. Now observe how his organization differs from
that of other quadrupeds, and approaches, against all the analogies of
classification, toward the arrangements of the human form. He has the
rudiments of five toes on each foot, shown externally by five toe-nails.
This is one toe more than belongs to any beast below the monkey tribe.
He has a kneepan on the hind leg, and the flexure of the limb is
backward, like the human, and unlike other quadrupeds. The breast of the
female is removed from its usual position upon the pelvis, to the chest
or breast bone, as in the more elevated races; and all the organs of
reproductive life correspond to those of the higher orders. All this is
unexplained by any mechanical necessity or advantage, and is so far, in
violation of the analogies of that lower constitution by which he is
linked to the order of four footed animals. Of his internal organization
I have no means of information within reach, but I am satisfied _a
priori_ that the human configuration and position of ports are
approximated wherever the quadruped form and attitude leaves it
possible. Comparative anatomists make great account of all instances of
mechanical accommodations which they meet with, but they are in nothing
so remarkable or so conspicuous as those which we are now noticing. They
have the advantage of being understood, and are therefore much insisted
upon; but the facts which we have given and hinted at are at once so
striking and so conclusive, as to leave no doubt and no necessity for
further proof of the preeminence of the law which they indicate.

II. In looking over the world of animal and vegetable forms there is
nothing more remarkable than the continual sacrifice of strength to
beauty, and of quantity or bulk to symmetry and shapeliness. Use seems
postponed to appearance, and order, attitude and elegance take rank of
quantity in the forms of things. I suppose that the law under
consideration determines these conditions of structure; and that the
beauty to which the sacrifice is credited, as an end and object, is only
an incident; and, that the pleasure derived arises upon the felt
correspondence of such forms with our faculties, innately adjusted to
the harmonies of this universal law—in other words—that there is an
intrinsic force of essence which compels organization, limits its
dimensions, and determines its figure, and so, all substances take shape
and volume from a law higher and more general than individual use and
efficiency. Beauty, being but the name for harmony between faculty and
object, may well serve as a rule of criticism, but the efficient cause
which determines form lies deeper; it lies, doubtless, in the necessary
relation of organization and essence—structure and use—appearance and
office—making one the correspondent and exponent of the other in the
innermost philosophy of signs.

The abrogation of a rule, and departure from an established method of
conformation, belonging to a whole class of natural beings, in order to
attain the forms and order of arrangement of another class into whose
higher style of constitution the lower has been somewhat advanced, as in
the case of the elephant; and, the clear evidence that mechanical
perfection is everywhere in the human mechanism subordinated to a law of
configuration, which has respect to another standard and a higher
necessity—each, in its own way, demonstrates that form is not only a
necessity of mechanics, but is still more eminently an essential
condition of all substance. Facts from these sources hold a sort of
raking position in the array of our argument, but the multitude and
variety of examples which muster regularly under the rule are, of
themselves, every way adequate to maintain it.

III. Our proposition (to vary the statement of it) is, that form, or
figure, and, doubtless, dimension also, have a fixed relation to the
special qualities and characters of beings and things, and that it is
not indifferent in the grand economy of creation whether they be put
into their present shapes or into some other; but, on the contrary, the
whole matter of configuration and dimension is determined by laws which
arise out of the nature of things.

In generals the evidence is clear, and it must, therefore, be true in
the minutest particulars; for the law of aggregates is the law of
individuals—the mass and the atom have like essential conditions. It
is, indeed, difficult to trace facts into the inmost nature of things,
and quite impossible to penetrate by observation as deep as principles
lead by the process of mental investigation—so much more limited in the
discovery of truth, even the truth of physics, are the senses than the
reasoning faculties. We need, however, but open our eyes to see that the
diversities of form among all created things are, at least, as great as
their differences of character and use; and whether there be a
determinate relation of appearance to constitution or not, there is at
least an unlikeness of configuration or dimension, or of both, wherever
there is unlikeness of quality; and that this difference of form thus
commensurate with difference of constitution, is not merely a matter of
arbitrary distinctiveness among the multifarious objects of creation, as
names or marks are sometimes attached to things for certainty of
reference and recognition, appears from such facts and considerations as
follow—

1. All mineral substances in their fixed, that is, in their crystaline
form, are angular with flat sides and straight edges. This is not only a
general rule and an approximate statement, but exactly accurate and
universal; for in the few instances of crystals occurring with convex or
curvilinear faces, such as the diamond, it is known that their primary
forms have plane or flat faces and a parallel cleavage—making the rule
good against accidental influences and superficial appearances.

Here then we have a mode of configuration appropriate to and distinctive
of one whole kingdom of nature.

2. In vegetables we have a different figure and characteristic
conformation. Their trunks, stems, roots and branches are nearly
cylindrical, and uniformly so, in all individuals clearly and completely
within the class.

Soon as we enter the precincts of life curvature of lines and convexity
of surface begin to mark the higher styles of existence, the law being
that nothing which lives and grows by the reception and assimilation of
food is angular, rectilinear or included within plane surfaces. Inert
bodies take straight, but life assumes curve lines.

3. In animal forms the curve or life line is present of necessity, but
it undergoes such modification and departure from that which marks
vegetable existence as our law demands. We no longer have almost
cylindrical simplicity of shape as the sign of character and kind, but,
retaining curvity, which is common to vitality of all modes, we find the
cylinder shaped or tapered toward the conical, with continually
increasing approach to a higher style of configuration as we ascend
toward a higher character of function.

In the human body all that belongs to the whole inferior creation is
represented and reproduced, for man is logically a microcosm, and in his
body we find the various orders of natural beings marked by their
appropriate modes of construction and configuration—from a hair to a
heart, the multifarious parts bring with them the forms native to their
respective varieties of being.

The bones have in them the material of the mineral kingdom, and they
have conformity of figure. In the short, square bones of the wrist, in
the teeth, and several other instances, the flatness, straightness and
angularity proper to crystalized matter, marks its presence as an
element of the structure.

The correspondence of the vascular system with the forms proper to
vegetation, is most striking. A good drawing of the blood vessels is a
complete picture of a tree. Now, animals and vegetables differ widely in
their manner of taking in food, but they are alike in the method and end
of the distribution of the nutritious fluids, and between them the
resemblance of form obtains only in this, as our law requires. There is
nothing in trees, shrubs or grasses, that has any outline likeness to
the esophagus, stomach or intestinal tube; nothing in them has any
resemblance of office, and nothing, therefore, is formed upon their
pattern. The roots of trees, which are the avenues of their principal
aliment, are merely absorbing and circulating instruments—a sort of
counterpart branches in function—and they have, therefore, what
scientific people call the arborescent arrangement wherever they find
it.

If it is answered here that a hydraulic necessity determines the general
form of circulating vessels, and that certain immediate mechanical
advantages belong to the cylindrical over the square or polygonal shape
of tube, our point is not affected. We are showing, now, that the
expected conformity never fails. It is essential to our position that
mechanical requirements shall not over-rule the general law. The
instance given is in accordance, and a presumption rises that even
mechanical conformation itself is covered and accommodated by the great
principle which we are illustrating. It is enough for us, however, that
no facts contradict, though it be doubted whether all the instances
cited afford us the expected support.

But, leaving the functions and organs, which belong to all living and
growing beings in common, and entering the province of animal life and
animal law proper, we everywhere observe a significant departure from
the angular and cylindrical forms of the mineral and vegetable kingdoms,
and an approach, in proportion to the rank and value of the organ and
its use, toward an ideal or model, which is neither conical nor
heart-shaped, exactly, but such a modification of them as carries the
standard figure farthest from that uniformity of curve which marks a
globe, from the parallelism of fibre which belongs to the cylinder, and
from the flatness of base and sharpness of apex which bound the cone.

The limbs that take their shape from the muscles of locomotion, and the
internal parts concerned in those high vital offices, of which minerals
and vegetables are wholly destitute, are examples and proof of the
configuration proper to the animal kingdom. The thigh, leg, arm,
fore-arm, finger, the neck and shoulders, the chest, and the abdomen
meeting it and resting on the pelvic bones, are felt to be beautiful or
true to the standard form as they taper or conform to this intuitive
life-type.

The glands are all larger at one end than the other, and those that have
the highest uses are most conspicuously so, and have the best defined
and most elegant contour. The descending grade of figure and function is
marked by tendency to roundness and flatness. In the uses, actions and
positions of these organs, there is nothing mechanical to determine
their figure. The human stomach is remarkable for an elegance of form
and conformity to the ideal or pattern configuration, to a degree that
seems to have no other cause, and, therefore, well supports the doctrine
that the importance of its office confers such excellence of shape. The
facts of comparative anatomy cannot be introduced with convenience, but
they are believed to be in the happiest agreement and strongest
corroboration.

The heart, lungs and brain, are eminent instances of the principle. They
hold a very high rank in the organization, and, while their automatic
relations, uses and actions are _toto cœlo_ dissimilar, their agreement
with each other in general style of configuration, and their common
tendency toward the standard intimated, is most remarkable.

Their near equality of rank and use, as measured by the significance of
form, over-rides all mechanical difference in their mode of working. The
heart is, in office, a forcing pump or engine of the circulation. The
lungs have no motion of their own, and the porosity or cellular
formation of the sponge seems to be the only quality of texture that
they require for their duty, which is classed as a process of vital
chemistry. The brain differs, again, into a distinct category of
function, which accepts no classification, but bears some resemblance to
electrical action. Yet, differing thus by all the unlikeness that there
is between mechanical, chemical and electro-vital modes of action, they
evidently derive their very considerable resemblance of figure from
their nearly equal elevation and dignity of service in the frame. This
near neighborhood of use and rank allows, however, room enough for their
individual differences and its marks. The heart is lowest of the three
in rank, and nearest the regularly conical form. The lungs, as their
shape is indicated by the cavity which they occupy, are more delicately
tapered at their apex, and more oblique and variously incurvated at
their base. And the brain, whether viewed in four compartments, or two,
or entire, (it admits naturally of such division,) answers still nearer
to the highest style and form of the life pattern; and with the due
degree of resemblance, or allusion to it, in its several parts,
according to their probable value; for the hemispheres are shaped much
more conformably to the ideal than the cerebellum or the cerebral
apparatus at the base of the brain, where the office begins to change
from that of generating the nervous power to the lower service of merely
conducting it out to the dependencies.

IV. Hitherto we have looked for proof and illustration only to well
marked and clearly defined examples of the orders and kinds of things
examined. But the borders of kingdoms and classes, the individuals which
make the transitions, and the elements and qualities common to several
provinces which link kind to kind and rank to rank, confess the same
law, and even more nicely illustrate where, to superficial view, they
seem to contradict it.

Every species of beings in the creation is a reproduction, with
modifications and additions, but a real reproduction, in effect, of all
that is below it in the scale; so that the simplest and the lowest
continues and reappears in all, through all variety of advancement, up
to the most complex and the highest; in some sense, as decimals include
the constituent units, and hundreds include the tens, and other
multiples of these embrace them again, until the perfect number is
reached, if there be any such bound to either numerals or natures.

1. The rectilinear and parallel arrangement of parts proper to
crystalization, which is the lowest plastic power of nature known to us,
continues, proximately, in the stems and branches of vegetables. This
will accord with our theory, if ascribed to the abundant mineral
elements present in the woody fibre, and to its insensibility and
enduring nature, as shown by its integral preservation for ages after
death, to a degree that rivals the rocks themselves. But the stems of
trees are not exactly cylindrical and their fibres are not quite
parallel; for there is something of life in them that refuses the
arrangement of dead matter. From root to top they taper, but so
gradually that it is only decidedly seen at considerable distances or in
the whole length.

2. A section of a timber tree shows a regular concentric arrangement of
rings—the successive deposits of sequent years—and its cleavage proves
that it has also a radiated disposition of fibres. In the flat bones of
the head this same arrangement of parts obtains. The cartilaginous base
of bone has a life of perhaps equal rank with that of the vegetable
structure; it has its insensibility, elasticity, and durability at
least, with scarcely any higher qualities; and the osseous deposit is
thrown into figure and order similar to the ligneous.

3. The fruits, kernels, and seeds of plants, being the highest results
of the vegetable grade of living action, and so bordering upon the
sphere of animal existence, and even intruding into it, begin to take
its proper forms, and they are spheroidal, oblate spheroids, conical
exactly, ovoid, and even closely touch upon the heart-shaped; yet
without danger of confusion with the forms distinctive of the higher
style of life. This comparison, it must be remarked also, is between the
fruits of one kind and the organic structures of the other, and not of
organ with organ, which in different kinds shows the greatest diversity,
but of spheres of existence immediately contiguous, and therefore
closely resembling each other.

V. Of these forms the globular is probably the very lowest; and,
accordingly, of it we have no perfect instance in the animal body, and
no near approach to it, except the eye-ball, where mechanical law
compels a rotundity, that muscle, fat, and skin seem employed to hide as
well as move and guard, and, in the round heads of bones, where the ball
and socket-joint is required for rotatory motion. But in both these
cases the offices which the roundness serves are mechanical, and so, not
exceptions to our rule. The perfectly spherical must rank as a low order
of form, because it results from the simplest kind of force, mere
physical attraction being adequate to its production, without any
inherent modifying power or tendency in the subject. It is, accordingly,
very repugnant to taste in the human structure; as, for instance,
rotundity of body, or a bullet-head. Nothing of that regularity of curve
which returns into itself, and might be produced upon a turning lathe,
and no continuity of straight lines within the capacity of square and
jack-plane, are tolerable in a human feature. Lips, slit with the
straightness of a button-hole, or conical precision, or roly-poly
globularity, would be equally offensive in the configuration of any
feature of the face or general form. Cheek, chin, nose, brow, or bosom,
put up into such rotundity and uniformity of line and surface, have that
mean and insignificant ugliness that nothing can relieve. In raggedest
irregularity there is place and space for the light and shade of thought
and feeling, but there is no trace or hint of this nobler life in the
booby cushiony style of face and figure. Nose and brows, with almost any
breadth of angle; and chin, with any variety of line and surface, are
better, just as crystalization, flat and straight and sharp as it is,
nevertheless, seems to have some share in its own make and meaning,
which rolls and balls cannot lay any claim to.

VI. But the law under consideration cannot be restrained to shape only.
Dimension is also a result of intrinsic qualities, and must in some way
and to some extent, indicate the character to which it corresponds.
Druggists are so well aware of, and so much concerned with the
difference in the size of the drops of different fluids, that they have
constructed a table of equivalents, made necessary by the fact. Thus a
fluid drachm of distilled water contains forty-five drops, of sulphuric
ether one hundred and fifty, of sulphuric acid ninety, and of Teneriffe
wine seventy-eight. So that the law is absolutely universal, however
varied in expression, and a specific character in fluids and other parts
of the inanimate world declares itself as decidedly in bulk or volume,
as difference of constitution is shown by variety of figure in the
living and sentient creation.

Among the crystals termed _isomorphous_ by chemists, the dominant
ingredient which is common to them all, controls the form, but
difference of size answers sufficiently to the partial unlikeness of the
other less active elements; and so in the instances of cubes and
octahedrons formed of dissimilar minerals where difference of
constitution is indicated by varied dimensions only.

VII. Crystal and crystal, and, drop and drop, are alike within the
limits of the species, or their unlikeness, if there be any, is not
appreciable to our senses, and scarcely conceivable though not
absolutely impossible to thought; but we know certainly that clear
individuality of character is everywhere pursued and marked by
peculiarity of form and size throughout the entire universe.

While among minerals and fluids dissimilarity occurs obviously only
between species, among plants it begins to be conspicuous between
individuals, growing more and more so as observation ascends in the
vegetable kingdom. Two stalks of grass may resemble each other as much
as two crystals of the same salt, but timber trees grow more unlike, and
fruit trees differ enough to make their identification comparatively
easy. But it is in the animal kingdom, eminently, and with increasing
distinctness as the rank rises, that individuals become distinguishable
from each other; for it is here that diversity of character gets
opportunity, from complexity of nature, freedom of generating laws, and
varied influence of circumstances, to impress dissimilarity deepest and
clearest. Crystals undergo no modification of state but instant
formation and the sudden violence which destroys them. Vegetables pass
through the changes of germination and growth, and feel the difference
of soil, and winds, and temperature, and to the limits of these
influences, confess them in color, size, and shape; but animals, endowed
with acuteness of sense, enjoying locomotion, and related to all the
world around them—living in all surrounding nature, and susceptible of
all its influences—their individual differences know no limits, and
they are universally unlike in appearance as in circumstances, training
and character.

Even in the lower orders there is ample proof of this. The mother bird
and beast know their own young; the shepherd and the shepherd’s dog know
every one of their own flock from every other on all the hills and
plains; and among the millions of men that people the earth, a quick eye
detects a perfectly defined difference as broad as the peculiarity of
character which underlies it.

    _Narrowness of relations and Simplicity of function are as
    narrowly restrained in range of conformation; Complexity makes
    proportionate room for difference; and Variety is the result,
    the sign, and the measure of Liberty._

Detailed illustrations of the law would interest in proportion to the
range of the investigation; and gratification and delight would keep
pace with the deepening conviction of its universality; but the limits
of an essay restrain the discussion to mere hints and suggestions, and
general statements of principles which reflection must unfold into
formal demonstration for every one in his own department of observation.

Some inaccuracies of statement have been indulged to avoid the
complexity which greater precision would have induced. Broad, frank
thinking will easily bring up this looseness of language to the required
closeness of thought as the advancing and deepening inquiry demands.
Moreover, it may be difficult or impossible to meet every fact that
presents itself with an instant correspondence in the alleged law; but
such things cannot be avoided until people learn how to learn, and cease
to meet novel propositions with a piddling criticism, or a wrangling
spirit of controversy. Looking largely and deeply into facts in a
hundred departments of observation will show the rule clear in the focal
light of their concurrent proofs, or, looking out from the central
position of _a priori_ reasoning, it will be seen in every direction to
be a _necessary_ truth.

It would be curious, and more than curious, to trace ascent of form up
through ascertained gradation of quality in minerals, plants, fruits,
and animal structures; and it would be as curious to apply a criticism
derived from this doctrine to the purpose of fixing the rank and
relations of all natural beings—in other words, to construct a science
of taste and beauty, and, striking still deeper, a science of universal
physiognomy, useful at once as a law of classification, and as an
instrument of discovery. The scale would range most probably from the
globular, as the sign of the lowest character, through the regularly
graded movement of departure which in nature fills up all the stages of
ascending function from a drop of fluid to the model configuration of,
perhaps, that cerebral organ which manifests the highest faculty of the
soul.

The signs that substance and its states give of intrinsic nature and
use, or the connection of configuration and function, are not understood
as we understand the symbols of arithmetic, and the words of artificial
language; that is, the symbols of our own creation answer to the ideas
they are intended for, but the signs of the universal physiognomy of
nature are neither comprehended fully, nor translated even to the extent
that they are understood, into the formulæ of science and the words of
oral language. Many of them are telegraphed in dumb show to our
instincts, to the great enlargement of our converse with nature, both
sentient and inanimate; but still a vast territory of knowledge lies
beyond the rendering of our intuitions, and remains yet unexplored by
our understanding; a dark domain that has not been brought under any
rule of science, nor yielded its due tribute to the monarch mind. We
have no dictionary that shows the inherent signification of a cube, a
hexagon, an octagon, circle, ellipse, or cylinder; no tables of
multiplication, addition, subtraction, and division, which, dealing in
forms and their equivalents, might afford the products, quotients, and
remainders of their various differences and interminglings with each
other. States, qualities, and attitudes of structure, contribute much of
that natural language by which we converse with the animal world beneath
us, and with the angel world within us, but it remains as yet
instinctual, except so far only as the fine arts have brought it out of
the intuitive and oracular into rule and calculation, nor have we any
methodic calculus, universally available, by which these revelations of
nature may be rendered into demonstrative truth ruled by scientific
method.

It is conceivable that the form of every natural being is a full report
of its constitution and use, but as yet, tedious and dubious chemical
analysis, observation, and experiment are our directory to the hidden
truth. In some things it is otherwise. We know perfectly a passion or
emotion, and the meaning of the attitudes, colors, and forms of limb,
person and feature which denote them; and the interior qualities of
texture, also, as they are intimated to the sight and touch, lead us
without reasoning, to definitive judgments of human character. Of
animals, in their degree, we receive similar impressions and with equal
conviction, but we know so little more about these things, than that we
know them, that we can make no advantage of such knowledge beyond its
most immediate purpose in our commerce with the living beings which
surround us.

It remains, therefore, for mind to explore the philosophy of form, that
all which lies implied in it, waiting but still undiscovered, may come
out into use, and all that we instinctively possess of it may take a
scientific method, and so render the service of a law thoroughly
understood.

The principle gives us familiar aid every day, yet without revealing its
own secret, in physiognomy, painting, statuary, architecture, and
elocution. It is obeyed in all the impersonations of metaphor, fable and
myth; it is active every instant in the creations of fancy, and
supplies, so to speak, the material for all the structures of
thought—ruling universally in the earth, and fashioning and peopling
the heavens. To the most delicate movements of the imagination it gives
a corresponding embodiment of beauty; and it helps, as well, to realize
the monstrous mixtures of man and beast occurring in human character by
the answering monstrosity of centaur, syren, sphinx, and satyr. The old
Greek theology held that the eternal Divinity made all things out of an
eternal matter, after the forms of eternal, self-subsisting patterns; a
statement, in its utmost depth beyond the discovery of human faculties,
certainly, but not too strong to express the universal prevalence of
this law in the creation. To the human intellect all things _must_ exist
in space, bounded and determined by figure appropriate to the subject;
in fact, we can conceive of nothing except under such conditions; and
our doctrine but refers this necessity of mind to a primordial necessity
of being, ranking it among the harmonies of existence, as an adaptation
of sense, thought, and feeling to the correspondent truth in the
constitution of the universe.

                                                                   E.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                    ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL TAYLOR.


                            BY R. T. CONRAD.


    _Quid me mortuum miserum vocas, qui te sum multo felicior? aut
    quid acerbi mihi putas contigisse?_

           Weep not for him! The Thracians wisely gave
         Tears to the birth-couch, triumph to the grave.
         ’Tis misery to be born—to live—to die:
         Ev’n he who noblest lives, lives but to sigh.
         The right not shields from wrong, nor worth from wo,
         Nor glory from reproach; he found it so.
         Not strong life’s triumphs, not assured its truth;
         Ev’n virtue’s garland hides an aspic tooth.
         His glorious morn was past, and past his noon;—
         Life’s duty done, death never comes too soon.
         Then cast the dull grave’s gloomy trappings by!
         The dead was wise, was just—nor feared to die.
           Weep not for him. Go, mark his high career;
         It knew no shame, no folly and no fear.
         More blest than is man’s lot his blameless life,
         Though tost by tempests and though torn by strife.
         ’Neath the primeval forest’s towery pride,
         Virtue and Danger watched his couch beside;
         This taught him purely, nobly to aspire,
         That gave the nerve of steel and soul of fire.
         No time his midnight lamps—the stars—could dim;
         His matin music was the cataract’s hymn;
         His Academe the forest’s high arcade—
         (To Numa thus Egeria blessed the shade;)
         With kindling soul, the solitude he trod—
         The temple of high thoughts—and spake with God:
         Thus towered the man—amid the wide and wild—
         And Nature claimed him as her noblest child.
           Nurtured to peril, lo! the peril came,
         To lead him on, from field to field, to fame.
         ’Twas met as warriors meet the fray they woo:
         To shield young Freedom’s wild-wood homes he flew;
         And—fire within his fortress, foes without,
         The rattling death-shot and th’ infuriate shout—
         He, where the fierce flames burst their smoky wreath,
         And war’s red game raged madliest, toyed with death;
         Till spent the storm, and Victory’s youngest son
         Glory’s first fruits, his earliest wreath, had won.
           Weep not for him, whose lustrous life has known
         No field of fame he has not made his own:
         In many a fainting clime, in many a war,
         Still bright-browed Victory drew the patriot’s car.
         Whether he met the dusk and prowling foe
         By oceanic Mississippi’s flow;
         Or where the southern swamps, with steamy breath,
         Smite the worn warrior with no warrior’s death;
         Or where, like surges on the rolling main,
         Squadron on squadron sweep the prairie plain;
         Dawn—and the field the haughty foe o’erspread,
         Sunset—and Rio Grande’s waves run red;
         Or where, from rock-ribbed safety, Monterey
         Frowns death, and dares him to the unequal fray;
         Till crashing walls and slippery streets bespeak
         How frail the fortress where the heart is weak;
         How vainly numbers menace, rocks defy,
         Men sternly knit and firm to do or die;
         Or where, on thousands thousands crowding, rush
         (Rome knew not such a day) his ranks to crush,
         The long day paused on Buena Vista’s height,
         Above the cloud with flashing volleys bright;
         Till angry Freedom, hovering o’er the fray,
         Swooped down, and made a new Thermopylæ;—
         In every scene of peril and of pain,
         His were the toils, his country’s was the gain.
         From field to field, and all were nobly won,
         He bore, with eagle flight, her standard on:
         New stars rose there—but never star grew dim
         While in his patriot grasp. Weep not for him.
           The heart is ne’er a castaway; its gift
         Falls back, like dew to earth—the soul’s own thrift
         Of gentlest thoughts by noblest promptings moved:
         He loved his country, and by her was loved.
         To him she gave herself, a sacred trust,
         And bade him leave his sword to rest and rust;
         And, awed but calm, nor timid nor elate,
         He turned to tread the sandy stairs of state.
         Modest, though firm; decided, cautious, clear;
         Without a selfish hope, without a fear;
         Reverent of right, no warrior now, he still
         Cherished the nation’s chart, the people’s will;
         Hated but Faction with her maniac brand,
         And loved, with fiery love, his native land.
         Rose there a foe dared wrong in her despite,
         How eager leaped his soul to do her right!
         Her flag his canopy, her tents his home—
         The world in arms—why, let the armed world come!
         Thus loved he, more than life, and next to Heaven,
         The broad, bright land to which that life was given;
         And, loving thus and loved, the nation’s pride,
         Her hope, her strength, her stay—the patriot died!
           Weep not for him—though hurried from the scene:
         ’Twill be earth’s boast that such a life has been.
         Taintless his truth as Heaven; his soul sincere
         Sparkled to-day, as mountain brooklets clear.
         O’er every thought high honour watchful hung,
         As broods the eagle o’er her eyried young.
         His courage, in its calmness, silent, deep,
         But strong as fate—Niagara in its sleep;
         But when, in rage, it burst upon the foe—
         Niagara leaping to the gulf below.
         His clemency the graceful bow that, thrown
         O’er the wild wave, Heaven lights and makes its own.
         His was a spirit simple, grand and pure,
         Great to conceive, to do and to endure;
         Yet the rough warrior was, in heart, a child,
         Rich in love’s affluence, merciful and mild.
         His sterner traits, majestic and antique,
         Rivaled the stoic Roman or the Greek;
         Excelling both, he adds the Christian name,
         And Christian virtues make it more than fame.
           To country, youth, age, love, life—all were given;
         In death, she lingered between him and Heaven;
         Thus spake the patriot in his latest sigh,
         “_My duty done—I do not fear to die._”
           Weep not for him; but for his country, tost
         On Faction’s surges: “think not of the lost,
         But what ’tis ours to do.”[2] The hand that stayed,
         The pillar that upheld, in dust are laid;
         And Freedom’s tree of life, whose roots entwine
         Thy fathers’ bones—will it e’er cover thine?
         Root, rind and leaf a traitor tribe o’erspread;
         Worms sap its trunk and tempests bow its head.
         But the land lives not, dies not, in one man,
         Were he the purest lived since life began.
         Upon no single anchor rests our fate:
         Millions of breasts engird and guard the state.
         Yet, o’er each true heart, in the nation’s night,
         Will Taylor’s memory rise, a pillared light;
         His lofty soul will prop the patriot’s pride,
         His virtues animate, his wisdom guide.
         Faction, whose felon fury, blind and wild,
         Would rend our land, as Circe tore her child,
         In sordid cunning or insensate wrath,
         Scattering its quivering limbs along her path—
         Ev’n Faction, at his name, will cower away,
         And, shrieking, shrinking, shield her from the day.
         Then up to duty! true, as he was true;
         As pure, as calm, as firm to bear and do;
         Nerve every patriot power, knit every limb,
         And up to duty: but _weep not for him_!

-----

[2] _Non quos amisimus, sed quantum lugere par sit cogitemus._
   Cicero.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                           “PSYCHE LOVES ME.”


                        BY THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH.


           I have no gold, no lands, no robes of splendor,
             No crowd of sycophants to siege my door;
           But fortune in one thing at least is tender—
             For Psyche loves me! Could I ask for more?

           I have no fame, nor to the height of honor
             Will my poor name on tireless pinions soar;
           Yet Fate has never drawn my hate upon her—
             For Psyche loves me! Could I ask for more?

           I have no station, know no high position,
             And never yet the robes of office wore;
           Yet I can well afford to scorn ambition—
             For Psyche loves me! Could I ask for more?

           I have no beauty—beauty has forsworn me,
             On others wasting all her charming store;
           Yet I lack nothing now which could adorn me—
             For Psyche loves me! Could I ask for more?

           I have no learning—in nor school nor college
             Could I abide o’er quaint old tomes to pore;
           But this I know which passeth all your knowledge—
             That Psyche loves me! Could I ask for more?

           Now come what may, or loss or shame or sorrow,
             Sickness, ingratitude or treachery sore,
           I laugh to-day and heed not for the morrow—
             For Psyche loves me—and I ask no more.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                            TO THE LOST ONE.


                            BY DUNCAN MOORE.


                         _Vale et Benedicite._

             In joy we met; in anguish part;
               Farewell, thou frail, misguided one!
             Young Hope sings matins in thy heart,
               While dirges ring in mine alone,
               Solemn as monumental stone.

             Thy life is Spring, but Autumn mine;
               Thy hope all flowers; mine bitter fruit,
             For hope but blossoms to repine;
               It seldom hath a second shoot;—
               A shadow that evades pursuit.

             Though poets are not prophets here,
               Yet Time must pass and you will see,
             While o’er dead joys you drop the tear,
               This world is one Gethsemane
               Where all weep—die—still dream to be.

             Flowers spring, birds sing in the young heart,
               But Time spares not the flowers of Spring;
             The birds that sang there soon depart,
               And leave God’s altar withering—
               Flowerless and no bird to sing.

             God pronounced all things good in Eden;
               Young Adam sang—not knowing evil,
             Until the snake plucked fruit forbidden,
               And made himself to Eve quite civil.—
               Did he tempt her, or she the devil?

             True, she made Eden Adam’s heaven;—
               Also the green earth Adam’s hell;
             Tore from his grasp all God had given;
               Cast him from bliss in sin to dwell;
               To make her food by his sweat and blood.

             Then what should man from woman hope,
               Who hurled from Paradise his sire?
             Her frailty drew his horoscope,
               And barred the gates of heaven with fire;
               Changed God’s intent for her desire.

             And what should she from man expect
               Who slew his God her soul to save?
             A dreary life of cold neglect;—
               For Eden lost;—a welcome grave,
               Where kings make ashes with the slave!

             A welcome grave! man’s crowning hope!
               All trust from dust we shall revive;
             Despite our gloomy horoscope,
               Incarnadined God will receive
               His children who slew him to live.

             A frail partition but divides
               Your husband from insanity;
             He stares as madness onward strides
               To crush each spark of memory—
               I gave you all—this you give me!
                         _Vale et Benedicite._

                 *        *        *        *        *




                       COQUET _versus_ COQUETTE.


                      BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.


             _Benedict._ One woman is fair; yet I am well:
          another is wise; yet I am well: another virtuous;
          yet I am well: but till all graces be in one woman,
          one woman shall not come in my grace.
                                    _Much Ado About Nothing._

        _Princess._ We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.

        _Rosaline._ They are worse fools to purchase mocking so.
        That same Biron I’ll torture ere I go.
        How will I make him fawn, and beg, and seek;
        And wait the season, and observe the times,
        And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes;
        And shape his service wholly to my behests;
        And make him proud to make me proud that jests!
        So portent-like would I o’ersway his state
        That he should be my fool, and I his fate.
                                            _Love’s Labor Lost._


                               CHAPTER I.

Nature had been very profuse in bestowing her favors upon Mr. Frank
Gadsby. In the first place she had given him a very elegant person, tall
and of manly proportions; secondly, a pair of large, dark-hazel eyes,
which could beam with tenderness or become fixed in the “fine frenzy” of
despair, as best suited the pleasure of their owner. Above them she had
placed a broad, white forehead, and adorned it with waving hair, of a
dark, glossy brown. Next, a splendid set of teeth attested her skill and
favor; and, to complete the _tout ensemble_, whiskers and moustache were
unsurpassable.

“Well,” said Fortune, rather ruffled, “if Nature has been so prodigal,
he shall have none of my assistance—not he! Let him make his way
through the world by his good looks, if he can. I will seek out some
ordinary looking fellow, whom nature has neglected, and with my golden
smiles atone for the want of those attractions which soonest win the
favor of the fair.”

And thus, under the ban of Fortune, Frank Gadsby left college.

He professed to study the law as a means of winning the favor of the
goddess, and had a small backroom, up three flights of stairs, furnished
with a table and two chairs, on which table several voluminous law-books
very quietly reposed, being seldom forced to open their oracular jaws to
give forth their sage opinions. This was his study. But the person who
should expect to find him there, I am sorry to say, would have a
fruitless visit, and drag up those steep stairs for nothing. He would be
much more likely to meet him promenading Chestnut street, gallanting
some beautiful young girl up and down its thronged _pavé_—or at the Art
Union, with an eye upon the living beauties there congregated, not upon
the pictures which adorn its walls.

And yet I would not wish to convey an erroneous opinion, in thus hinting
at the usual whereabouts of Mr. Gadsby. If he did not study, it was not
for the want of talents or aptness; for he possessed a fine mind, and
only needed some impetus to call forth those brilliant traits which were
concealed beneath an exterior so vain and trifling—for vain he
certainly was, and trifling I think I can prove beyond dispute. The fact
is, being a general favorite with the ladies, he was inclined to push
his advantage a little too far; or, in other words, Frank Gadsby was a
coquet—a male coquet, of the first magnitude—insinuating, plausible,
soft-voiced, and, in the words of Spencer,

        “When needed he could weep and pray,
          And when he listed he could fawn and flatter,
        Now smiling smoothly, like to summer’s day,
          Now glooming sadly so to cloke the matter.”

But although, like the fickle zephyr, he wooed with light dalliance
every fair flower of beauty which came across his path, he yet managed
to retain his heart safe in his own lordly bosom, and Frank Gadsby, the
charmer, alone possessed that love sworn to so many.

Yet, as one cannot very well live without money, especially in the
atmosphere which surrounded my hero, and as the law put little money in
his purse, and the small annuity left him by some deceased relative
almost as little, Mr. Gadsby resolved to make a rich match one of these
days; no hurry—there was time enough—he had but to pick and
choose—any lady would be proud to become Mrs. Frank Gadsby—and until
stern necessity forced it upon him, he would wear no conjugal yoke! And,
with this self-laudatory decision, he continued his flirtations.

A conversation which passed between Mr. Gadsby and his friend Clarence
Walton, will serve better than any thing I can vouch to substantiate the
charge of trifling which I have preferred against him.

This same charge Walton had been reiterating, but to which, with perfect
nonchalance, Gadsby answered:

“A trifler—a coquet! Come, that is too bad, Walton! To be sure, I pay
the ladies attentions, such as they all expect to receive from the
gentlemen. I give flowers to one, I sit at the feet of a second, go off
in raptures at the music of a third, press the fair hand of a fourth,
waltz with a fifth, and play the gallant to all—but it is only to
please them I do it; and then, I say, Walton, if they will fall in love
with me, egad, how can I help it!” and, saying this, our coxcomb looked
in the glass, as much as to say, “poor things, _they_ surely cannot help
it!”

“There was Caroline D——, for instance,” replied his friend; “why, as
well as I know your roving propensities, I was induced to think you
serious there!”

“What, Cara D.! I smitten! O, no! I said some very tender things to her,
to be sure, and visited her every day for a month—wrote her notes, and
presented her daily with some choice bouquet; but I was honorable; as
soon as I saw she was beginning to like me too well, why, I retreated.
Did, upon my honor! Here is her last note—read it Walton!” taking one
from a private drawer, evidently crowded with a multitudinous collection
of faded bouquets, knots of ribbon, gloves, fans, billet-doux, and
silken ringlets of black, brown and golden hair.

“No; excuse me, Frank, from perusing your love notes,” said Walton! “but
there was also Emma Gay.”

“Ah, poor Emma! She was a bewitching little creature!” was the answer.
“I wrote some verses to her beautiful eyes, and gazed into them so
tenderly that they folded themselves in their drooping lids to hide from
me. She gave me a lock of her soft, brown hair—I have it somewhere;
but, faith, I have so many such tokens that it is difficult to find the
right one. O, here it is!”

“And Cornelia Hyde!”

“She was a splendid girl! Sang like an angel, waltzed like a sylph! Yes,
I flirted with her half a season. I believe she did get a little too
fond of me—sorry for it; upon my soul I meant nothing!”

“But you can hardly say your attentions to Miss Reed meant nothing,”
said Walton, continuing the category.

“Why, what could I do?” answered Gadsby. “Confound it, if she did not
send for me every third night to sing duets with her, and every other
morning to pass judgment upon her paintings. I could not be otherwise
than civil.”

“Then, there was Julia Hentz, and her friend, Hatty Harwood.”

“O, spare me, Walton! Julia was a sentimental beauty, doating upon the
moon, and stars, and charity children! On my soul, it is no unpleasant
thing to stroll in the beautiful moonlight with a pretty, romantic girl
leaning upon your arm, and to gaze down into her languishing eyes as
they turn their brilliant orbs to the less brilliant stars. I tell you
what, it is a taking way, and came pretty near taking me; for I was
nearer popping the question to the sentimental, moon-struck, star-gazing
Julia, than I love to think of now; see what I drew from her fair hand
on our last moonlight ramble,” (showing a delicate glove.) “As for her
friend Harriet, although not so handsome as Julia, she is a shrewd,
sensible girl—told me, with all the sang-froid imaginable, that I was
flirting a little too strongly—that she could not think of having me
dangling after her, for two reasons—conclusive ones. First was, she did
not like me; and, secondly, my professions were all feigned, for she
knew me to be the greatest coquet extant—a character which, she added,
with provoking coolness, she had no respect for!”

“Good! A sensible girl, Frank!” said Walton, laughing.

“Hang me if I did not begin to like her all the better after that,”
continued Gadsby, “and had a great mind to pursue the game in earnest;
but I found it would not pay the exertion. She is as poor as myself.”

“What can you say of the sisters, Louise and Katrine Leslie, whom you
followed as their shadow for more than six weeks?” pursued the
indefatigable Walton.

“The brunette and the blonde,” answered Gadsby. “Both charming girls.
Louise, with those large, tender, black eyes—why, she melted one’s
heart as though but a lump of wax; but, then, the roguish glances of
Katrine’s sparkling gray ones! Well, well; a sensible fellow might be
very happy with either. Fact is, they were jealous of each other—ha,
ha, ha. If I wrote poetry to Louise, then Katrine pouted, and her little
white dimpled shoulder turned very coldly upon me. So, I gave flowers to
Katrine and pressed her dimpled hand; then the bewitching Louise cast
her reproachful eyes upon me, and a sigh came floating to me on her
rose-scented breath, at which I placed myself at her feet, and read the
Sorrows of Evangeline in Search of her Lover, and begged for the ringlet
on which a tear had fallen; then Katrine—but no matter; they were both
very fond, poor things!”

“In the words of the song, I suppose you might have sung,

        “‘How happy could I be with either,
        If the other charmer were away,’”

exclaimed Walton.

“Precisely. Have you finished your catechism?”

“I have; although many other names, whose fair owners you have trifled
with, are in my mind,” said Walton. “You must excuse my frankness,
Gadsby, when I tell you that your conduct is unworthy a man of honor or
principle. There is not one of the ladies of whom we have spoken, but
has had reason to think herself the object of your particular interest
and pursuit; and if, as you flatter yourself, they have seemed partial
to your attentions, that partiality has been awakened by those winning
words and manners which none better than yourself know how to assume.
Shame on the man, I say, who can thus insinuate himself into the
affections of a young, unsuspecting girl, merely to flatter his own
egregious vanity or his self-love! Coquetry, idle as it is, is more
properly the province of woman. Nature has given them sprightliness,
grace and beauty, which, in their hands, like the masterly fan in the
days of the Spectator, they are expected to use as weapons against us;
but for a man to assume the coquet, renders him contemptible. If there
is any thing which can add to its meanness, it is boasting of his
conquests—playing the braggart to his own vanity. Woman’s affections
are too sacred to be thus trifled with, nor should her purity be
insulted by the boasts of a—caricature, not a man! Burn all these idle
toys, Gadsby—trophies of unworthy victories—turn to more noble
pursuits, nor longer waste the talents which God has given you, nor the
time which can never be regained.”

“As fine a lecture as I ever listened to,” quoth Gadsby, feigning a
laugh. “When do you take orders, most reverend Clarence? Why, you
deserve to be elected moralist of the age—a reformer in the courts of
Cupid. However, I will give you the credit of honesty, and more—for I
confess you have given me some pretty sharp home-thrusts, which I will
not pretend to parry; but you take things too seriously, upon my soul
you do. One of these days you shall behold me a sober, married man, in a
flannel night-cap; but until then, Walton,

                           “_vive l’amour!_”


                              CHAPTER II.

“Blue or pink, Charlotte?”

“O, the blue, by all means, Lucia.”

“And pearls or rubies?”

“Pearls.”

“Blue and pearls! Why, I shall personate the very ideal of maiden
simplicity. I might as well appear all in white!”

“And it would be beautiful, Lucia,” answered her friend.

“Think so? Well, I have a great mind to try it, for you must know it is
my desire to look uncommonly well to-night,” said Lucia.

“But why to-night do you so particularly wish to shine?” inquired
Charlotte.

“Why? Why, don’t you know we are to meet that renowned enslaver of
hearts, that coquet, Frank Gadsby! Is not that enough to inspire my
vanity?” replied the lively girl.

“And you are resolved upon leading this renowned conqueror in your own
chains, Lucia?”

“He shall not escape them, Charlotte. I will bring him to my feet, and
thus become the champion of my sex,” said Lucia.

“And have you no fears for yourself? Where so many have yielded their
willing hearts, do you expect to escape without paying the same
penalty?”

“Fears!” answered Lucia. “Why, Charlotte, you don’t think I would give
up my affections to one who has no heart, and never had one; or, if he
had, it has been so completely divided and sub-divided, quartered and
requartered, and parceled out by inches, that not a fragment is left to
hang a hope upon! Why, I should as soon think of falling in love with
one of those effigies of beau-dom—those waxen busts at a barber’s
window—as with this hollow-hearted Frank Gadsby.”

“You are right, Lucia; for I certainly think that when you marry, it
would be well to have at least one heart between you and your _cara
sposa_, for I am sure you have none,” said Charlotte, laughing.

“Now, that is the unkindest cut of all, Charlotte—I no heart! Why, I am
‘all heart,’ as poor Mrs. Skewton would say,” answered Lucia.

“Ah, Lucia, it is conceded by all, I believe, that you are an arrant
coquette.”

“I a coquette!” exclaimed Lucia. “I deny the charge; there is my gage!”
drawing off her little glove and throwing it at the feet of Charlotte.

“I accept the challenge,” answered her friend. “In the first place, let
me remind you of a poor Mr. F——.”

“You need not remind me of him,” answered Lucia. “I am sure I shall not
soon forget him, with his tiresome calls every day, nor his attempts to
look tender with those small, twinkling gray eyes of his. Imagine an owl
in love, that’s all.”

“And yet you encouraged his visits. Then, there was young Dornton.”

“Dornton! yes, I remember. Poor fellow, how he did torment me with his
execrable verses!”

“Execrable! If I remember, Lucia, you once told me they were beautiful.”

“Ah, I tired of them, and him too, in a fortnight. Why, Charlotte, it
was a perfect surfeit of antimony wrapped up in honey.”

“Then, your long walks last summer with Dr. Ives.”

“Were very pleasant walks until he grew sentimental, and suddenly popped
down upon his knees, one day, in the high grass, like a winged
partridge; he looked so ridiculous that really I could not help laughing
in his face. It was a bitter pill; doctor, as he was, he could not
swallow it.”

“For six weeks you flirted with Henry Nixon,” continued Charlotte. “Why,
he was your shadow, Lucia; what could have tempted you to trifle with
him as you did? I am sure he loved you.”

“There you are mistaken,” was the reply. “He was only flattered by my
smiles and proud of being in my train. Such magnificent bouquets, too,
as he brought me! It was party season, you know, and his self-love, thus
embodied in a flower to be worn by me, was quite as harmless to him as
convenient for myself.”

“But not so harmless were the smiles and flattering words you bestowed
upon young Fairlie. O, Lucia, your thoughtless vanity ruined the
happiness of that young man, and drove him off to a foreign clime,
leaving a widowed mother to mourn his absence.”

“Indeed, Charlotte,” replied Lucia, in a saddened tone, “I had no idea
James Fairlie really loved me until too late. He painted so exquisitely
that, at my father’s request, he was engaged to paint my portrait. I
believe I gave him a lock of my hair, and allowed him to retain a small
miniature which he had sketched of me; but, as I told him, when he so
unexpectedly declared his love, I meant nothing.”

“Ah, Lucia,” said her friend, reproachfully, “and did you mean nothing
when you allowed the visits of Colonel W——?”

“O, the gallant Colonel! Excuse me Charlotte—a pair of epaulettes
answer very well, sometimes, in place of a heart. The Colonel’s uniform
was a taking escort through the fashionable promenades; and, then, he
was so vain that it did one good to see him lose the ‘bold front of
Mars’ in the soft blandishments of Cupid; and not forgetting, even when
on his knees, to note, in an opposite mirror, the irresistible effect of
his gallant form at the feet of a fair lady! So far, I think, I have
supported my ground against your accusation of coquetry,” added Lucia.

“On the contrary, my dear Lucia, I am sorry to say that you have but
proved its truth,” answered Charlotte. “Sorry, because there is, to my
mind, no character so vain and heartless as that of a coquette, and I
would not that any one whom I love should rest under such an imputation.
The moment a woman stoops to coquetry she loses the charm of modesty and
frankness, and renders herself unworthy the pure affection of any
noble-minded man. It betrays vanity, a want of self-respect, and an
utter disregard for the feelings of others. A coquette is a purely
selfish being, who, by her hollow smiles and heartless professions, wins
to the shrine of her vanity many an honest heart, and then casts it from
her as idly as a child the plaything of which he has tired. She is
unworthy the name of woman.”

“Hollow smiles—heartless professions! Why, what is all this tirade
about, Charlotte?” interrupted Lucia, indignantly. “I do not understand
you. You surely do not mean to class me with those frivolous beings you
have named.”

“It will do for young coxcombs and <DW2>s,” continued Charlotte, “whose
brains centre in an elegant moustache or the tie of a cravat, who swear
pretty little oaths, and can handle their quizzing glass with more skill
than their pen—it will do for them to inflate their vanity by the sighs
of romantic school-girls; but for a high-minded, noble woman, like you,
Lucia, to descend from the dignity of your position to the contemptible
artifices of a coquette—fie, Lucia, be yourself.”

“From no other but you, Charlotte,” she replied, “would I bear the
unjust imputation you cast upon me, and I should blush did I think
myself deserving one half your censure. I do not feel that I have
descended at all from the ‘dignity of my position,’ as you are pleased
to term it, and consider a coquette quite as contemptible as you do.”

“Ah, Lucia,” said Charlotte, archly,

        “O wad some power the giftie gie us,
        To see oursel’s as ithers see us.”

“Nonsense! I know I am not a coquette, Charlotte,” retorted Lucia. “Gay
and thoughtless I may have been; but I have never, nor would I ever,
trifle with the affections of one whom I thought any other feeling but
his own vanity had brought to my feet. But come, Madam Mentor, I will
make a truce with you. I must first vanquish this redoubtable Gadsby, in
honorable warfare, and with his own weapons, and then, I promise you, no
duenna of old Spain ever wore a more vinegar aspect than shall Lucia
Laurence, spinster.”

“But, Lucia—”

“No—no—no! stop! I know what you are going to say,” interrupted the
gay girl, playfully placing her little hand over the mouth of her
friend. “Positively I must have my way this time. And now for the
business of the toilet. Let me see—blue and pearls; no, white—white,
like a bride, Charlotte!”


                              CHAPTER III.

A brilliant company swept through the elegant apartments of Mrs. De
Rivers. It was the opening soirée of the season, and here had gathered,
in the regal train of Fashion and Display, the wealth, wit, beauty, and
grace, of Penn’s fair city. Music’s enchanting strains breathed delight,
fair forms moved in the graceful dance, and through the thronged
assembly gay groups were gathered,

                    “Where the swift thought,
        Winging its way with laughter, lingered not,
        But flew from brain to brain.”

“Who is that queenly young lady, dressed with such elegant simplicity,
talking with Miss De Rivers?” inquired Frank Gadsby of a friend at his
elbow.

“Where? ah, I see. Why, is it possible you do not know Miss Laurence?
She is the greatest coquette in Philadelphia. Beware—no one escapes who
comes under the influence of her bewitching eyes.”

“A fair challenge—I will dare the danger. Will you introduce me?” was
the reply.

“With pleasure—but remember my warning,” answered his friend. “Miss
Laurence is full of wit, and will cut up your fairest speeches to serve
her ridicule; she is proud, and leads her many captives after her with
the air of a Juno; she is sensible, and will carry out an argument with
the skill of a subtle lawyer. She is handsome—”

“That is easily seen,” interrupted Gadsby. “Pray spare me further
detail, and give me an opportunity, if you please, to judge of the rest
for myself.”

At the same moment when these remarks were passing between the
gentlemen, Lucia said to Miss De Rivers:

“Pray tell me, Fanny, who is that stylish gent lounging so carelessly
near the door?”

“Tall—talking with young Bright, do you mean?”

“The same.”

“Ah, beware!” was the answer; “that same gentleman wears a perjured
heart. He is no other than that gay deceiver—”

“Who—Mr. Gadsby!” interrupted Lucia.

“Yes, Frank Gadsby, whose vows of love are as indiscriminate as his
smiles.”

“I have heard of him, Fanny. Well, he is certainly very handsome,” said
Lucia.

“And as fascinating in his manners as he is handsome,” replied her
friend. “Why, he makes every woman in love with him—myself excepted,
Lucia; every fair lady elicits, in turn, the same homage, the same
tender speeches, and, in turn, finds herself the dupe of his flattery
and melting glances.”

“Perfectly absurd!” exclaimed Lucia, with a toss of her head.

“But see, Lucia, he has already marked you; look, he approaches, with
Earnest Bright. Now prepare for the introduction, which he has, no
doubt, solicited.”

The presentation was gone through with in due form. Lucia assumed an air
of the most perfect indifference, scarcely deigning to notice the
elegant man of fashion, who, by his most courtly smiles and winning
compliments, endeavored to attract her favorable attention. But both
smiles and fine speeches were thrown away; and, not a little chagrined
at his reception from the fair Lucia, Gadsby at length turned coldly
away, and began chatting, in a gay tone, with Miss De Rivers, while, at
the same moment, Miss Laurence, giving her hand to a young officer,
joined the dancers.

“Well, how do you like Miss Laurence, Frank?” said Earnest Bright, later
in the evening, touching the shoulder of Gadsby, who stood listlessly
regarding the gay scene.

“She has fine eyes, although I have seen finer,” was the answer; “a good
figure, but there are others as good; ’pon my soul, I see no particular
fascination about her—I could pick out a dozen here more agreeable.”

“Think so? Well, don’t be too secure, that’s all,” replied his friend.

“Never fear. I have escaped heart-free too long to be caught at last by
one like Miss Laurence. Less imperiousness, and more of woman’s
gentleness, for me,” said Gadsby. “And yet, it were worth while to
subdue this inflexible beauty, and entangle her in her own snares,” he
mentally added.

In the supper-room Charlotte Atwood found herself, for a moment, near
her friend Lucia.

“Well, you have met the foe; what think you now, Lucia?” she whispered.

“Of Mr. Gadsby, I suppose you mean,” she replied. “I am sadly
disappointed, to tell you the truth. I expected to find him too much a
man of the world to betray his own vanity. Why, he is the most conceited
fellow I ever met with.”

“Do you wonder at it? Such a universal favorite as he is with the
ladies, has reason to be conceited,” said Charlotte.

“Perhaps so. It would be doing him a kindness, therefore, to take a
little of this self-conceit out of him—don’t you think so?” Lucia
laughingly replied.

These two invincible coquettes are now entered for a trial of their
skill, in fair and equal combat. “Let him laugh who wins,” but a crown
to the victor, I say. A too minute detail of this well-contested game,
might prove tedious; therefore, we will pass over three months of
alternate frowns and smiles, and allow the reader to judge, by the
following chapter, to whose side the victory most inclines.


                              CHAPTER IV.

A pleasant spring morning found Frank Gadsby—where? Not promenading
Chestnut street—not lounging upon the steps of a fashionable hotel, nor
whispering smooth flatteries in the ear of beauty; but positively up
those three flights of stairs, in that gloomy back room dignified by the
name of study. Several books were open before him, and
papers—promising, business-like looking papers, with red tapes and huge
seals—were scattered around him. Indeed, the very man himself had a
more promising, business-like appearance; there was less of the dandy,
more of the gentleman, and the look of self-complacency lost in a more
serious, thoughtful expression. As I said before, Mr. Gadsby had
talents, hidden beneath the mask of frippery, which needed but some
impetus to bring into power, and this impetus seemed now to have been
supplied.

For three months the fashionable world had wondered why so often its
most brilliant ornament had been missing from its gay gatherings; nor,
perhaps, wondered more than Mr. Gadsby himself at his own sudden
distaste for those pursuits which had but lately afforded him so much
pleasure. Perhaps the remonstrances of his friend Walton had awakened
him to a sense of the unprofitable life he was leading; but, as we have
more to do with effects than causes, at present, we will not pursue the
inquiry.

For some time, perhaps half an hour, Gadsby steadily applied himself to
his studies—now turning over the pages of a folio, now lost in deep
thought, and then rapidly transferring his conclusions to paper. At
length, with a sigh of relief, as if he had mastered some complicated
problem of the law, he pushed books and papers from him, and, rising
from the table, walked back and forth the narrow limits of his study.

“Are you ready?” said Clarence Walton, unceremoniously opening the door.

“I believe I shall not go. Make my excuses, if you please, to the
ladies,” replied Gadsby, slightly embarrassed.

“Not go! Why, what has come over you, man? The party are now only
waiting your presence to start. What will Miss Laurence think? It will
never do to slight her invitation in this way. Come!”

“No!” answered Gadsby. “Say what you please for me to Miss Laurence; if
she chooses to take offense, it matters but little to me. The frowns of
one whose smiles are so general, are easily borne. I hope you will have
a pleasant ride.”

“But what new freak is this? Last night you were in fine spirits for the
excursion, and I am sure you received the invitation of Miss Laurence
with undisguised pleasure.”

“Think so? Well, I have altered my mind—that’s all,” said Gadsby,
carelessly.

“Ah-ha! Are your wings scorched, that you thus shun the presence of the
irresistible Lucia?”

“Cannot a man of business absent himself from the society of a flirt,
without giving a reason, Walton?” said Gadsby, tartly.

“A man of business! Good—excellent! I will report that weighty concerns
of the law interfere with your engagements. You wont go, then?”

“No!” and saying this, Gadsby took up a book and sat down, with a
dogged, resolute air.

“Well, I must be off. _Au revoir._”

No sooner did the door close after his friend, than, throwing away the
book, Gadsby started up, exclaiming:

“No! this syren—this coquette—this all fascinating woman, as she is
called, shall find I am not so easily made her dupe! She is a perfect
mistress of art, that is certain; for who that did not know her would
think the light of her beautiful eyes shone only to deceive—they are
heavenly! Who would think that sweet, gentle smile which she sometimes
wears, and the soft, witching tones of her voice were but superficial.
In outward appearance she is a type of all that is most perfect in
woman; and if this beauty of mind and person but extended to the
heart—ah, I dare not think of it! I am told she considers me a vain,
conceited fellow—ha! ha! she shall find yet that I am not what I have
appeared, and that this vain, conceited fellow, has at least wit enough
to see through and despise her arts. What a beautiful morning for the
ride. I was foolish not to go; besides, she may think—no matter what
she thinks. But then I would not be uncivil; as I accepted the
invitation, I should have gone. I wish I had. Let me see, it is now ten
o’clock; perhaps I may yet be in time. Yes, I will show her that I can
meet her fascinations unmoved, and leave her without one sigh of
regret—heigh, ho!” And Mr. Gadsby ended his soliloquy by catching up
the broom-brush and rapidly applying it to his shoulders and arms, and
then with a glance at the small looking-glass, he seized his hat, and
rushing down stairs, swiftly thridded his way through the crowd until he
reached the residence of Miss Laurence, whence the party were to set
forth. Running up the steps, he rang the bell.

Much to his mortification he learned the party had been gone about ten
minutes, and he was turning from the door, when the servant added,

“Miss Laurence is at home—will you walk in, sir?”

Then she had not gone! Strange!—no, he would not go in; but perhaps he
had better, and apologize for his apparent rudeness. Yes, he would go
in; and following the servant, he was ushered into the drawing-room.

Sending up his card, Gadsby sat down to await the entrance of the lady.
Opposite the sofa on which he reclined hung the full length portrait of
Miss Laurence—the work of the unfortunate young painter whom love of
her had driven from his native land. It was a beautiful creation of art,
but not more beautiful than the fair original herself. There was grace,
dignity, and repose in the attitude, harmonizing so perfectly with the
sweet expression of the features. The eyes of Gadsby were soon riveted
upon it, and rising from his seat, he approached nearer, and remained
standing before it, lost in contemplating its loveliness.

“Charming girl!” he exclaimed inadvertently aloud; “but false as thou
art charming!”

Imprudent man! These words were not lost; even as he spoke the fair
Lucia herself stood very near him, waiting for him to turn around that
she might address him; but as she caught this expression, a glow of
indignation suffused her features, and with noiseless footsteps she
glided from the room.

“How dare he say this of me!” she exclaimed, as she closed the door of
her chamber; “what reason have I given him for such a supposition! He
judges of me by his own false and fickle heart; yet why should I care
for the opinion of such a man as he is. How stupid in John to say I was
at home. I believe I will send word I am engaged; no, I will even see
him, and let him know by my indifference how little value I place either
on his society or his opinion.”

And Lucia re-entered the drawing-room with a stately step, and received
the salutation of her visiter with the utmost hauteur of manner.

“I have called, Miss Laurence, to apologize for my apparent incivility
in not keeping the engagement formed with you last evening,” said
Gadsby, with evident embarrassment.

“It was not necessary, Mr. Gadsby, to take so much trouble for that
which is of so little consequence,” answered Lucia, coldly.

“Pardon me, Miss Laurence, nothing but—but imperative business—”

“Pray do not exhaust your invention, sir, for excuses.”

Gadsby’s face crimsoned.

“Let me hope nothing serious prevented your accompanying the party, Miss
Laurence,” he at length said.

“To be more honest than you, I had no inclination to go, and therefore
did not.”

“But last evening—”

“O, last evening I arranged the excursion merely for my friends, not
feeling, of course, obliged to go with them,” was the answer.

“Then I certainly cannot regret so much the cause which prevented my
joining them, since the only attraction would have been wanting.”

This implied compliment was noticed only by a haughty bow.

“Cold, unyielding beauty!” thought Gadsby, carelessly turning over the
leaves of an annual.

“False, idle flatterer!” thought Lucia, pulling her bouquet to pieces.

“Those are beautiful flowers, Miss Laurence—what have they done to
merit such treatment at your fair hands!” said Mr. Gadsby, glad of the
opportunity to say something, for he felt himself completely embarrassed
by her repulsive manners. “You treat them with as little favor as you do
your admirers, and throw them from you with as little mercy. Fair,
beautiful flowers!” he added, gathering up the leaves of a rose from the
rich carpet, “fit emblems they are in their fragility of woman’s
short-lived faith and truth.”

“A lesson upon faith and truth from Mr. Gadsby is a paradox well worth
listening to!” retorted Lucia, with a sarcastic smile.

“Why so—do you then believe me destitute of them?”

“I have never deemed the subject worthy of reflection; yet, if I mistake
not, the world does not burthen you with such attributes.”

“And the world is probably right, Miss Laurence,” answered Gadsby,
piqued and angry. He arose, and walked several times across the room,
then again pausing before her, he said in a softened tone, “And yet,
although our acquaintance has been but brief, I trust I have given you
no reason to pass such severe censure upon me.”

A quick retort rose to the lips of Lucia, but as she raised her eyes,
they met those of Gadsby fixed upon her with an expression such as she
could not well define, so strangely were reproach and tenderness
blended. She was embarrassed, a deep blush mantled her face, and the
words were unspoken.

“She is not, then, utterly heartless—that blush belies it!” thought
Gadsby. “Say, Miss Laurence, may I not hope for a more lenient judgment
from you than the world accords?” he said, again addressing her.

“What ails me? Why do I tremble thus? Am I really to be the dupe of this
deceiver. No! let me be true to myself!” mentally exclaimed Lucia; and
then, with a look which instantly chilled the warm impulse in the heart
of Gadsby, she said,

“My opinion can be of very little consequence to Mr. Gadsby.”

“True, Miss Laurence. I wish you good morning,” and proudly bowing
himself out of the room, Gadsby took leave.

“Fool that I am to blush before him, who of all men has the least power
over me. It is well I know him, or even I might be deceived by such
looks as he just now cast upon me!” cried Lucia, as the door closed
after her visiter.


                               CHAPTER V.

It was some weeks after this ere Mr. Gadsby so far mastered his pride as
to call again upon the disdainful Miss Laurence. To his great regret he
was then informed that she was ill, very ill; and for many days his
inquiries were all met by the same painful answer. There is nothing
sooner breaks down the barrier of feigned indifference than the illness
of one whom we are schooling ourselves to avoid; and thus, in the heart
of Gadsby, coldness, distrust, disdain, yielded at once to the most
painful solicitude and deep tenderness. This sudden revulsion quite
overcame even the caution of this redoubtable coquet, so captious of any
appearance of surrendering the long boasted freedom of his heart; and
careless of what “the lookers on in Venice” might say, he called daily
to make inquiries, and sent to the fair invalid the most beautiful
flowers as delicate memorials of his sympathy, however he might once
have named them as fit emblems of the frailty of woman’s vows.

One morning early Clarence Walton entered the office of Gadsby.

“Good morning. Have you heard from Miss Laurence to-day, Walton?” was
the first inquiry.

“I am sorry to say she is not so well.”

“Is it possible! Who told you—are you sure?” said Mr. Gadsby, turning
quite pale.

“Yes; I am told she is better of the old complaint, but her friends
think now that she has a confirmed heart disease!” answered Walton,
gravely.

“Good God! you don’t say so! Is it incurable—is there no hope?”
exclaimed Gadsby, starting from his seat.

“Heart complaints are very dangerous in all cases, I believe,” replied
Walton, turning his head to conceal a smile, “yet I hope Miss Laurence
is not incurable; indeed, I feel quite confident that if she would but
call in a physician I could recommend, she might soon be restored.”

“And wont she? Have you spoken to her friends? Where is he to be
found—for not a moment should be lost; it is your duty to insist upon
it!” cried Gadsby, catching the arm of his friend, who seemed
provokingly indifferent.

“If she will only consent to see him, I shall gladly name him to
you—but why are you so much interested? To be sure, common kindness
dictates sympathy for the illness of one so young and beautiful; but why
you should take her sickness so much at heart, quite astonishes me,”
said Walton.

“Then, Walton, let me tell you that it is because I love her; yes, love
her more than my life!” replied Gadsby. “I know she despises me, for I
have appeared to her in a false light, for which I may thank my own
folly, and in giving my heart to her, I have sealed my own
wretchedness.”

Walton respected the feelings of his friend at this candid avowal, and
checking the well-merited jest which rose to his lips, said,

“In so hasty a decision, and one so fatal to your happiness, I think you
do both Miss Laurence and yourself injustice; if you really love her,
pursue the game boldly—I think you need not despair.”

Grateful for his forbearance on a point to which he was aware he was a
fair subject for ridicule, and somewhat encouraged by the words and
manner of Walton, Gadsby frankly continued,

“If her life is spared, I will show her that I am not what she has
thought me. Yes, I will study to win her love. O, my friend, should I
succeed—should I gain that rich treasure of beauty and intelligence, my
whole life shall be devoted to her happiness!”

What think you now, dear reader, of our invincible coquet?

Let us now change the scene to the sick room of Lucia.

“Look, my darling! see what beautiful flowers have been sent you this
morning!” said Mrs. Laurence, as Charlotte Atwood entered the room,
bearing in her hands two large and splendid bouquets.

“How beautiful!” cried Lucia, a faint color tinging her pale cheek.

“Yes, they are beautiful,” said her friend Charlotte; “really, Lucia, to
be so tenderly remembered in sickness, compensates for a great deal of
suffering. But you are favored; now I dare say poor I might look in vain
for any such fragrant tokens of kindness.”

“You carry them always with you, dear Charlotte; your heart is a perfect
garden of all fair and beautiful flowers,” said Mrs. Laurence, smiling
gratefully at the affectionate girl, who had shared with her so
faithfully the cares and anxieties of her child’s sick bed.

“Do you know who sent them?” asked Lucia, as she bent her head to inhale
their sweetness.

“That I shall not tell you,” answered Charlotte, catching the flowers
from her hand. “They are offerings from your captive knights, fair
princess; now choose the one you like best, and then I will tell you;
but be as wary as Portia’s lovers in your choice, for I have determined
in my mind that on whichever your selection falls, the fortunate donor
shall also be the fortunate suitor for your hand—come, choose!”

The bouquets were both beautiful. One was composed of the rarest and
most brilliant green-house flowers arranged with exquisite taste; the
other simply of the modest little Forget-me-not, rose-buds, and sweet
mignonette.

“In the words of Bassanio, then, I will say,

        Outward shows be least themselves,
        The world is still deceived with ornament;

and thus I make my choice,“ answered Lucia, smiling, and blushing as she
took the forget-me-not, and pressed them to her bosom.

“O happy, happy Mr. Gadsby!” cried Charlotte, laughing and clapping her
hands.

“Are these from him, then!” exclaimed Lucia, as she cast the beautiful
flowers from her. “Then pardon me, Charlotte, if I make a new choice;
Mr. Gadsby is too officious—pray bring me no more flowers from him!”

“You are really ungenerous, Lucia,” said Mrs. Laurence; “no one has been
so attentive in their inquiries since you have been ill as Mr. Gadsby. I
believe not a day has passed without his calling; they have not been
merely formal inquiries either—his countenance betrays a real
interest.”

Lucia , and a gentle sigh heaved her bosom—but she said, coldly,

“It is not difficult, dear mother, for Mr. Gadsby to feign an interest
for any lady upon whom he chooses to inflict his attentions.”

“Now, Lucia, I take a bold, defensive ground for Mr. Gadsby,” exclaimed
Charlotte. “You have abused the poor man unmercifully since you first
knew him, nor given him credit for one honest feeling. Well, there is
one comfort, you do not think worse of him than he does of you.”

“Then there is no love lost!” said Lucia, rather hastily.

“No, I am sure of that!” replied Charlotte, laughing. “There is none
lost, it is true, but treasured in your very hearts, hidden away as fire
beneath the snowy surface of Hecla, and which will one day suddenly
burst its frigid bonds—now mark my words!”

“You talk in enigmas, Charlotte, and I am too weary to solve them,” said
Lucia.

“Pardon me, dearest, I forgot you were sitting up so long—you must lie
down;” and as Charlotte turned to arrange the pillows for the fair
invalid, in an opposite mirror she saw Lucia take up the discarded
flowers, and—_press them to her lips_.


                              CHAPTER VI.

For the first time for many weeks, Lucia once more left her chamber, and
was able to receive the congratulatory visits of her friends. It was not
long ere Mr. Gadsby took advantage of her convalescence to express in
person his own pleasure at her recovered health.

She had never looked more lovely in his eyes than when he thus met her.
If, at the moment when he first looked upon her, her paleness pained
him, the bright color which instantly mantled her cheek, and the
agitation of her manner, sent a thrill of happiness to his heart. He
took her small, attenuated hand, and pressed it tenderly, as, in an
agitated voice, he told the happiness it gave him to see her again; and
as Lucia raised her eyes to reply, she saw his fine countenance beaming
with an expression which deepened her bloom and increased her
embarrassment.

“You have been very kind, Mr. Gadsby, during my illness,” she said, at
length, averting her face, “and I have to thank you for the many
beautiful flowers with which you have cheered my sick chamber.”

These kind words from her—from the proud Lucia, rendered Gadsby almost
beside himself with joy.

“Do not thank me for so trifling a favor, when, if I could, I would so
gladly have poured out my life’s blood to have saved you a moment’s
pain! O, my dear Miss Laurence—”

Now spare me, kind reader; I was never good at a love scene. Only just
fancy as pretty a declaration of love as you ever listened to, or poured
from your own throbbing heart, and you will have the result of Mr.
Gadsby’s interview with the fair Lucia, the self-styled “champion of her
sex”—yet proving herself a recreant, after all her boasting; for I have
been told, confidentially, that, so far from spurning this
“hollow-breasted Frank Gadsby” from her feet, when Miss Atwood rather
abruptly entered the drawing-room, she actually found her with her
beautiful head resting on his shoulder, while his manly arm was thrown
around her delicate waist—you must remember she was an invalid, and
required support!

There is a snug little house not a stone’s throw from the residence of
Mr. Laurence. It is furnished with perfect neatness and taste, and
there, loving and beloved, our two coquettes have settled themselves
down, in the practice of those domestic virtues and kindly affections
which contribute so largely to the happiness of life. Frank Gadsby is
now respected as an able lawyer, and bids fair to attain to great
eminence in his profession; and never did Lucia, even in the most
brilliant assembly, receiving the homage of so many eyes and hearts,
look more lovely than now, as in her neat morning dress, with her
beautiful hair in “braided tramels ’bout her daintie ears,” and

        “Household motions light and free,
        And steps of virgin liberty,”

she goes about dispensing order in her cherished home.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                          THE GENIUS OF BYRON.


                        BY REV. J. N. DANFORTH.


Twenty-five years ago it was announced, in an Edinburgh Journal, by Sir
Walter Scott: “That mighty genius, which walked among men as something
superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with
wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether
they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor
peasant, whose ideas never went beyond his daily task. The voice of just
blame, and that of malignant censure, are at once silenced; and we feel
almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly disappeared from
the sky, at the very moment when every telescope was leveled for the
examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness.” Thus did the
great “Wizard of the North” open his beautiful tribute to the memory of
the Noble Enchanter of the South, within whose fascinated circle had
been drawn the beauty, fashion, genius and literature of England. It was
as if the light of one star answered to that of another, or as if the
music of the one responded to the dying strains of the other—each in
his exalted sphere, when the “Great Unknown” thus uttered his voluntary
eulogy on a kindred genius, not to say imperial rival, of the first
magnitude, if the magnanimous spirit of the former could so conceive of
any cotemporary. The first fervor of admiring enthusiasm of the genius
of Byron having been cooled by the lapse of time, we are enabled to form
a more judicious estimate of it, and of the treasures it poured forth
with such lavish profusion. It is not now the image of the young lord we
see in the brilliant saloon, surrounded by gay admirers, with a face of
classic beauty, expressive eyes, an exquisite mouth and chin, hands
aristocratically small and delicately white, while over his head strayed
those luxuriant, dark-brown curls, that seem to constitute the mystery
of finishing beauty about the immortal brow of man and womankind, and
quite to defy the art of the sculptor. It is not such an one we see—a
living, moving form, like our own; but we think of the ghastly image of
death, we revert to the form mouldering in its subterranean bed,
relapsing into as common dust as that of the poorest beggar. But the
MIND remains—that which has stamped its burning thoughts on the poetic
page; it survives, imperishable, in another, an etherial sphere. It has
sought congenial companionship in one of the two states of perpetual
being, as inevitably demonstrated by reason as taught by revelation.
Byron himself might scorn to aspire after celestial purity and glory,
but he could draw with a dark and flagrant pencil the terrors of remorse
and retribution. He believed in the future existence of the soul,
whatever words of ominous meaning might at times be inserted to complete
a line or to indulge a whim of fancy. “Of the immortality of the soul,”
said he, “it appears to me there can be but little doubt, if we attend
for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used
to doubt it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very
independent of the body—in dreams, for instance. . . I have often been
inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear its
introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded
on the soul. For this reason Priestly’s materialism always struck me as
deadly. Believe the resurrection of the _body_, if you will, but not
without the _soul_.” Thus there were times when the “divinity stirred
within him,” and the soul asserted its regal prerogatives, and
vindicated its own expectations of the future. Nay, the sentiment must
have been habitual, for how often is it naturally implied in the ardor
of composition, as in those beautiful lines:

        “Remember me! Oh, pass not thou my grave,
        Without one thought whose relics there recline.
        The only pang my bosom dare not brave,
        Would be to find forgetfulness in thine.”

But our chief concern is with the _Poet_ Byron, not with the Philosopher
or the Peer. It has been said that in reviewing the lives of the most
illustrious poets—the class of intellect in which the characteristic
features of genius are most strongly marked—we shall find that, from
Homer to Byron, they have been restless and solitary spirits, with minds
wrapped up, like silk-worms, in their own tasks, either strangers or
rebels to domestic ties, and bearing about with them a deposit for
posterity in their souls, to the jealous watching and enriching of which
most all other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed. In
accordance with this theory, Pope said: “One misfortune of extraordinary
geniuses is, that their very friends are more apt to admire than to love
them.” True, they have often “dwelt apart,” have been so engaged in
cultivating the imaginative faculty, as to become less sensible to the
objects of real life, and have substituted the sensibilities of the
imagination for those of the heart. Thus Dante is accused of wandering
away from his wife and children to nurse his dream of Beatrice, Petrarch
to have banished his daughter from his roof, while he luxuriated in
poetic and impassioned ideals, Alfieri always kept away from his mother,
and Sterne preferred, in the somewhat uncouth language of Byron,
“whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.” But did not
Milton love his daughter with an intense tenderness? Than Cowper who a
more filial and devoted son to the memory of his mother? A fond father
as well as faithful son was Campbell. Burns, too, delighted in his
“fruitful vine,” and “tender olive plants.” In Wordsworth the beauty and
purity of domestic life shone forth to the end. Southey had a home of
love and peace. Scott was a model of a husband and father. Nothing can
exceed the exquisite tenderness of some passages in his diary at the
death of his wife. Goldsmith was neither husband nor father, yet his
fine poetry never alienated his heart from the softer scenes and
sympathies of life. It seemed rather to augment their claims, and the
clear current from the fountain of the imagination is seen to flow right
through the channel of the heart, sparkling with beauty and murmuring
natural music in the enchanted ear. Even the voluptuous Moore is said to
have repaired his fame and prolonged his days by settling down into the
sobrieties of domestic life.

To return to Byron. He might be said to be unfortunate in his cradle.
His young days were brought under sinister influences and associations.
The youth that is deprived of a healthy maternal guardianship, is to be
pitied. Such was Byron’s lot. Alternately indulged and abused, petted
and irritated, his temper was formed in a bad mould. Never could he
forget the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him when his
mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a “lame brat.”

Now, as men of genius, being by a law of genius itself susceptible of
strong impressions, are in the habit of reproducing those impressions in
their works, a man of a sensitive poetic temperament, like Byron, and
one so highly, so dangerously endowed with intellect, and a vigorous
power of expression, would give to all these thoughts and associations a
local habitation, a living permanence in poetry, romance, and even in
history, so far as it could be turned to such a purpose. In his Deformed
Transformed, Bertha says: “Out, hunchback!” Poor Arnold replies: “I was
born so, mother!” If, then, we find the traits of misanthropy, scorn,
hate, revenge, and others of the serpent brood, so often obtruding
themselves in his poetry as to compel us to believe they were combined
with the very texture of his thoughts and the action of his imagination,
imparting to it a sombre and menacing aspect, we must refer much of this
melancholy idiosyncracy to his early education. He was always grieving
over the malformation of his foot. Far more lamentable was the
malformation of his mental habits. But this, unlike the other, could be
corrected. He should have exerted himself to achieve so noble a victory.
Instead of this he resigned himself to the strength of the downward
current, and was finally dashed among the rocks, where other stranded
wrecks uttered their warning voice in vain. There did he take up the
affecting lamentation:

        “The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
        I planted—they have torn me, and I bleed.
        I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”

Goethe said of him, that he was inspired with the _genius of Pain_. The
joyous, cheerful spirit that pervades the works of men who, like Scott
and Southey, were educated under auspicious influences, and by a healthy
process grew up to manhood with an habitual regard to the sacred
sanctions annexed to their physical and moral being, contrasts strongly
with the morbid, gloomy, and often bitter and sarcastic temper of that
poetry, which seems to flow as if from some poisoned fountain of
Helicon. Sometimes, indeed, he forgets his fancied wrongs and real woes,
as when walking amid the ruins of imperial Rome, and kindred
contiguities, he throws himself back into the very bosom of classic
antiquity, and pours out the purest strains of eloquence, enriched with
the glowing sunlight of poetry. For a time the shadow of the evil spirit
appears to depart from him, and the true glory of his genius shines
forth without a cloud, while the sentiments that rise in his soul ascend
to a pitch of moral sublimity beyond which the ambition of the human
imagination could not desire to go. In the fourth canto of Childe Harold
his power of conception and expression culminated, and the publication
of that poem called forth a judgment of the Lord Chief Justice of the
Bench of Literature, Francis Jeffrey, which almost deserves a coequal
immortality with the poem itself, and it is impossible to account for
this splendid piece of criticism being left out of the recent collection
of the elegant Critic and Essayist, except on the supposition that the
most accomplished judges of other men’s works are some times incompetent
to fix the right estimate of their own. Genius does not always
accurately weigh its own productions, since Milton preferred his
Paradise Regained to his Paradise Lost, and Byron himself was
inveterately attached to a poem, or rather a translation, to restrain
him from publishing which cost the strongest efforts of his most
influential friends.

He was then a voluntary exile from his native land, that noble England,
which should be dear to all great men, because the mother of so many; he
was nursing many fictitious sorrows; affecting a scorn for his country
he could not feel; defying the judgments of men to which he was
painfully sensitive; mourning over the blasted blossoms of domestic
happiness; seeking new sources of gratification, or old gratifications
in new forms; in the midst of all he plunges into the arcana of classic
lore; he dives into the crystal depths of classic antiquity, to draw
forth beautiful gems, dripping with the sparkling element, untainted by
its passage through centuries of time. He reconstructs the whole scene
to our view, mingling his illustrations from those severer arts with the
sweet and graceful touches of a pencil that seems capable of catching
and delineating every form of beauty that can engage the fancy or awaken
the imagination. We have been filled with admiration, we have been fired
with enthusiasm, at some of these magnificent strains of poetry, noble
ideas, burning thoughts, assuming precisely the dress, the costume,
which best became them. Whether the poet takes us along the bank of some
classic stream, places us before some romantic city, flies over the
battle-field, luxuriates in a moonlight scene, lingers amid broken
columns and bubbling fountains, gazes on the splendid remnants of
statues that almost seem instinct with the breath of life, conducts us
to the roaring of the cataract, across whose dread chasm, “the hell of
waters,” is arched here and there the lovely Iris, with her seven-fold
dyes, “like Hope upon a death-bed,” then upward passes and beholds the
solemn mountains, the Alps or Appenines, scenes of heroic daring and
suffering, contemplates the mighty ocean, “dark, heaving, boundless,
endless and sublime, the image of eternity,” over whose bosom ten
thousand fleets have swept, and left no marks; finally, if he leads us
back to the Eternal City, not as in her pride of place and power, but as
oppressed with the “double night of ages,” as the “Niobe of nations,”
the “lone mother of dead empires,” sitting in solitude, “an empty urn
within her withered hands,” and draws mighty lessons from all these
objects, in all this we behold the splendor of true genius; we feel its
power; we wonder at the gifts of God thus bestowed; we tremble at the
responsibility of the man thus rarely endowed by his Creator. That regal
imagination, disdaining at times the vulgarities to which a depraved
heart would subject it, asserts its native dignity, and as it ranges
among more quiet scenes utters, with the solemnity of a prophet, such a
lesson as this:

        “If from society we learn to live,
          ’Tis solitude should teach us how to die.
        It hath no flatterers; vanity can give
          No hollow aid; alone, man with his God must strive.”

Besides that ORIGINALITY, which is a distinguishing attribute of the
genius of Byron, there is in his language a power of concentration,
which adds greatly to its vigor; some condensing process of thought is
going on, the result of which is much meaning in few words, and those
words kept under the law of fitness with more than military precision,
yet without constraint. Few feeble words or straggling lines disfigure
his poetry. That infamous effusion of a putrid mind, Don Juan, has most
of them, while it has also some exquisite gems of beauty. As the last
offspring of a teeming mind, it evidences a progress in sensual
depravity, and an effrontery in publishing it to the world, seldom
adventured by the most reckless contemner of the opinion of his fellow
men, or the most impious blasphemer of the majesty of God. Indeed, his
moral sense must have reached that region said to be inhabited by
demons, who “impair the strength of better thoughts,”

        “Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
         The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom.”

It was of this last, deeply characteristic work, that Blackwood’s
Magazine said, at the time: “In its composition there is unquestionably
a more thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and
profligacy, than in any poem which had ever been written in the English,
or indeed in any other modern language.” No poem, perhaps, ever
exhibited a more remarkable mixture of ease, strength, fluency, gayety,
mock-seriousness, and even refined tenderness of sentiment along with
coarse indecency. Love, honor, purity, patriotism, chastity, religion,
are all set forth or set at naught, just as suits the present, vagrant
fancy of the author. The Edinburgh Review justly said: “We are
acquainted with no writings so well calculated to extinguish in young
minds all generous enthusiasm and gentle affection, all respect for
themselves, and all love for their kind; to make them practice and
profess hardly what it teaches them to suspect in others, and actually
to persuade them that it is wise and manly, and knowing, to laugh, not
only at self-denial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambition, and all
warm and constant affection.”

The opinion of admiring and impartial critics, indeed, was, that the
tendency of his writings was to destroy all belief in the reality of
virtue, to make constancy of devotion ridiculous; not so much by direct
maxims and examples of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the habitual
exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had
been represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions,
and in the lessons of that same teacher who, a moment before, was so
pathetic and eloquent in the expression of the loftiest conceptions.

How nobly different was Burns, the peer of Byron in genius—analogous to
him, as well in the strength of passion as in the beauty of imagination;
attracted, like him, by the Circean cup, absorbed at times in his
convivialities, but never jesting with virtue, jeering at religion, or
scorning the recollections of a pious home and a praying father. They
rose by the force of their genius—they fell by the strength of their
passions; but the fall of the one was only a repetition of the lapses of
apostate humanity—guilty, indeed, but profoundly self-lamented, often
expiated in tears wept on the bosom of domestic affection. The fall of
the other was like that of the arch-angel ruined, defying Omnipotence,
even when rolling in agony on a sea of fire. Even when feeding his fancy
and invigorating his imagination amid the rural charms and sublimities
of Switzerland, Byron thus writes in his journal: “I am a lover of
nature and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue and welcome
privation, and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But in
all this, the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of more
recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life,
have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the
crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier,
the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon
my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the
majesty, and the power, and the glory around, above, and beneath me.”
Or, as expressed in another form:

                    “——I have thought
        Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
        In its own eddy, boiling and o’er wrought—
        A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame.”

Why all this? A part of the secret is disclosed by himself, in a letter
to his friend Dallas: “My whole life has been at variance with
propriety, not to say decency. . . . My friends are dead or estranged,
and my existence a dreary void.” It had not been so had passion been
held in check by principle, instead of principle being subjected to
passion. There is, indeed, too much reason to believe the truth, that in
connection with great versatility of powers, there is too often found a
tendency to versatility of principle. So the unprincipled Chatterton
said: “he held that man in contempt who could not write on both sides of
a question.” Byron delights in sketching the most odd and opposite sorts
and styles of pictures, and in abruptly bringing into rude collision the
most opposite principles, as if he would amuse himself with the shock
while he distresses the sensibilities of others. His powers were mighty,
various, beautiful; but they needed adjustment. There was no regular
balance-wheel in his intellectual and moral system. In another, or more
painful sense, than the pensive and drooping genius of Cowper expressed
it, might Byron say:

        “The howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed,
        Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost,
        And day by day some current’s thwarting force
        Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.”

His refined and exquisite sense of the beautiful in poesy could not be
surpassed. His pictures of mortal loveliness are quite inimitable, and
there is at times in the strains of his muse, in the very structure of
his language, a tenderness, which it would seem impossible could
co-exist with that severity so often, so naturally sharpening into
sarcasm, as if it were a part of the staple of his mind. The lash of
criticism having first roused up the dormant energies of his genius, his
first impulse was to seize the sharpest weapons of satire he could find,
and even the poisoned arrows of vituperation and slander, and with a
power and precision of archery seldom surpassed, to take his full
measure of retaliation. Nay, he became so fond of the sport, or so
unable otherwise to satisfy his revenge, that he multiplied innocent
victims, assailing his own relations, and even the noble, generous,
genial Scott, whose maxim it was never to provoke or be provoked,
especially in his intercourse with the irritable tribe of authors.
Firmly and calmly Scott resolved to receive the fire of all sorts of
assailants, who were engaged in the “raving warfare of satire, parody,
and sarcasm.” This sudden, bellicose production of Byron’s impulsive
genius—English Bards and Scotch Reviewers—cost even him shame and
sorrow the rest of his life. But still he was ever fond of sailing on
that quarter. His impulses must ever be of the fiery, fitful kind. It is
a wonder that, among all his paradoxes and peregrinations, he did not
pay a visit to the _Dead Sea_. That _would_ have been a congenial
pilgrimage for Childe Harold; and, then, for such a drake as he was to
swim in its waters! The exploit of Leander was only repeated by him from
Sestus to Abydos. The other would have been an original feat, worthy of
the taste of a man who preferred drinking out of a skull to the usual
mode of potation out of the ordinary goblets of civilization.

Severe, scornful, passionate, vengeful, as he often was, how do those
stern features relax, and the milder sensibilities rise into tender
exercise, when, as a father in exile, he writes:

        “My daughter! with thy name this song begun,
          My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end.
        I see thee not—I hear thee not—but none
          Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend
        To whom the shadows of far years extend;
          Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold,
        My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
        And reach into thy heart—when mine is cold,
        A token and a tone, even from thy father’s mould.”

Thus, with a certain style of uniformity everywhere observable,
especially in his characters, there is much variety of thought, emotion
and passion, evidential of great fertility of mind. If he does reproduce
the same hero under different names, and even give strong indications of
his identification with himself, still the wand of the enchanter invests
him with so many brilliant aspects, places him in so many imposing
attitudes, as to produce all the effect of novelty. His muse less
delights in planning incidents and grouping characters, than in working
out, as with the sculptor’s energetic art, single, stern, striking
models of heroic humanity, albeit stained with dangerous vices. His very
genius has been declared to be inspired with the classic enthusiasm that
has produced some of the most splendid specimens of the chisel; “his
heroes stand alone, as upon marble pedestals, displaying the naked power
of passion, or the wrapped up and reposing energy of grief.” Medora,
Gulnare, Lara, Manfred, Childe Harold, might each furnish an original
from which the sculptor could execute copies, that would stand the proud
impressive symbols of manliness or of loveliness, satisfying even those
intense dreams of beauty which poets and lovers sometimes indulge in
their solitary musings.

        “There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills
        The air around with beauty; we inhale
        The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
        Part of its immortality.”     Childe Harold.

This poem, indeed, is a perfect gallery of art, whose paintings and
statues are drawn and fashioned from the life, with the skill of a
consummate master and the facility of a powerful creative, divinely
endowed genius. He places his hand on the broad canvas of life, and
behold the figures that rise under his magic pencil! They are, indeed,
too often dark, stern, mysterious and awful, stained with vices, and
pre-doomed, for their guilt, to the pains of a terrible reprobation.
With such characters the genius of Byron had a strange sympathy. Hence
his admiration of that historical passage in the Scriptures, in which
the crime and the doom of Saul is so solemnly set forth at the tomb of
the prophet Samuel, whose sepulchral slumbers were so rudely disturbed
by the intrusion of the anxious and distressed monarch, now forsaken by
his God. Shakspeare, having finished off one of these dark and repulsive
pictures, as in his Macbeth or Lear, passes to the sketching of more
cheerful and even humorous portraits; but Byron, for the most part,
delights to dwell in darkness. Thus, in this poem, when the curse is
imprecated, the time midnight, the scene the ruined site of the temple
of the Furies, the auditors the ghosts of departed years, the imprecator
a spirit fallen from an unwonted height of glory to the depths of wo.
Principals and accessaries assume the sombre coloring of his
imagination, from which, however, at times, shoots a gleam of beauty,
that imparts loveliness to the whole scene. Milton, with his almost
perfect sense of beauty, and the fitness of things, would never have put
such words as these in the mouth of his Eve:

        “May the grass wither from thy foot! the woods
        Deny thee shelter—earth a home—the dust
        A grave! the sun his light! and Heaven her God!”
                                             Cain.

It was quite suitable for Byron to talk so in his Cain, but he has not
unsettled the position of the world’s estimate of its first mother, so
firmly established by Milton. He was, at the time, perhaps, thinking of
himself as Cain, and of his own mother as in one of her imprecating
paroxysms. Alas, that he should have gone on in lawless indulgence,
insulting, both in poetry and practice, the sanctity of domestic,
heaven-constituted, earth-blessing ties, until, after an abortive,
ill-directed struggle for poor Greece, he sunk into an early grave, at
36 aet., the very meridian of life! He was never satisfied with his
earthly lot, not even with the rare gifts of his genius, nor with the
achievements it made. He professed to consider a poet, no matter what
his eminence, as quite a secondary character to a great statesman or
warrior. As he had failed in the first character, he resolved to try the
second, and strike for the liberty he had sung. But Fame had no place
for him in this part of her temple. With the rest of the tuneful tribe,
he descends to the judgment of posterity as a Poet; with all men of
genius above the million, as more deeply responsible than they to the
author of all mercies; with all men whatever, as a MORAL AND IMMORTAL
BEING, accountable at the tribunal of God.

The mind would fail in any attempt to estimate the immense influence of
his genius and writings upon the youthful mind and morals of the past
generation—an influence to be augmented in a geometrical ratio in the
future. What is written, is written, constituting a portion of the
active influence circulating in the world—not to be recalled, not to be
extinguished, but to move on to the end of time, and finally to be met
by its originator, where all illusions will vanish, and all truth,
justice and purity be vindicated.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                             OUTWARD BOUND.


                        BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.


                 Fare ye well, our native valleys,
                   And our native hills farewell;
                 Though we part, your blessed memory
                   Shall be with us like a spell:—

                 For with you are souls in silence
                   Breathing for us hopes and prayers,
                 Loving eyes that weep in secret
                   Gazing on the vacant chairs.

                 Tender hearts made dear unto us
                   By unnumbered sacred ties,
                 Bend at eve their tearful vision
                   To the stars that o’er us rise.

                 There are children, darling children,
                   In the April of their years,
                 In their play they cease and call us,
                   And their laughter melts to tears.

                 There are maidens overshadowed
                   With a transient cloud of May,
                 There are wives who sit in sorrow
                   Like a rainy summer day.

                 There our parents sit dejected
                   In the darkness of their grief,
                 Mourning their last hope departed
                   As the autumn mourns its leaf.

                 But the prayers of these are with us
                   Till the winds that fill the sails
                 Seem to be the breath of blessings
                   From our native hills and vales.

                 Then farewell, the breeze is with us,
                   And our vessel ploughs the foam;
                 God, who guides the good ship seaward
                   Will protect the loved at home.

                 *        *        *        *        *

[Illustration: HE COMES NOT.

Painted by W. Brown and Engraved expressly for Graham's Magazine by W.
  Holl]

                 *        *        *        *        *




                             HE COMES NOT.


                         [WITH AN ENGRAVING.]


                              BY C. SWAIN.


              Night throws her silver tresses back,
                And o’er the mountain-tops afar
              She leaves a soft and moonlight track,
                More glorious than the day-beams are;
              And while she steers her moonlight barque
                Along that starry river now,
              Each leaf, each flower, each bending bough,
                Starts into beauty from the dark;
              Each path appears a silver line,
              And naught in earth—but all divine.

              Oh, never light of moon was shed
              Upon a maid’s more timid tread;
              And never star of heaven shone
              On face more fair to look upon.
              Hark! was not that a whisper light?
              A step—a movement—yet so slight,
              That silence holds its breath in vain
              To catch that fleeting sound again.
              Well may’st thou start, lone, timid dove,
              To-night he comes not to thy love.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                        RAIL AND RAIL SHOOTING.


BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF FRANK FORESTER’S “FIELD SPORTS,” “FISH
                           AND FISHING,” ETC.


[Illustration: THE VIRGINIA RAIL. (_Rallus Virginianus._)
THE SORA RAIL. (_Rallus Carolinensis._)]

With the present month commences the pursuit of this singular and
delicious species of game, and, although as a sport it is not to be
compared with the bolder and more varied interest of shooting over dogs
on the upland, still the great numbers which are killed, and the
rapidity with which shot after shot is discharged in succession, render
Rail-shooting a very favorite pastime, more especially with the
sportsmen of Philadelphia, in the vicinity of which city this curious
little bird is found in the greatest abundance.

Of the _rallidæ_, or Rail family, there are many varieties in America,
all of them more or less aquatic in their habits, and none of them
being, as the Corncrake, or Land Rail, of Europe, purely terrestrial;
though the little Yellow-Breasted, or New York Rail, _Rallus
Noveboracencis_, approaches the most nearly to that type, being
frequently killed in upland stubble or fallow fields.

The principal of these species, and those most worthy of notice,
are—the Clapper Rail, or great Salt-Water Rail, variously known as the
Meadow Hen, or Mud Hen; found very extensively along all the tide
morasses, and salt meadows of the Atlantic coast, but more especially on
the shores of Long Island, and in New Jersey, at Barnegat and Egg
Harbor. This, the scientific name of which is _Rallus crepitans_, is the
largest of the species; it is shot from row boats in high spring tides,
when the water has risen so much as to render it impossible for the
Rails either to escape by running, which they do at other times with
singular fleetness, baffling the best dogs by the celerity with which
they pass between the thick-set stalks of the reeds and wild oats,
constituting their favorite covert, or to lurk unseen among the dense
herbage.

This Rail, like all its race, is a slow and heavy flyer, flapping
awkwardly along with its legs hanging down and a laborious flutter of
the wings. It is, of course, very easily shot, even by a bungler, and
there is little or no sport in the pursuit, though its flesh is tender
and delicate, so that it is pursued on that account with some eagerness.

Second to the Clapper Rail, in size, and infinitely superior to it in
beauty and excellence of flesh, is the King Rail, _Rallus elegans_,
which is by far the handsomest of the species. It is commonly known as
the Fresh-Water Meadow Hen, though it is not with us to the northward a
frequent or familiar visitant, the Delaware river being for the most
part its northeastern limit, and very few being killed to the eastward
of that boundary. A few are found, it is true, from time to time, in New
Jersey, and it has occurred on Long Island, and in the southern part of
New York, though rather as an exception than as a rule.

Next to these come the Virginia Rail, which is represented to the right
hand of the cut at the head of this paper, and the Sora, which
accompanies it.

The Virginia Rail, _Rallus Virginianus_, notwithstanding its
nomenclature, which would seem to indicate its peculiar local
habitation, is very generally found throughout the United States, and
very far to the northward of the Old Dominion. I have myself killed it
in the State of Maine, as well as in New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, at the marsh of the _Aux Canards_ river, in Canada East,
and on the head waters of the Lake Huron Rivers. In the great wild rice
marshes of the St. Clair river, the Virginia Rail, like most of the
aquatic birds and waders, is very common. It is rather more upland in
its habits than its companion, the Sora, which delights in the wettest
tide-flowed swamps where the foot of man can scarcely tread, being
frequently killed by the Snipe-shooter in wet inland meadows, which is
rarely or never the case with the Sora.

The Virginia Rail is, however, not unfrequently found in company with
the other on the mud flats of the Delaware, and, with it, is shot from
skiffs propelled by a pole through the reed beds at high water.

The Virginia Rail is a pretty bird, measuring about eight inches in
length. The bill is about an inch long, slightly decurved, red at the
base and black at the extremity; the nostrils linear. The top of the
head is dark-brown, with a few pale yellowish streaks; a blackish band
extends from the base of the bill to the eye, and a large, ash-
spot, commencing above the eye posteriorily, occupies the whole of the
cheeks. The throat, breast, and belly, so far as to the thighs, which
partake the same color, are of a rich fulvous red, deepest on the belly.
The upper parts, back of the neck, scapulars, and rump, are dark
blackish-brown, irregularly streaked and dashed with pale
yellowish-olive. The wing-coverts are bright bay, the quills and tail
blackish-brown. The vent black, every feather margined with white. The
legs are red, naked a little way up the tibia. It is a very rapid
runner, but flies heavily. It affords a succulent and highly flavored
dish, and is accordingly very highly prized, though scarcely equal in
this respect to its congener, the Sora, which is regarded by many
persons as the most delicious of all game, though for my own part I
would postpone it to the Canvas-Back, _Fuligula valisneria_, the Upland
Plover, _Totanus Bartramius_, and the Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Fowl,
_Tetrao cupido_.

The Sora Rail, _Rallus Carolinus_, which is more especially the subject
of this paper, is somewhat inferior in size to the last species, and is
easily distinguished from it by the small, round head, and short bill,
in which it differs from all the rest of its family. This bill is
scarcely half an inch in length, unusually broad at the base, and
tapering regularly to a bluntly rounded point. At the base and through
nearly the whole length of the lower mandible it is pale
greenish-yellow, horn- at the tip. The crown of the head, nape,
and shoulders, are of a uniform pale olive-brown, with a medial black
stripe on the crown. The cheeks, throat, and breast, pale rufous brown,
fading into rufous white on the belly, which is mottled with broad
transverse gray lines. The back, scapulars, wing-coverts, and rump, are
olive-brown, broadly patched with black, and having many of the feathers
margined longitudinally with white, the quills dark blackish-brown, the
tail dark reddish-brown. The lower parts from the tail posteriorily to
the vent transversely banded with black and white. The legs long and
slender, bare a short way up the tibia, of a pale greenish hue. The iris
of the eye is bright chestnut. The male bird has several black spots on
the neck.

This bird is migratory in the United States, passing along the sea-coast
as well as in the interior; a few breed in New Jersey, on the Raritan,
Passaic, and Hackensack rivers; but on the Delaware and its tributaries,
which abound with wild rice, it is exceedingly abundant, as it is also
in the great northwestern lakes and rivers which are all plentifully
supplied with this its favorite food. It is rarely killed in New York or
to the eastward, though a few are found on the flats of the Hudson. It
winters for the most part to the south of the United States, although a
few pass the cold season in the tepid swamps and morasses of Florida and
Louisiana. All this is now ascertained beyond doubt, but till within a
few years all sorts of strange fabulous tales have been in circulation
concerning the habits of this bird; arising from the circumstance of its
very sudden and mysterious arrival and disappearance on its
breeding-grounds, the marshes being one day literally alive with them,
and the next solitary and deserted. Add to this its difficult, short,
and laborious flight, apparently so inadequate to the performance of
migrations thousands of miles in length, and it will be easy to conceive
that the vulgar, the ignorant, and the prejudiced, should have been
unable to comprehend the possibility of its aërial voyages, and should
have endeavored to account for their disappearance by insisting that
they burrow into the mud and become torpid during the winter, as I have
myself heard men maintain, incredulous and obstinate against conviction.
Audubon has thought it necessary gravely, and at some length, to
controvert this absurd fallacy, and in doing so has recorded the
existence of a planter on the James River, in Virginia, who is well
convinced that the Sora changes in the autumn into a frog, and resumes
its wings and plumage in the spring, thus renewing the absurd old legend
of Gerardus Cambrensis in relation to the tree which bears shell-fish
called _barnacles_, whence in due season issue _barnacle geese_.

The Sora Rail arrives in the Northern States in April or May. I saw one
killed myself this spring in a deep tide marsh on the Salem creek, near
Pennsville, in New Jersey, on the 25th of the former month, which was in
pretty good condition. They migrate so far north as to Hudson’s Bay,
where they arrive early in June, and depart again for the south early in
the autumn. They breed in May and June, making an inartificial nest of
dry grass, usually in a tussock in the marsh, and laying four or five
eggs of dirty white, with brown or blackish-white spots. The young run
as soon as they are hatched, and skulk about in the grass like young
mice, being covered with black down. The Sora Rail is liable to a
curious sort of epileptic fit, into which it appears to fall in
consequence of the paroxysms of fear or rage to which it is singularly
liable.

The following account of the habits and the method of shooting this
bird, from Wilson’s great work on the Birds of America, is so admirably
graphic, truthful, and life-like, that I prefer transcribing it for my
own work on Field Sports, into which I copied it entire as incomparably
superior to any thing I have elsewhere met on the subject, to recording
it myself with, perhaps, inferior vigor.

“Early in August, when the reeds along the shores of the Delaware have
attained their full growth, the Rail resort to them in great numbers, to
feed on the seeds of this plant, of which they, as well as the
Rice-birds, and several others, are immoderately fond. These reeds,
which appear to be the _Zizania panicula effusa_ of Linnæus, and the
_Zizania clavulosa_ of Willenden, grow up from the soft muddy shores of
the tide-water, which are, alternately, dry, and covered with four or
five feet of water. They rise with an erect tapering stem, to the height
of eight or ten feet, being nearly as thick below as a man’s wrist, and
cover tracts along the river for many acres. The cattle feed on their
long, green leaves, with avidity, and wade in after them as far as they
dare safely venture. They grow up so close together, that except at or
near high water, a boat can with difficulty make its way through among
them. The seeds are produced at the top of the plant, the blossoms, or
male parts, occupying the lower branches of the panicle, and the seeds
the higher. The seeds are nearly as long as a common-sized pin, somewhat
more slender, white, sweet to the taste, and very nutritive, as appears
by their effects on the various birds that feed on them at this season.
When the reeds are in this state, and even while in blossom, the Rail
are found to have taken possession of them in great numbers. These are
generally numerous, in proportion to the full and promising crop of the
former. As you walk along the embankment of the river, at this season,
you hear them squeaking in every direction, like young puppies. If a
stone be thrown among the reeds, there is a general outcry, and a
reiterated _kuk, kuk, kuk_—something like that of a Guinea-fowl. Any
sudden noise, or discharge of a gun, produces the same effect. In the
meantime, none are to be seen, unless it be at or near high water—for
when the tide is low, they universally secrete themselves among the
insterstices of the reeds; and you may walk past, and even over them,
where there are hundreds, without seeing a single individual. On their
first arrival, they are generally lean and unfit for the table, but as
the seeds ripen, they rapidly fatten, and from the 20th September to the
middle of October, are excellent, and eagerly sought after. The usual
method of shooting them in this quarter of the country is as follows.

“The sportsman furnishes himself with a light batteau, and a stout,
experienced boatman, with a pole of twelve or fifteen feet long,
thickened at the lower end, to prevent it from sinking too deep in the
mud. About two hours or so before high water, they enter the reeds, and
each takes his post—the sportsman standing in the bow, ready for
action, the boatman on the stern-seat, pushing her steadily through the
reeds. The Rail generally spring singly as the boat advances, and at a
short distance a-head, are instantly shot down, while the boatman,
keeping his eye on the spot where the bird fell, directs the boat
forward, and picks the bird up, while the gunner is loading. It is also
the boatman’s business to keep a sharp look out, and give the word
‘Mark,’ when a Rail springs on either side, without being observed by
the sportsman, and to note the exact spot where it falls, until he has
picked it up; for this once lost sight of, owing to the sameness in the
appearance of the reeds, is seldom found again. In this manner the boat
moves steadily through and over the reeds, the birds flushing and
falling, the gunner loading and firing, while the boatman is pushing and
picking up. The sport continues an hour or two after high water, when
the shallowness of the water, and the strength and weight of the
floating reeds, as also the backwarkness of the game to spring, as the
tide decreases, oblige them to return. Several boats are sometimes
within a short distance of each other, and a perpetual cracking of
musketry prevails above the whole reedy shores of the river. In these
excursions, it is not uncommon for an active and expert marksman to kill
ten or twelve dozen in a tide. They are usually shot singly, though I
have known five killed at one discharge of a double-barrelled piece.
These instances, however, are rare. The flight of these birds among the
reeds, is usually low, and shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to
more than fifty or one hundred yards. When winged, and uninjured in
their legs, they swim and dive with great rapidity, and are seldom seen
to rise again. I have several times, on such occasions, discovered them
clinging with their feet to the reeds under the water, and at other
times skulking under the reeds, with their bills just above the surface;
sometimes, when wounded, they dive, and rising under the gunwale of the
boat, secrete themselves there, moving round as the boat moves, until
they have an opportunity of escaping unnoticed. They are feeble and
delicate in every thing except the legs, which seem to possess great
vigor and energy; and their bodies being so remarkably thin, and
compressed so as to be less than an inch and a quarter through
transversely, they are enabled to pass between the reeds like rats. When
seen, they are almost constantly jetting up the tail, yet though their
flight among the reeds seems feeble and fluttering, every sportsman who
is acquainted with them here, must have seen them occasionally rising to
a considerable height, stretching out their legs behind them, and flying
rapidly across the river, where it is more than a mile in width. Such is
the mode of Rail shooting in the neighborhood of Philadelphia.

“In Virginia, particularly along the shores of James River, within the
tide-water, where the Rail, or Sora, are found in prodigious numbers,
they are also shot on the wing, but more usually taken at night in the
following manner:—

“A kind of iron grate is fixed on the top of a stout pole, which is
placed like a mast in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The darker
the night, the more successful is the sport. The person who manages the
canoe, is provided with a light paddle, ten or twelve feet in length;
and about an hour before high water, proceeds through among the reeds,
which lie broken and floating on the surface. The whole space, for a
considerable way round the canoe, is completely enlightened—the birds
start with astonishment, and, as they appear, are knocked over the head
with a paddle, and thrown into the canoe. In this manner, from twenty to
eighty dozen have been killed by three <DW64>s in the short space of
three hours.

“At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very numerous in the
lagoons near Detroit, on our northern frontier, where another species of
reed, of which they are equally fond, grows in shallows, in great
abundance. Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on whose judgment I
can rely, assure me that they differ in nothing from those they have
usually killed on the shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill; they are
equally fat, and exquisite eating.”

To this I shall only add, that a very light charge of powder and
three-quarters of an oz. of No. 9 shot will be found quite sufficient to
kill this slow flying bird. I have found it an excellent plan to have a
square wooden box, with two compartments, one holding ten lbs. of shot,
with a small tin scoop, containing your charge, and the other containing
a _quantum suff._ of wadding, placed on the thwarts of the boat, before
you, and to lay your powder flask beside it, by doing which you will
save much time in loading; a great desideratum where birds rise in such
quick succession as these will do at times, a couple of hundred being
some times killed by one gun in a single tide.

A landing net on a long light pole will be found very convenient for
recovering dead birds. No rules are needed for killing rail, as they lie
so close and fly so slowly that a mere bungler can scarce miss them,
unless he either gets flurried or tumbles overboard. When dead he is to
be roasted, underdone, like the snipe, served on a slice of crisp
buttered toast, with no condiment save a little salt and his own gravy.
If you are wise, gentle reader, you will lay his ghost to rest with red
wine—Burgundy if you can get it, if not, with claret. For supper he is
undeniable, and I confess that, for my own part, I more appreciate the
pleasure of eating, than the sport of slaying him; and so peace to him
for the present, of which he surely will enjoy but little after the
twentieth of September, until the early frosts shall drive him to his
asylums, in the far southern wilds and waters.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                             THE FINE ARTS.


Twenty-Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts.—Viewed in all its bearings and relations, we believe this to have
been the most important exhibition of this excellent institution. Not
that we think the present by any means the best collection of paintings
we remember to have seen in these same rooms. We believe it is generally
known that for some time past a considerable business has been done in
the way of importing paintings, statues, etc., for purposes of
speculation. Through the exertions of the individuals engaged in this
traffic, scores of foreign pictures have been scattered over the
country. With this business it is not our purpose to meddle. Undoubtedly
these gentlemen possess the right to invest their money in whatever will
yield the largest per centage, and we are glad to perceive that a
fondness for art exists to such an extent as tempts shrewd speculators
and financiers to enter into operations of this description. But,
keeping in view the state of affairs induced by the exertions of these
gentlemen, no surprise will exist in the mind of any one at the
unparalleled interest created in the public mind by the announcement
that the Directors of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, impelled by
a laudable desire to patronize art and artists, had offered certain
“prizes or sums of money,” to be competed for by artists all over the
world. The mere announcement put public curiosity on the _qui vive_.
Expectation was on tip-toe. At length, after protracted delay, on the
16th of May last, the Academy was thrown open to the public.

The two galleries—the south-east and the north-east—those usually
appropriated to the new works, contained one hundred and eighty
pictures, which, with some half dozen scattered through the old
collection, made about one hundred and ninety new pictures, by modern
artists. Of this number some seventy or eighty were foreign—the
majority of these German. How many were submitted for the “prizes or
sums of money” we are not informed.

328 of the catalogue—Death of Abel, etc., by Edward du Jardin, is
probably, so far as subject is involved, the most important work in the
collection. As a whole, we look on these pictures as a failure, as a
_dead failure_. Parts of the works are well drawn, and carefully, even
laboriously studied, but what could be more absurd than the habiliments,
attitude and expression of the angel in the first of the three? The Adam
in the centre is a regular _property_ figure—one of those _stock_
studies which embellish the portfolio of every young artist who has ever
been to Europe. The attitude and expression are such as can be purchased
by the franc’s worth from any one of the scores of models to be found in
almost every city in Europe. The Eve possesses more of the character of
a repentant Magdalene than the “mother of mankind.” The third picture is
to our mind the best; but, taken all together, the works are barely
passable—not by any means what we should have expected from a professor
of painting in one of the first schools in Europe. Religious art
requires abilities and perceptions of the first order—feelings
different from any manifested in this production.

Of a different order is 56—Rouget de Lisle, a French officer, singing
for the first time the Marsellaise Hymn, (of which he was the author,)
at the house of the Mayor of Strasburg, 1792—Painted by Godfroi
Guffens. Every thing here is fire and enthusiasm—the enthusiasm that
ought to pervade _every work of art_—which makes the intelligent
spectator _feel_ as the artist felt in its production. We have heard
various and conflicting remarks made upon this work, and the general
feeling among competent judges is that it is the best of the foreign
works. In our opinion it is, perhaps, _the best_ modern picture in the
collection. The grouping, actions, and expressions of the figures are in
admirable keeping with the subject, and the color is rich, agreeable,
and subdued.

_Murray’s Defense of Toleration._—P. F. Rothermel. If to the exquisite
qualities of color, composition, etc., Mr. Rothermel would add (we know
he can) _expression_, he would unquestionably be _the_ historical
painter of America. In a refined, intellectual perception of the general
character of his subject, Mr. R. is unsurpassed, perhaps unapproached by
any painter in the country. His pictures give evidence of the greatest
care and study—no part is slighted—nothing done with the “that will
do” feeling, which dreads labor. The picture under consideration
embraces a great number of figures—in fact the canvas is literally
covered, but not crowded, every inch giving evidence of intelligence and
design. Concerning the work, we have heard, from the public press as
well as from individuals, but one expression, that of the strongest
commendation—in which we heartily concur.

150, from the Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV., Scene 1st., also by Mr.
Rothermel, is conceived in the true feeling of the great poet. The
figures of Bottom, and Titania and the other fairies, are fine
conceptions. Some comparatively unimportant defects in drawing might be
remedied, without injuring the general effect.

Mr. Winner contributes a large work—Peter Healing the Lame Man at the
Beautiful Gate of the Temple. This picture possesses great merit, and
evinces a most commendable ambition. The grouping is well managed—the
expressions of Peter and John are good—the <DW36> capital. A stumpy
shortness of the figures mars the general character of this otherwise
beautiful production. Mr. Winner paints drapery well, and perhaps
unconsciously loads his figures with it. This defect is conspicuous in
his grand work of “Christ raising the Daughter of Jairus,” now in our
Art Union Gallery. The heads and extremities of Mr. Winner’s pictures
are perfect studies of color and modeling, and evince a masterly
knowledge of anatomy. We should be rejoiced to see the efforts of our
artists liberally sustained, as they ought to be, in the higher
departments of art.

41, The Happy Moment—105, The Recovery—Carl Hubner. These, no doubt,
are _popular_ works—as works of certain classes always will be. We have
heard much said in praise of them. They are beautifully, exquisitely
painted—especially the “Happy Moment,” in which the color and execution
are admirable. But in _sentiment_, or any of the _ideal_ qualities of
such subjects, they are lamentably deficient. Like nearly all the German
painters, Carl Hubner possesses much greater _executive_ than
_imaginative_ powers—he is more of a _mechanic_ than an _artist_. He
gratifies the _eye_ at the expense of the _mind_. Surely rustic love is
suggestive of something more than any thing hinted at in the “Happy
Moment.” “The Recovery” is composed of the usual conventional material
of such subjects—a simpering physician, with a nice diamond ring on his
finger, friends, with the old, upturned eyes and clasped hands, are
mechanically put together—all standing or sitting evidently on purpose
to be painted.

In landscape, the best works in the collection are Nos. 35 and 136, by
Diday, a Geneva artist—a Moonlight, No. 46, B. Stange, and No. 78, a
Roman Aqueduct at Alcala, with caravans of muleteers, F. Bossuet. The
two first are grand and imposing representations of scenery in the High
Alps—in color they are deep and rich in tone. The Moonlight, by Stange,
is the best we have ever seen. The tremulous luminousness of the
moonshine is rendered with matchless truth. The Roman Aqueduct, by
Bossuet, is, beyond question, the finest landscape in the collection.
Sunlight, local color, and texture were never painted with greater truth
than in this splendid production. Light and heat pervade every nook and
corner of the picture, from the dry, dusty foreground, off to the
distant mountains which close the scene. The work furnishes a grand
example of artistic execution and detail. No 52—Lake George—Russel
Smith—is a beautiful piece of open daylight effect, possessing great
truth. A Scene on the North River—Paul Weber—possesses much merit. The
color is fresh and natural, and the sky is the best we have seen by this
artist.

In the Marine department we have works from Schotel, De Groot, Pleysier,
Mozin, and other foreign artists, and from Birch, Bonfield, and
Hamilton, American. Hamilton stands preeminent in this department—his
“Thunder Storm,” and a poetic subject from Rogers’ Columbus, are the
best marines in the Academy. All his works in the present exhibition
have been so minutely described in the daily and weekly papers, and so
universally commended, that we deem it unnecessary to do more than add
our unqualified acquiescence in the favorable judgment thus far
expressed concerning them. Not one of our artists is attracting so much
attention at the present moment as Mr. Hamilton. We have no doubt he is
fully able to sustain the high expectations created by his works within
the last two years. Birch and Bonfield, each, maintain their well-earned
and well-deserved reputations. Of the foreign marines, those of Pleysier
and De Groot are the best—but there is nothing remarkable in either.

A Still Life piece by Gronland, a French artist, is a splendid example
of its class—as is, also, one of a similar character by J. B. Ord, the
best painter of such subjects in the United States.

Want of space prevents our entering into the discussion of the
comparative merits of native and foreign works. We feel no hesitation,
however, in saying that our artists, as a body, have every reason to
congratulate themselves upon the probable results of the present
exhibition.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Madonna del Velo.—Among the many works of art, which the unsettled
state of the Continent has brought into the London market, are a
collection formerly the property of the Bracca family of Milan. The gem
of the gallery is a remarkably fine and beautifully finished Madonna del
Velo by Raffaelle. This attractive picture derives its title from the
Virgin being represented as lifting a transparent veil from the face of
the sleeping Jesus. She is gazing on the infant with all the devoted
love of a mother, and with all a Madonna’s reverence beaming from her
eyes and depicted in her countenance and her posture; while the young
St. John is standing by, an attentive and interested spectator of the
proceeding. The colors are very beautiful, and are blended with the
highest taste and judgment. The details of the painting bear the closest
examination, and every new inspection brings to view some unobserved
charm, some previously undetected beauty. The figures are worthy in all
respects of the highest praise, and the landscape forms a delightful and
effective back-ground. To mention one little example of the singular
skill and finish displayed in this beautiful work, the veil which the
Virgin is represented as lifting from the sleeping infant’s face, is
marvelously painted. It is perfectly transparent, and seems so
singularly fine, filmy and light, that it has all the appearance of what
a silken cobweb might be imagined to be. It is a remarkable specimen of
the skill of the great artist even in the most difficult and delicate
matters. Indeed, the whole painting is a “gem of purest ray.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

“La Tempesta”—a new opera, the joint composition of Halevy and Scribe,
has been produced in London, with Sontag as Miranda, Lablache as
Caliban, Coletti as Prospero, and Carlotta Grisi as Ariel. Whether its
original source, the renown of the author of the libretto, the
reputation of the composer, or the combination of artistic talent
engaged, be considered, the opera is a work of unprecedented magnitude,
and naturally excited unusual interest on the part of all lovers of art.
Monsieur Scribe has made legitimate use of Shakspeare’s “Tempest” in its
transmutation into a libretto—supernatural agency and music are
employed, even Caliban sings, and Ariel, besides being an essentially
musical part, heads a band of sprites and elves “who trip on their toes,
with mops and mows.” But it was necessary, for lyrical purposes, that a
greater intensity of human interest should be added. M. Scribe has found
means of drawing these new points from Shakspeare’s own text. He says in
a letter to the lessee of Her Majesty’s Theatre, “I have done the utmost
to respect the inspirations of your immortal author. All the musical
situations I have created are but suggestions taken from Shakspeare’s
ideas; and as all the honor must accrue to him, I may be allowed to
state that there are but few subjects so well adapted for musical
interpretation.” We hope before long to have this last work from Halevy
transferred to the boards of the American Opera.

                 *        *        *        *        *

A Drama Thirty Centuries Old Revived.—A recent great theatrical wonder
of the hour in Paris, has been the revival of a piece from the Hindoo
theatre, “which was performed for the first time” some three thousand
years ago, in a city which no longer has an existence on the earth, and
written by the sovereign of a country whose very name has become a
matter of dispute. The piece was translated from the original Sanscrit
by Gerald de Nerval, and met unbounded success. All Paris has been
aroused by this curious contemplation of the ideas and motives of these
remote ages, and a whimsical kind of delight is experienced at finding
the human nature of Hindostan of so many centuries ago, and the human
nature of modern Paris, so exactly alike in their puerility and
violence, their audacity and absurdity, that the play may verily be
called a _pièce de circonstance_. King Sondraka, the author, seems to
have anticipated the existence of such men as Louis Blanc and Proudhon,
of Louis Bonaparte and Carlier; so true it is, that there is nothing new
under the sun, and that not an idea floats on the tide of human
intelligence but what has been borne thither by the waters of oblivion,
where it had been already flung.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Statue of Calhoun.—The marble statue of the late John C. Calhoun,
executed by Hiram Powers, at Leghorn, for the State of South Carolina,
was lost on the coast of Long Island, in July, by the wreck of the brig
Elizabeth.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Horace Vernet, the great historical printer, has been to St. Petersburg,
having been requested by the Emperor of Russia to furnish several battle
pieces illustrative of the principal scenes in the Hungarian campaign.

                 *        *        *        *        *

[Illustration: Drawn by Ch. Bodmer
Eng^{d} by Rawdon, Wright & Hatch

_Dance of the Mandan Indians._]

                 *        *        *        *        *




                            MANDAN INDIANS.


                          [WITH AN ENGRAVING.]


“The Mandans are a vigorous, well-made race of people, rather above the
middling stature, and very few of the men could be called short. The
tallest man now living was Mahchsi-Karehde, (the flying war eagle,) who
was five feet ten inches two lines, Paris measure, (above six feet
English.) In general, however, they are not so tall as the Manitaries.
Many of them are robust, broad-shouldered and muscular, while others are
slender and small limbed. Their physiognomy is, in general, the same as
that of most of the Missouri Indians, but their noses are not so long
and arched as those of the Sioux, nor have they such high cheek-bones.
The nose of the Mandans and Manitaries is not broad—sometimes aquiline,
or slightly curved, and often quite straight. Their eyes are, in
general, long and narrow, of a dark brown color; the inner angle is
often rather lower in childhood, but it is rarely so in maturer age. The
mouth is broad, large, rather prominent, and the lower jaw broad and
angular. No great difference occurs in the form of the skull; in general
I did not find the facile angle smaller than in Europeans, yet there are
some exceptions. Their hair is long, thick, lank, and black, but seldom
as jet and glossy as that of the Brazilians; that of children is often
only dark brown, especially at the tips; and Bradbury speaks of brown
hair among the Mandans. There are whole families among them, as well as
among the Blackfeet, whose hair is gray, or black mixed with white, so
that the whole head appears gray. The families of Sih-Chida and
Mato-Chiha are instances of this peculiarity. The latter chief was
particularly remarkable in this respect; his hair grew in distinct locks
of brown, black, silver gray, but mostly white, and his eyebrows
perfectly white, which had a strange effect in a tall, otherwise
handsome man, between twenty and thirty years of age. They encourage the
growth of their hair, and often lengthen it by artificial means. Their
teeth, like those of all the Missouri Indians, are particularly fine,
strong, firm, even, and as white as ivory. It is very seldom that you
see a defect or a tooth wanting even in old people, though, in the
latter, they are often worn very short, which is chiefly to be
attributed to their chewing hard, dry meat. The women are pretty robust,
and sometimes tall, but, for the most part, they are short and
broad-shouldered. There are but few who can be called handsome as
Indians, but there are many tolerable and some pretty faces among them.”

The engraving shows them in one of their celebrated dances, and is
beautifully done by the artists.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                      THE BRIGHT NEW MOON OF LOVE.


                      BY T. HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.


                  At the dawn she stood debating
                    With the angels at the door
                  Of Christ’s sepulchre, in waiting
                    For his body evermore.
                  Pure as white-robed Faith to Sorrow,
                    Pointing back to Heaven above—
                  (Happy Day for every Morrow)—
                    Was the Bright New Moon of Love.

                  Nun-like, chaste in her devotion,
                    All the stars in heaven on high,
                  With their radiant, rhythmic motion,
                    Chimed in with her from the sky.
                  Sweeter far than day when breaking,
                    Angel-like, in heaven above,
                  On the traveler lost, when waking,
                    Was the Bright New Moon of Love.

                  Thus she glorified all sweetness
                    With the angel-light she shed
                  From her soul in such completeness,
                    That she beautified the dead.
                  When an angel, sent on duty
                    From his Father’s throne above,
                  Saw the heaven-surpassing beauty
                    Of this Bright New Moon of Love.

                  For the Truth she loved was Beauty,
                    Because Beauty was her Truth;
                  And to love her was his duty,
                    Such as Boas owed to Ruth.
                  God had set his seal upon her,
                    Her divinity to prove,
                  And this angel wooed her—won her—
                    Won the Bright New Moon of Love.

                  Thus the Mission of True Woman
                    She did act out in this life—
                  Showed the Divine in the Human,
                    In her duties of the Wife.
                  For the Heaven that he had taken
                    Was so much like that above,
                  That the heaven he had forsaken
                    Was the Bright New Moon of Love.

                  For the kingdom of Christ’s glory,
                    Angel-chanted at her birth,
                  Is the theme now of the story
                    Which I warble through the earth.
                  And because this fallen angel
                    Took her home to heaven above,
                  I now write this New Evangel
                    Of the Bright New Moon of Love.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                               BARCAROLE.


                        WRITTEN AND COMPOSED FOR

                  G R A H A M ’ S   M A G A Z I N E .

                          BY R. J. DE CORDOVA.
[Illustration]

                  Come Love with me, the moonlit sea
                    Invites our barque to wander o’er
                  Its glassy face where e’en a trace
                    Of angry

[Illustration]

             wave is seen no more.
             Let Love repeat in accents sweet,
               The joys which only Love can tell
             And Passion’s strain sing o’er again,
               In those fond tones I love so well.

                             SECOND VERSE.

             Put fear away, and in the lay
               Of love be all but love forgot;
             Renounce the care of worldly glare.
               Oh heed its glittering falseness not,
             But come with me, with spirit free,
               United, never more to part,
             We’ll seize the time of youth’s gay prime.
               The summer of the heart.

                              THIRD VERSE.

             Then dearest rise, and let thine eyes,
               Where shine Love’s softest mightiest spells.
             Reveal the bright refulgent light
               Which in their lustrous beauty dwells.
             Let blissful song our joy prolong
               While gliding o’er the sparkling wave,
             And be the theme affection’s dream
               Which ends but in the grave.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                          REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.


    _In Memoriam. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._

The author of this exquisite volume, the finest ever laid on the altar
of friendship, is Alfred Tennyson, the most subtle and imaginative of
living poets. It derives its title from the circumstance of being
written in memory of Arthur Hallam, son of the historian of the Middle
Ages, friend of the poet, and lover of his sister. In a hundred and
eight short poems, all in one peculiar measure, Tennyson expresses not
merely his grief for the loss of his friend, but touches on all those
topics of sorrow and consolation kindred to the subject, or which the
character of young Hallam suggests. It may be said by some that the
object of the volume is unnatural and unmanly; that grief does not
express itself in verses but in tears; that sorrow vents itself in
simple words not in poetic conceits; and that the surest sign of the
deficiency of feeling is a volume devoted to its celebration. But if we
study the structure of Tennyson’s mind, we shall find that, however much
these objections will apply to many mourners, they are inapplicable to
him. The great peculiarity of his genius is intellectual intensity. All
his feelings and impressions pass through his intellect, and are
steadily scanned and reflected upon. In none of his poems do we find any
outburst of feeling, scorning all mental control, or rapidly forcing the
intellect into its service of rage or love. He has never written any
thing in which emotion is not indissolubly blended with thought. There
can be no doubt that he loved the person whom he here celebrates, but he
loved him in his own deep and silent manner; his loss preyed upon his
mind as well as heart, and stung thought and imagination into subtle
activity. The volume is full of beauty, but of beauty in mourning
weeds—of philosophy, but of philosophy penetrated with sadness. To a
common mind, the loss of such a friend would have provoked a grief, at
first uncontrollable, but which years would altogether dispel; to a mind
like Tennyson’s years will but add to its sense of loss, however much
imagination may consecrate and soften it.

This volume, accordingly, contains some of the finest specimens of
intellectual pathos, of the mind in mourning, we have ever seen, and, in
English literature, it has no parallel. The author is aware, as well as
his critics, of the impossibility of fully conveying his grief in
verses, and has anticipated their objection in a short poem of uncommon
suggestiveness:

        I sometimes hold it half a sin
          To put in words the grief I feel,
          For words, like nature, half reveal
        And half conceal the soul within.

        But for the unquiet heart and brain
          A use in measured language lies;
          The sad mechanic exercise,
        Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

        In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
          Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
          But that large grief which these unfold,
        Is given in outline and no more.

The following poem touches on the mind and character of young Hallam;
and, if a true picture, the world, as well as the poet, has reason for
regret at his early death:

        Heart-affluence in discursive talk
          From household fountains never dry;
          The critic clearness of an eye,
        That saw through all the Muses’ walk;

        Seraphic intellect and force
          To seize and throw the doubts of man;
          Impassioned logic, which outran
        The hearer in its fiery course;

        High nature amorous of the good,
          But touched with no ascetic gloom;
          And passion pure in snowy bloom
        Through all the years of April blood;

        A love of freedom rarely felt,
          Of freedom in her regal seat
          Of England, not the school-boy heat,
        The blind hysterics of the Celt;

        And manhood fused with female grace
          In such a sort, the child would twine
          A trustful hand, unasked, in thine,
        And find his comfort in thy face;

        All these have been, and thee mine eyes
          Have looked on: if they looked in vain
          My shame is greater who remain,
        Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.

In the poem which we now extract, we think our readers will recognize
the force which pathos receives by its connection with intense and
excursive thought:

        One writes, that “Other friends remain,”
          That “Loss is common to the race,”—
          And common is the commonplace,
        And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

        That loss is common would not make
          My own less bitter, rather more:
          Too common! Never morning wore
        To evening, but some heart did break.

        O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
          That pledgest now thy gallant son;
          A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
        Hath stilled the life that beat from thee.

        O mother, praying God will save
          Thy sailor, while thy head is bowed,
          His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
        Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

        Ye know no more than I who wrought
          At that last hour to please him well;
          Who mused on all I had to tell,
        And something written, something thought.

        Expecting still his advent home;
          And ever met him on his way
          With wishes, thinking, here to-day,
        Or here to-morrow will he come.

        O, somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
          That sittest ’ranging golden hair;
          And glad to find thyself so fair,
        Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

        For now her father’s chimney glows
          In expectation of a guest;
          And thinking “this will please him best,”
        She takes a ribbon or a rose;

        For he will see them on to-night;
          And with the thought her color burns;
          And, having left the glass, she turns
        Once more to set a ringlet right;

        And, even when she turned, the curse
          Had fallen, and her future lord
          Was drowned in passing through the ford
        Or killed in falling from his horse.

        O, what to her shall be the end?
          And what to me remains of good?
          To her, perpetual maidenhood,
        And unto me, no second friend.

The ringing of the Christmas bells prompts a grand poem, in which the
poet rises out of his dirges into a rapturous prophecy of the “good time
coming.” It is altogether the best of many good lyrics on the same
general theme:

        Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
          The flying cloud, the frosty light:
          The year is dying in the night;
        Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

        Ring out the old, ring in the new,
          Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
          The year is going, let him go;
        Ring out the false, ring in the true.

        Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
          For those that here we see no more;
          Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
        Ring in redress to all mankind.

        Ring out a slowly dying cause,
          And ancient forms of party strife;
          Ring in the nobler modes of life,
        With sweeter manners, purer laws.

        Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
          The faithless coldness of the times;
          Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
        But ring the fuller minstrel in.

        Ring out false pride in place and blood,
          The civic slander and the spite;
          Ring in the love of truth and right,
        Ring in the common love of good.

        Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
          Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
          Ring out the thousand wars of old,
        Ring in the thousand years of peace.

        Ring in the valiant man and free,
          The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
          Ring out the darkness of the land,
        Ring in the Christ that is to be.

After these extracts we hardly need to commend the volume to our readers
as worthy of the genius of Tennyson. It will not only give sober delight
on its first perusal, but it contains treasures of thought and fancy
which a frequent recurrence to its pages will alone reveal.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange. By John
    Francis. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 8vo._

This volume, invaluable to merchants and brokers, should be in the hands
of all who have reason to be interested in the secrets of stock-jobbing,
or who have a natural curiosity to understand the philosophy of the
whole system as now practiced in all civilized countries. It gives a
complete history of the National Debt of England, from the reign of
William the Third to the present day, with sketches of the most eminent
financiers of the Stock Exchange, and large details of the political
corruption attending the making of loans. To these are added stock
tables from 1732 to 1846; dividends of the Bank of England stock from
1694 to 1847; and descriptions of the various panics in the English
money market, with their causes and effects. The sketch of Rothschild is
a gem of biography, and while his avarice and cunning are deservedly
condemned, more than usual justice is done to the remarkable blending of
amplitude with acuteness in his powerful understanding. It is said that
on one loan he made £150,000. Though profane, knavish and ferocious,
with bad manners, and a face and person which defied the ability of
caricature to misrepresent, his all-powerful wealth and talents made him
courted and caressed, not only by statesmen and monarchs, but by
clergymen and fastidious aristocrats. It was his delight to outwit
others, but he himself was very rarely outwitted; and the few cases
given by Mr. Francis, of his being overreached by the cunning of other
brokers, are probably the only ones that the London Stock Exchange can
furnish. Though he lived in the most splendid style, gave expensive
entertainments, and occasionally subscribed to ostentatious charities,
he was essentially a miser; and his mind never was so busy in
calculations, in which millions of pounds were concerned, as to lose the
power of estimating within a sixpence, the salary which would enable a
clerk to exist.

Some curious anecdotes are given in this volume of the corruption of
members of Parliament. It is well known that during the reigns of
William the Third, Anne, George I. and George II., and a portion of the
reign of George III., a seat in the House of Commons was considered, by
many members, as a palpable property, from which a regular income was to
be derived by selling votes to the ministry in power. Sir Robert Walpole
and the Duke of Newcastle, were the greatest jobbers in this political
corruption; but Lord Bute, who entered office on the principle of
dispensing with the purchase of Parliamentary support, carried the
practice on one occasion to an extent never dreamed of by his
predecessors. He discovered that the peace of 1763 could not be carried
through the House without a large bribe. Mr. Francis quotes from Bute’s
private secretary, a statement of the sum distributed among one hundred
and twenty members. “I was myself,” says Mr. Ross Mackay, the secretary
in question, “the channel through which the money passed. With my own
hand I secured above one hundred and twenty votes. Eighty thousand
pounds were set apart for the purpose. Forty members of the House of
Commons received from me a thousand pounds each. To eighty others I paid
five hundred pounds a piece.” This system has been varied of late years.
The mode of purchase at present is by patronage. Offices and pensions
are now the price of votes.

It would be impossible in a short notice to convey an idea of the
variety of curious information which this book contains. To people who
have money to lose, it is a regular treatise on the art of preserving
wealth. Every private gentleman, smitten with a desire to speculate in
stocks, should carefully study this volume before he makes the fatal
investments.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _Evangeline; A Tale of Acadia. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
    Illustrated by forty-five engravings on Wood, from designs by
    Jane E. Benham, Birket Foster, and John Gilbert. Boston:
    Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 8vo._

This volume, in paper, binding, and illustrations, is the most beautiful
and unique we have seen from an American press. We hardly know, however,
if we are right in giving it an American origin, as its illustrations
are most assuredly English, and its typographical execution is exactly
similar to the English edition. No better evidence is needed of
Longfellow’s popularity abroad than the appearance of an edition of one
of his poems, embellished like the present, with engravings so beautiful
in themselves, and so true to the spirit of the scenes and characters
they illustrate. The book is a study to American artists, evincing, as
it does, the rare perfection to which their English brethren have
carried the art of wood engraving, and the superiority of the style
itself to copper-plate in many of the essential requisites of pictorial
representation. The poem thus illustrated, is more beautiful than ever,
its exquisite mental pictures of life and scenery being accurately
embodied to the eye. As a gift-book it will doubtless be very popular
among the best of the approaching season, as its mechanical execution is
in faultless taste, and as the poem itself is an American classic.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _The Rebels. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

Many of our elderly readers will recollect the sensation which this
admirable novel created on its original appearance. It was the first
work which gave Mrs. Child, then Miss Frances, her reputation as a
writer and thinker. The scene is laid in Boston, just before the
revolution, and contains a fine picture both of the characters and
events of the time. Many scenes are represented with great dramatic
effect, and there are some passages of soaring eloquence which the
accomplished authoress has never excelled. We cordially hope that the
novel is destined for a new race of popularity.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _Heloise, or the Unrevealed Secret. A Tale. By Talvi. New York:
    D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

We presume that our readers know that “Talvi” is the assumed name of
Mrs. Robinson. The present novel is a story of German and Russian life,
written by one to whom the subject is familiar, and will well repay
perusal. We think, however, that the accomplished authoress appears to
more advantage in works of greater value and pretension—such as her
late history of the literature of the Slavic nations.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter. Compiled from Various
    Sources. Together with his Autobiography. Translated by Eliza
    Buckminster Lee. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

This is a second edition of a charming biography, published in Boston a
number of years ago, and now very properly reissued. It not only
contains an accurate account of the life and works of one of the most
remarkable and peculiar of German writers, but its pages throng with
interesting allusions and anecdotes relating to his contemporaries. The
letters of Jean Paul, especially, are full of life and heartiness. In
the following passage, referring to his first introduction to Goethe, we
have a living picture painted in few words. “At last the god entered,
cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ‘The French are drawing toward
Paris,’ said Krebel. ‘Hem!’ said the god. His face is massive and
animated, his eye a ball of light. But, at last, the conversation led
from the campaign to art, publications, etc., and Goethe was himself.
His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but
sharp-toned, penetrating and calm. At last he read, that is, played for
us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through
the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic
Jean Paul. He did it again, when we took leave, and pressed me to call
again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic
course as closed. _His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with
soft, whispering rain-drops._ There is nothing like it.” Goethe’s
personal effect on his contemporaries, would lead us to suppose that he
was, to adopt Mirabeau’s system of nicknaming, a kind of
Webster-Wordsworth.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _Railway Economy; a Treatise on the New Art of Transport, With
    an Exposition of the Practical Results of the Railways in
    Operation in the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in
    America. By Dionysius Lardner, D. C. L. New York: Harper &
    Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

This is a very interesting account of the whole system of railways,
written by a person who understands it in its facts and principles. The
author has collected a vast amount of information, which he conveys in a
condensed and comprehensible form. The motto of the work is one of
Bacon’s pregnant sentences: “There be three things make a nation great
and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance of
men and things from one place to another.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. By Benson J. Lossing._

The Harpers have just commenced the issue of this beautiful work, which
is to be completed in twenty numbers. The mechanical execution is very
neat, and the wood engravings, from sketches by the author, are
admirable. Mr. Lossing writes with ardor and elegance, his mind filled
with his themes, and boiling over at times into passages of descriptive
eloquence. The book, when completed, will contain an account of the
localities and action of all the battles of the Revolution, illustrated
by six hundred engravings. The enterprise deserves success.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _A Discourse on the Baconian Philosophy. By Samuel Tyler, of the
    Maryland Bar. Second Edition Enlarged. New York: Baker &
    Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo._

This work is very creditable to American literature as a careful and
learned Discourse on a large subject, demanding a knowledge not only of
Bacon but of Plato and Descartes. Mr. Tyler evinces a thorough
comprehension of the externals of the subject, and few can read his book
without an addition to their knowledge; but we think he misses Bacon’s
method in his application of it to metaphysics and theology. The
peculiar vitality of Bacon’s axioms he often overlooks in his admiration
of their formal expression, and occasionally astonishes the reader by
making Bacon commonplace, and then lauding the commonplace as the
highest wisdom.

                 *        *        *        *        *

    _The Unity of the Human Races Proved to be the Doctrine of
    Scripture, Reason, and Science. By the Rev. Thomas Smith, D. D.
    New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol._

It is well known that Professor Agassiz, at the last meeting in
Charleston of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
startled the audience with an expression of disbelief in the doctrine
that all mankind sprung from one original parent. The present book, in
some degree the result of his remark, takes strong ground in favor of
the common faith on the point. It is worthy of attentive consideration
from all readers, especially as it popularises the important subject of
Races—a subject generally monopolized by technical _savans_; in
unreadable books.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Arthur’s Gazette.—We take great pleasure in calling the attention of
our readers to the prospectus of Mr. Arthur’s newspaper, as set forth in
full upon the cover of Graham for this month.

Mr. Arthur’s name is a household word the Union over; his stories have
penetrated every village of the country, and are read with delight for
their high moral tone and eminently practical character. The title is
therefore very fitly chosen, and we shall be much mistaken if the _Home_
Gazette is not welcomed from the start at thousands of firesides, as a
chosen and familiar friend.

Capital—a very necessary article in starting a new enterprise—has, we
are assured by Mr. Arthur, been abundantly secured, and with the
editor’s industry and energy, there can be no such word as fail.

Mr. Arthur has discovered the true secret of success—to charge such a
price as will really enable him to make a good paper—to make it so in
all respects; and then to _advertise_ so as to let the public know that
he has a first-rate article for sale at a fair living price. If he
allows no temptation of _temporary_ success to seduce him from the just
business ground thus assumed, he is as certain of ultimate and permanent
prosperity, as he can be of any problem in mathematics. A simple
business secret that a great many publishers we know of, have yet to
learn.

                 *        *        *        *        *

[Illustration:

LE FOLLET Paris, boul^{t}. S^{t}. Martin, 69.
Chapeaux de M^{me}. Baudry, r. Richelieu, 81—Plumes et fleurs de Chagot
  ainé, r. Richelieu, 73.
Robes et pardessus M^{me}. Verrier Richard, r. Richelieu, 77—Dentelles
  Violard, r. Choiseul, 4.
The styles of Goods here represented can be had of Mess^{rs}. L.T. Levy &
  C^{o}. Philadelphia,
 and at Stewart’s , New York.
Graham’s Magazine, 134 Chestnut Street.]

                 *        *        *        *        *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained as well as some
spellings peculiar to Graham's. Punctuation has 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 used for preparation of the ebook.

page 140, speech of Lenox, ==> speech of Lennox,
page 140, was for Malcom and ==> was for Malcolm and
page 145, at it’s outbreak ==> at its outbreak
page 148, added [_To be continued._
page 149, saw in vision ==> saw in a vision
page 149, “to saw the kernels ==> “to sow the kernels
page 153, thread-lace cape ==> thread-lace caps
page 153, in in leaving her ==> in leaving her
page 154, had forsight to arm ==> had foresight to arm
page 154, everybody eat, not ==> everybody ate, not
page 154, hour passsed in ==> hour passed in
page 155, turned to Miss Houton ==> turned to Miss Hauton
page 155, “Its a shameful ==> “It’s a shameful
page 155, “a very powerful ==> “is a very powerful
page 155, get a new troup ==> get a new troupe
page 155, was evident spite ==> was evident in spite
page 155, she could excute ==> she could execute
page 157, sleeping roses heart ==> sleeping rose’s heart
page 157, Our bark floats ==> Our barque floats
page 166, conditon of the ==> condition of the
page 171, nutricious fluids ==> nutritious fluids
page 173, roly-boly globularity ==> roly-poly globularity
page 177, perfect nonchalence ==> perfect nonchalance
page 178, some choice boquet ==> some choice bouquet
page 178, of faded boquets ==> of faded bouquets
page 179, lige a winged ==> like a winged
page 180, herself ununworthy ==> herself unworthy
page 180, and <DW2>s,” concontinued ==> and <DW2>s,” continued
page 183, to her hapness ==> to her happiness
page 186, in the of midst ==> in the midst of
page 189, her moonlight bark ==> her moonlight barque
page 192, pannicle, and the ==> panicle, and the
page 193, no part slighted ==> no part is slighted
page 193, fact the canvasi ==> fact the canvas is
page 194, musical intepretation ==> musical interpretation
page 195, BY T. HOLLY CHIVRES, M. D. ==> BY T. HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.
page 196, our bark to wander ==> our barque to wander
page 199, Longfellow’s popularaity ==> Longfellow’s popularity





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3,
September 1850, by Various

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