ungrounded antipathy against this harmless and interesting bird:

“Even those by whom it is entertained, can scarcely tell you why; only
they ‘hate Cat-Birds;’ as some persons tell you they hate Frenchmen,
they hate Dutchmen, etc., expressions that bespeak their own narrowness
of understanding and want of liberality. Yet, after ruminating over in
my own mind all the probable causes, I think I have at last hit upon
some of them; the principal of which seems to me to be a certain
similarity of taste, and clashing of interest, between the Cat-Bird and
the farmer.

“The Cat-Bird is fond of large, ripe garden-strawberries; so is the
farmer, for the good price they bring in the market; the Cat-Bird loves
the best and richest early cherries; so does the farmer, for they are
sometimes the most profitable of the early fruit; the Cat-Bird has a
particular partiality for the finest, ripe mellow pears; and these are
also particular favorites with the farmer. But the Cat-Bird has
frequently the advantage of the farmer, by snatching off the first
fruits of these delicious productions; and the farmer takes revenge by
shooting him down with his gun, as he finds old hats, wind-mills, and
scare-crows are no impediments in his way to these forbidden fruits; and
nothing but this resource—the ultimatum of farmers as well as
kings—can restrain his visits. The boys are now set to watch the
cherry-trees with the gun; and thus commences a train of prejudices and
antipathies, that commonly continue through life. Perhaps, too, the
common note of the Cat-Bird, so like the mewing of the animal whose name
it bears, and who itself sustains no small share of prejudice, the
homeliness of its plumage, and even his familiarity, so proverbially
known to beget contempt, may also contribute to this mean, illiberal and
persecuting prejudice; but with the generous and the good, the lovers of
nature and rural charms, the confidence which the familiar bird places
in man, by building in his garden, under his eye, the music of his song,
and the interesting playfulness of his manners, will always be more than
a recompense for all the little stolen morsels he snatches.”

                             THE CHICADEE.

This bird is also known as the Black-capt Titmouse. It is an active,
hardy animal, abounding in the Northern and Middle States, Canada, and
as far north as the 60th parallel. It is a familiar and amusing bird,
often making its appearance in our cities in fall or winter, and
approaching near to man, in order to glean from his bounty or
carelessness a supply of food. During the same seasons large flocks
scour the fields and woods in search of insects, larvæ, seeds and
berries. Kernels containing oil, and the fat of animals are greedily
devoured by them. When all these fail, they enter barns, sheds, and the
roofs of houses, clearing them of moths, eggs of insects, spiders and
wood-worms. They appear to be very little affected by extreme cold,
being provided with thick downy feathers, and a constitution naturally
robust. In winter, numbers collect on a snow-bank, and swallow small
pieces, either to slake thirst or for pleasure. On such occasions, and
generally when collecting food, they keep up a continual chattering,
which renders their places of haunt easy of discovery.

The Chicadee builds in the hollows of trees, the nest being constructed
of moss, feathers, and similar soft materials. The eggs are from six to
a dozen in number, white, speckled with red. They rear two broods in a
season. The young are strong and lively, requiring little assistance
from the old ones, but living with them, as one family, through the fall
and winter.

Beside the usual chicking note of this bird, from whence its name, it
has a harsh angry tone, to express anger or fright, and a kind of
melancholy wail, approaching a song. Sometimes its voice is said to
resemble the noise produced by sharpening a saw. “These birds,” says
Wilson, “sometimes fight violently with each other, and are known to
attack young and sickly birds that are incapable of resistance, always
directing their blows against the skull. Being in the woods one day, I
followed a bird for some time, the singularity of whose notes surprised
me. Having shot him from off the top of a very tall tree, I found it to
be the Black-Headed Titmouse, with a long and deep indentation in the
cranium, the skull having been evidently at some former time drove in
and fractured, but was now perfectly healed. Whether or not the change
of voice could be owing to this circumstance, I cannot pretend to
decide.” The unnatural practice of destroying their sick is however
denied of these birds by late writers.

The Chicadee is five and a half inches in length, and six in extent. The
whole upper part of the head and neck is black, and the body a
mouse-color. It has often been confounded with the European Marsh
Titmouse, but there seems good reason to consider this as an error. The
foreign bird is never seen in flocks, frequents streams or
water-courses, and has a note quite different from that of the Chicadee.
It is also an inch shorter.

                       ARIEL IN THE CLOVEN PINE.

                           BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

                Now the frosty stars are gone:
                I have watched them, one by one,
                Fainting on the shores of Dawn.
                Round and full the glorious sun
                Walks with level step the spray,
                Through his vestibule of Day,
                While the wolves that howled anon
                Slink to dens and coverts foul,
                Guarded by the demon owl,
                Who, last night, with mocking croon
                Wheeled athwart the chilly moon,
                And with eyes that blankly glared
                On my direful torment stared.

                The lark is flickering in the light;
                Still the nightingale doth sing—
                All the isle, alive with Spring,
                Lies, a jewel of delight
                On the blue sea’s heaving breast:
                Not a breath from out the West,
                But some balmy smell doth bring
                From the sprouting myrtle buds,
                Or from meadows wide, that lie
                Each a green and dazzling sky,
                Paved with yellow cowslip-stars,
                Cloud-like, crossed by roseate bars
                Of the bloomy almond woods,
                And lit, like heaven, with fairest sheen
                Of the sun that hangs between.
                All is life that I can spy,
                To the farthest sea and sky,
                And my own the only pain
                Within this ring of Tyrrhene main.

                In the gnarled and cloven Pine
                Where that hell-born hag did chain me,
                All this orb of cloudless shine,
                All this youth in Earth’s old veins
                Tingling with the Spring’s sweet wine,
                With a sharper torment pain me.
                Pansies, in soft April rains
                And April’s sun, from Thea’s lap
                Fill their stalks with honeyed sap,
                But the sluggish blood she brings
                To the tough Pine’s hundred rings,
                Closer locks their cruel hold,
                Closer draws the scaly bark
                Round my prison, lightning-riven;
                So when Winter, wild and dark,
                Vexes wave and writhing wold
                And with murk vapor swathes the heaven,
                I must feel the vile bat creep
                In my narrow cleft, to sleep.
                By this coarse and alien state
                Is my dainty essence wronged;
                The fine sense that erst belonged
                To my nature, chafes at Fate,
                Till the happier elves I hate,
                Who in moonlight dances turn
                Underneath the palmy fern,
                Or in light and twinkling bands
                Follow on with linked hands
                To the Ocean’s yellow sands.

                The primrose-bells each morning ope
                In their cool, deep beds of grass;
                Violets make the airs that pass
                Tell-tales of their fragrant slope.
                I can see them where they spring
                Never brushed by fairy wing.
                All those corners I can spy
                In the island’s solitude,
                Where the dew is never dry,
                Nor the miser bees intrude.
                Cups of rarest hue are there,
                Full of perfumed wine undrained—
                Mushroom banquets, ne’er profaned,
                Canopied by maiden-hair.
                Pearls I see upon the sands,
                Never touched by other hands,
                And the rainbow bubbles shine
                On the ridged and frothy brine,
                Tenantless of voyager
                Till they burst in vacant air.
                O the songs that sung might be
                And the mazy dances woven,
                Had that witch ne’er crossed the sea
                And the Pine been never cloven!

                Many years my direst pain
                Has made the wave-rocked isle complain.
                Winds, that from the Cyclades
                Came, to ruffle with foul riot
                Round its shore’s enchanted quiet,
                Bore my waitings on the seas;
                Sorrowing birds in Autumn went
                Through the world with my lament.
                Still the bitter fate is mine,
                All delight unshared to see,
                Smarting in the cloven Pine,
                While I wait the tardy axe
                Which, perchance, shall set me free
                From the damned witch, Sycorax.

                             REMINISCENCES;

                       OR AUNT ABBY’S PINCUSHION.

                           BY EMMA C. EMBURY.

Reader, do you love old houses, old books, old pieces of furniture, old
chairs, in short, all the relics of antiquity which fashionable people
usually discard and despise? If so, there is a bond of sympathy between
us, and I shall not be afraid to rake among the cold ashes of the past
for some unconsumed remnant of other days, even though I find only
trifles to reward my search. The very table on which I write, black with
age, and wearing a polish which nothing but years and years of manual
labor could have given it, owes its peculiar favor in my eyes to the
fact of its being more than a century old. What stories could it not
tell of days gone by; what reminiscences of tea-drinkings, and
christenings, and weddings, and funerals must be imbedded in every pore
of the old mahogany!

But for real hearty enjoyment of such a taste for homely antiquities,
commend me to an old-fashioned secretary, (_that_ is the true
name—_bureau_ is but a modern Gallicism,) with its desk, and
pigeon-holes, and secret-drawers, especially if it have been an heirloom
in possession of a maiden aunt, who died a spinster of seventy-two, or
thereabouts. What stores of relics it contains—locks of hair taken from
the heads of pretty children, whom we only recollect as wrinkled old
bodies that seemed never to have been young; mourning-rings, with
obituary inscriptions of persons whose existence we should never have
known but for this record of their death; golden knee-buckles and
sparkling paste shoe-buckles, reminding us of the days when the dress of
a gentleman was hopelessly inimitable to the rowdies and loafers of the
period; fragments of wedding-gowns, carefully rolled in bits of linen,
yellow with age—preserved in order to impress the next generation with
due respect for some wizened-up, childish old lady, who was once a
belle, and was married in a dress of silver brocade.

Perhaps, too, there are more tender memorials hidden in the secret
drawer. Let us touch the spring, and lo! what trophies of love’s power
are there. Shall we pause to read these verses? The ink is almost faded
out, the paper is falling to pieces in its folds, and he who wrote, and
she who with fluttering heart first read those tender lines, have long
since been dirt and ashes. Here is a quaint old ring—two hands clapped
together, and within the circle an inscription in old English
characters—the single word, “_Forever_.” She who once wore that ring
was an angel upon earth, and he who placed it there, lived and died “as
the beasts that perish;” will their union be, indeed, _forever_? Look at
that bracelet, woven of soft, silken hair, its golden clasps are dimmed
with age, but the hair still wears its rich sunshiny lustre, though she
who bestowed it as a parting gift to a sister, has been long a tenant of
the tomb. What is this, folded so carefully and so closely, like one of
the mummied mysteries of the pyramids? A curl, a thick, dark curl—not
the long flowing tress that might have floated over woman’s graceful
neck; these crisped and glossy tendrils tell of the strength and beauty
of manhood. A faint perfume rises from the inner folds of the
envelope—the ashes of a rose are there enclosed. And this is all! But
what a tale do these scanty memorials of a by-gone love impart to the
beholder! What matters it that the details of the story are forgotten?
What matters it whether the lady or her lover were to blame? It was a
love tender and true, but yet unhappy, else wherefore the curl of raven
hair so carefully cherished, and the dead rose so reverently buried
beside the more life-like memento? The love which brings happiness
becomes diffusive in its expression, and the love-tokens of the youth
and maiden are hidden, in after-days, beneath the accumulation of
affection’s later offerings. But when one flower becomes the treasure of
a life-time; when one lock of hair is guarded like the heart’s pearl of
price, then be sure that the hallowing touch of sorrow has been there.
It is only when grief and love go hand in hand, that trifles become holy
relics wherever they tread. Alas! do we not all wear upon our hearts a
reliquary, in which, impearled with tears, and adorned with the fine
gold of our best affections, we have enshrined some fragment of the
past, whose value we alone can tell?

But I am growing sad, serious, and, of course, dull; yet the object
which led me into this train of thought was certainly not calculated to
inspire any especial exhibition of sentiment. I was rummaging in such a
secretary as I have described, when I accidentally pulled out a round
pincushion, banded with silver about the middle, and attached to a
substantial silver chain, which terminated in a broad hook, for the
purpose of fastening it to the girdle of some thrifty housewife. On the
heavily-wrought circlet which made the equinoctial line of the purple
velvet globes which had been doomed to do duty in so humble a capacity,
were the initials “_A. L._,” and I at once recognized it as the constant
appendage of my respected and venerated relative, Aunt Abby.

I had just been reading a paragraph respecting the female clubs in
Paris, and the sight of this relic of old times, reminded me of the fact
that poor Aunt Abbey had lived just half a century too soon, for to the
day of her death the old lady’s favorite topic of conversation was the
“equality of the sexes.” How would she have rejoiced in the modern
attempts to enfranchise woman from her thraldom! how would she have
gloried in the idea of woman’s equal rights of property! how would she
have delighted in the prospect of political privileges for her sex! how
she would have expatiated upon the benefits of a female House of
Representatives! Aunt Abby (my _great_ aunt, by the by) was emphatically
an advocate for woman’s “_standing alone_,” (I believe that is the
phrase among the reformers,) and certainly, though she had a father,
uncles, cousins, to say nothing of a husband, she succeeded in
“_standing alone_,” to a certain extent, all her life.

But what, you will say, had a disciple of progress, a defender of
woman’s rights, a declaimer against woman’s slavery, to do with a
_pincushion_? Let me sketch her portrait at full length, and then you
will see how curiously she blended the duties and prerogatives of both
sexes in her own proper person.

Abigal, or, as she was usually called, Abby Leyburn, was the only child
of a learned and eccentric clergyman, who, being disappointed in his
hope of exercising his theories of education on a son, chose to educate
his daughter after the manner of a boy. Fortunately for him, the little
girl possessed a singularly strong and quick mind. She grasped at
knowledge as most children would at playthings, and imbibed wisdom with
as much zest as others would have sucked an orange. Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, mathematics, moral philosophy, to say nothing of the lighter
accomplishments of botany, geology, and natural history, were _among_
the young lady’s acquirements. Her father had determined to make her a
second Madame Dacier, and he really seemed likely to find her a sort of
female _Crichton_. Nor were these all her acquisitions. The details of
housekeeping, the thrift, management, and tidiness necessary to the
comfort of American homes, was as easy as the alphabet to Abby. She
could knit, and spin, and sew; she could bake, and brew, and cook; she
could milk, and churn, and make cheese; and nobody could so effectually
and rapidly “set things to rights.”

Beside all this, Abby Leyburn, at twenty years of age, was one of the
handsomest girls in the country. She was like nothing so much as the
effigy of Britannia on an English penny. Don’t laugh, reader, the
comparison is a highly complimentary one, but lest you should not
recollect the stately Mrs. Bull, I will describe my heroine. Abby was
just six feet high, but magnificently proportioned, a perfect Juno in
form, with large black eyes, a high forehead, full red lips, and a chin
as massive and as despotic in its expression as Napoleon’s. Her profile
was superb—bold, strongly-marked, but beautifully classical. Her
abundant hair, usually worn back from her brow, and gathered into a knot
at the back of her head, was black as the crow’s wing. Her teeth were
white, strong, and somewhat pointed in shape, a peculiarity which rather
impaired the softness of her smile, inasmuch as it was always associated
with the beholder’s remembrance of a somewhat similar conformation in
the dental perfections of the only wild animal who has ever been accused
of laughing—I mean the hyena. Not that Abby bore the slightest
resemblance to the disagreeable creature just named. But her smile
certainly lacked that indefinable charm which usually belongs to such
pleasant demonstrations of good humor.

As a specimen of the human animal Abby was perfect. The superb
proportions of her well-rounded figure, her complexion, pure, fresh, and
radiant with health, her firm step, quick, active motions, and great
strength of frame, combined to make her a model of “_le grande et beau
physique_.” Add to these personal attractions, her learning, and her
domestic accomplishments, and one might almost fancy that Aunt Abby, in
her younger days at least, came near being

        “That faultless monster which the world ne’er saw.”

What did she lack? you will ask. Certainly not virtues, for she abounded
in them. No; her defects were of a very different character. She had
every thing that one would consider desirable; but Aunt Abby lacked “one
sweet weakness.” There was the difficulty. She had no _weaknesses_. That
magnificent person of hers was brimful of strong, stubborn intellect. If
she had a heart, it was only a piece of mechanism, necessary to the
workings of the human machine. The brain—the strong, massive, abundant
brain, which lay behind that immense forehead, was the only motive power
which she acknowledged. Had she no benevolence, no kindly impulses, no
yearning tenderness of soul, no sentiment? Not an atom of either; yet
she did the most benevolent things in the world, lavished kindness upon
all who deserved it, was full of gentleness toward little children, and,
if judged by her deeds, would have seemed overflowing with the milk of
human kindness. But still it was the dictates of that cold despotic
intellect which she obeyed. “People must be in want, and must be
relieved by those who had means. Humanity was full of suffering—the
healthy must look after the sick. Little children are incipient men and
women, therefore must be taken care of. Sentiment was but the
_penumbra_, the shadow of a shadow as unsubstantial as itself.” Such
were among the apothegms of this singular woman. Reversing the
established axiom, that “there is nothing in the intellect which does
not come by the senses,” she seemed to assert that “there was nothing in
the senses which did not come by the intellect.”

As Mr. Leyburn held the office of president over one of the few
institutions of learning then in America, Abby had ample opportunity for
displaying her talents and beauty to the admiring eyes of sundry young
students. But Abby had no personal vanity; she knew she was handsome,
just as she knew she was strong and robust, and she would have scorned
the idea of being a belle. The young men, although belonging to that
peculiarly inflammable species known by the name of “College Boys,”
would as soon have thought of falling in love with the stone image of
Minerva on the college-green, as with the president’s learned daughter.
There was something in her sturdy good sense which everybody rather
liked, yet the want of softness and pliability in her character excited
a certain dread in all who came near her. Gifted with peculiar powers
both of mind and body, she had no compassion for feebleness of frame or
infirmity of purpose, for she had no clear perception of such things.
Her intellect was like a telescope through which she could examine the
grand and the remote, but she could not use it as a microscope to
examine the littlenesses of humanity. It is only through the sympathies
of the heart that we learn respect for the sufferings, or compassion for
the weaknesses of our fellows—and Abby Leyburn had no sympathies,
except those of the brain.

Perfectly self-possessed, because thoroughly conscious of her own vast
superiority, and utterly indifferent as to the impression she was likely
to make, Abby’s manners in society had all the elegance and nonchalant
ease which fashion tries so hard to teach. She conversed exceedingly
well on all subjects, and possessed the gift (most rare among talented
women) of making herself as agreeable to her own sex, as to the men.
Everybody admired her, yet everybody feared her; everybody acknowledged
her rare powers, yet everybody kept at a certain distance. “He comes too
near who comes to be denied,” so says one of the wits and demi-reps of a
past age; but Abby never suffered any one to reach the confines of
_Love-Land_, and, of course, none ever attained to _Declaration Point_.

It is difficult to imagine a character like that of Aunt Abby. A woman
without softness, and tenderness, and sentiment, seems such an anomaly,
that we are tempted to doubt the probability of her possessing any of
the qualities we seek in woman. But Abby had all the necessary knowledge
of womanly duties, all the considerateness we look for in woman, all the
attention to detail which is a woman’s peculiar province, and withal was
possessed of the most indomitable good humor. She was sententious,
because every truth became, in her mind, an axiom, to be stowed away in
the smallest possible space; she was dogmatic, because her opinions were
made up by her own unaided reflection, and were not to be changed or
modified by words. Her self-esteem was prodigious; it was not the puny
vanity which is so often dignified with such a title, it was rather a
magnificent _Johnsonesque_ self-appreciation, precisely like that which
looms so grandly beside the vain pettinesses of the biographer of the
great lexicographer.

She was certainly a great puzzle to every one. A woman who could quote
Longinus, read Homer, expound a disputed text in the Hebrew Bible, chop
logic with the most caviling acuteness, and talk of the Differential
Calculus as if it were the last new poem, was certainly something of a
wonder; but when that same woman was seen seated on the milking-stool,
or standing at the churn, or presiding over a blazing oven, or, broom in
hand, raising motes in the sunbeams by her vigorous attack upon the
“dust of the schools,” or displaying the beauty of her Juno-like figure,
as she paced to and from the huge spinning-wheel; she was certainly a
_world’s_ wonder. There is a half-remembered story of Aunt Abby’s
spirit, which no one dares to talk of openly; but it is believed that a
certain gentleman, now high in civic honors, received, when a youth of
twenty, a severe _caning_ from the lady, in consequence of some
impertinence, offered when under the influence of a deep potation. But
this may be only a piece of scandal.

The circumstances of Aunt Abby’s marriage were as peculiar as were her
own traits of character. Among the students of the college was a young
gentleman of large fortune and fine talents, who was afflicted with a
constitutional timidity and nervousness that paralyzed all his powers.
He was the only child of a widowed mother, who had foolishly resisted
the boy’s wish to go to school. He had therefore remained at home under
the charge of tutors, and when the death of his mother released him from
her affectionate tyranny, he entered college only to find himself
inferior in attainments to every one else, and a perfect butt, from his
timid shyness. He was full of poetry and sentiment. Among realities he
was lost and bewildered, but in the world of fancy he was a hero even to
himself.

To a gay set of frolicksome students nothing could offer better game
than the mental and personal peculiarities of the rich young Southerner,
who rejoiced in the name of Sampson Terricott, (a name soon transmuted
into Sampson Tear-your-coat) by his companions. Nothing could be more
ludicrous than the association of such a name with such a person. The
redoubtable Sampson was some five feet four inches in height, with an
exceedingly slight figure, small features of the style usually
designated as “_snub-faced_,” with a skim-milk complexion, and hair of
that _sun-burned_ flaxen color, so common among hatless country urchins.
His voice was a piping treble, with an occasional tone in it like that
of a cracked penny-trumpet. His hands and feet were ridiculously small,
and when attired in his college-gown, it required but little
caricaturing to draw his portrait in a style decidedly feminine, yet
decidedly like. He received all kinds of nicknames for his personal
peculiarities, but, perhaps, none annoyed him more than the _soubriquet_
of “Miss Dalilah,” which was generally bestowed upon him. Yet a mind
filled with images of beauty was hidden beneath this unpromising
exterior. He had no force of character, no iron strength of intellect,
but he had an unbounded imagination, and an unlimited reach of vision
into spiritualities. He was a poet, but lacking the key to a poet’s
harmonies of utterance, he expended his strength in the beautiful
cloud-land of metaphysics and became a moral philosopher.

Like all diminutive men Sampson had a decided partiality for large
women. The colossal beauty of Abby Leyburn had struck him when he first
beheld her, and he loved nothing so well as to contemplate her from a
distance, being quite too timid to address himself to her. Now there was
in Abby a certain propensity that might almost be called compassion
toward little people. She regarded them as a huge Newfoundland dog often
looks upon a poodle—their very insignificance and feebleness seemed a
claim upon her protection. It had often been remarked that Miss Leyburn
showed especial favor to those whom she denominated “the _poor little_
fellows,” and no one was surprised, therefore, to find her taking a
great fancy to Sampson Terricott. There was something so appealing in
his manner, such a tacit acknowledgment of inferiority in his humble
demeanor, such an irresistible claim to tender treatment in his timid
little voice and stammering speech, that Abby at once took to him as to
one of those “incurables” for whom the world is a hospital, and every
charitable person ought to be a nurse. To the gentle Sampson the lady
became “like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” She
overshadowed him so completely that he could find repose and refreshment
in her presence. Instead of attempting to be any thing, or do any thing,
or say any thing, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of a consciousness
of perfect insignificance as compared with the splendid creature, who
could excel any and every body. It was a comfort to see everybody look
small in her presence, but to the nervous student it was a positive
luxury to _feel small_, without being mortified and disgraced.

Sampson was not in love with his Minerva, he had no sentiment, no
passionate longings for any thing which the world of reality could
afford. His loves were all idealities, and could not be prisoned in
flesh. But with the same weak fondness that had once tied him to his
mother’s apron-string, he submitted to the guidance of Abby Leyburn.
What were Abby’s motives for troubling herself with little Sampson no
one knew or cared; but when it was known that she was soon to become
Mrs. Terricott, everybody thought that the large fortune of the tiny
lover would account for the whole affair.

As usual, the world was mistaken. Abby was as free from all mercenary
feelings as she was from all other frailties. But she had her own
notions about doing good. She saw in Sampson Terricott a highly
imaginative and gifted man, wasting mental power in immature schemes
which his timidity thwarted in their very outset, and suffering a fine
fortune to be idle in his hands for want of energy to take up his
stewardship. He was weak in health, and subject to attacks of morbid
spirits which sometimes threatened his reason. In a word, Abby saw that
he wanted some one to take care of him, and she fixed upon herself as
the fittest person. She was now nine-and-twenty, in the full bloom of
health and beauty, and, as she argued, “if society provides no other
resource for destitute females than marriage, I must marry, or at my
father’s death find myself a beggar.” Having come to this conclusion,
she decided that, as the giving herself a master was out of the
question, and the idea of possessing a slave in her husband was equally
disagreeable, she had better divide the difference, and unite herself to
one who needed a stronger nature on which to rest.

How the courtship was managed no one ever knew. I am inclined to think
there was not much love-making, and from the kind of dreamy surprise
which Sampson exhibited when questioned about his engagement, it is
presumed he was scarcely conscious of his own happiness. People said
that Miss Leyburn, reversing the usual order of things, had popped the
question to Sampson, who stammered out, “Yes,” through sheer fright. The
probability is that he did exactly as she directed him. She gave him to
understand she meant to marry him, and if he offered no resistance,
feeling rather pleased at being relieved from responsibility for the
rest of his life.

They were married in the chapel of the college, and the half-suppressed
glee of the saucy students may be imagined. All the blank walls about
the college were filled with caricatures, illustrative of the one idea,
“_paired, not matched_.” One of these charcoal libels was particularly
annoying, it represented a nondescript and beautiful winged animal—a
Hippogriff—with the face of a woman, curving her proud neck beneath a
rein held in the hands of Apollo, while directly beneath was a second
representation of the same magnificent creature tamely yoked with an ox
to the plough.

But Abby cared little for these things, and she would not suffer her
husband to pay any attention to them. She made him one of the best wives
in the world, and though she was ten years his elder, and thrice as big
as he, nobody ever believed that he repented the step he had taken.
Their home was at the South, and, during her husband’s lifetime, Abby
never paid a visit to her early friends. But she was visited by her
family connections, and we younger members of the circle were often
entertained in childhood by the accounts of Aunt Abby’s splendid service
of gold-plate, her massive silver ewers and basins in every
dressing-room, her Turkey carpets and rich hangings of Gobelin tapestry,
and all the paraphernalia of great wealth and magnificent tastes.

When Terricott died, she exhibited her peculiarities of character still
more strikingly. She knew people had accused her of marrying for money,
and she therefore induced him to make a will, bestowing all his large
property upon his own relatives, with the exception of a life-annuity of
a thousand dollars to his widow. “I don’t want his money,” she said, “I
took good care of him while he lived, and if he did not become a great
man, it was no fault of mine. He was rich, and I used his money freely,
because he liked to see fine things and good things around him; but now
I have no occupation here, and so I shall go back to my old home, and
‘live along.’ I dare say something will be given me to do.”

So she buried her poor little Sampson, handed over his property to the
heirs, and with the first instalment of her annuity in her pocket, came
to take up her abode in ——. But her father had been dead for many
years, and the place was filled with new people who knew little of her
history or of her character. She soon became disgusted with her new
home, and removing to New York, established herself there for the rest
of her life. In her later years she gave up taking exercise daily, and
in consequence of this she grew immensely large. I have the faintest
shadow of a reminiscence respecting her personal appearance at that
time. I was a child of perhaps five years old, and had a dear old aunt,
who was as little as a fairy, and almost as benevolent. This kind little
old body once took me to see our great Aunt Abby; but my head was
crammed full of fairy legends and nursery tales, and when I saw an
immensely large, fat woman sitting in a chair from which she could not
lift her ponderous form, and met the full stare of her great black eyes,
I thought of the Ogress who always devoured little children, and
immediately set up such a howl of terror that I was sent away in
disgrace. She died not long afterward, having lived to count her
_ninetieth_ birthday. Her disinterestedness left her no fortune to
bestow on her relatives, and but for her profile, (which, cut in black
paper, hangs in an attic room,) her pincushion, and the traditions which
remain in the family respecting her, all trace of her has vanished from
the earth.

Poor Aunt Abby! she used to shock the women of her time by talking of
women’s rights, and was guilty once of the enormity of wishing to be
Pope of Rome, in order to carry out some scheme for the advancement of
woman’s social position. She talked of _freedom_ until some pious prudes
really suspected she meant _license_, and she predicted that the time
would come when the genius of woman would rise superior to the imposed
trammels of sex. She should have lived in the present age, when she
would have seen woman’s struggles for emancipation, as exhibited in the
French female clubs, and the German free associations, to say nothing of
the free inquirers and declaimers against female slavery in this
country. She should have lived till now to exhibit a rare and peculiar
instance of masculine power submitting itself cheerfully to feminine
duties; and perhaps the knowledge that Aunt Abby, with all her mental,
moral, and physical perfections, lived and died unloving and unloved,
might go far toward settling the question of _woman’s rights_, and make
her quite satisfied with her easily accorded _privileges_.

                                PARTING.

               INSCRIBED TO MY SISTER ADELA M. WADSWORTH.

                      BY MRS. LYDIA JANE PEIRSON.

          Parting! Oh, is it not the bitterness
            Of life, and death? It were small agony
          If we and those we love—heart pressed to heart—
            With loving words, and blended prayers, could die.

          ’Tis not the rending of the strings of life
            That makes death terrible. The mental pain
          Is parting from our dear and beautiful,
            Who weep, and pray—and bid us live in vain.

          It is not that we fear to close our eyes,
            And rest from life’s long labor, that we cling
          To pain and weakness. ’Tis fond human love
            Which binds our soul with many a quivering string.

          To know that we shall never look again
            Into those loving eyes—shall never hear
          Again those sweet-toned voices—never clasp
            Again those forms, so tender, and so dear.

          Yes—parting is the bitterness of death—
            And life is full of parting. Day by day
          We see the cherished of our homes depart,
            As fledglings from the bird-nests flit away.

          The cherished ones, whom we have called our own,
            And loved so many years, that they have grown
          Into our hearts, and so become a part
            Of all that we have felt, or done, or known.

          The ever-present with us, who were wont
            To greet us every morning, with a smile,—
          To answer to our voices all day long,—
            And cheer us with love’s sunlight all the while.

          Each hath a separate mission to fulfill,
            And when their path diverges from our own,
          And they have said farewell! and turned away
            From our embrace—oh, then, we are _alone!_

          We miss them in all places, everywhere,
            And feel a shadow, and an emptiness
          Forever by our side—but most of all
            In the departed one’s accustomed place.

          We turn to speak to them—they are not there—
            The thought we would have uttered curdles back
          Upon our heart, a stifling agony—
            We turn our tearful gaze along the track

          By which the dear one went—’tis desolate—
            Our home—our heart—our world is desolate—
          In all the places where our joy has been
            Dark shades, and weeping memories, congregate.

          But when our only one—the dearest, best,
            The angel of our household, bids good-bye
          And goes forth weeping—then the tortured heart
            Reels with the anguish of the broken tie.

          Yes—parting is the bitterness of life—
            The agony of death—the ban of earth—
          The inevitable doom—to love—to part—
            Is the condition of our human birth.

          Thank God! there is a world where loved ones meet
            In perfect beauty, and unclouded joy,
          Where all is love—where parting never comes
            The everlasting rapture to destroy.

                          MONTGOMERY’S HOUSE.

   THE HEAD-QUARTERS OF GENERAL JACKSON AT THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.

                            [SEE ENGRAVING.]

By the courtesy of Mr. J. R. Smith, the artist, we are permitted to
present our readers with another view of a remarkable place. It is
Montgomery’s House, occupied by General Jackson as his headquarters at
the time of the celebrated Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. It is
surrounded by a splendid garden and grounds, and a beautiful grove of
cedars, which in this latitude grow to an immense size. The line of
intrenchments running up the lane by Montgomery’s House back to the
cedar swamp can still be distinctly traced. Farther down on the banks of
the river Mississippi are four live-oak trees, of immense size, forming
a square, and hanging with Spanish moss. Beneath these trees the British
commander, General Packenham, expired and was laid out. The spot is a
favorite resort of curious visiters from the city, who go to examine the
battle-ground. Below this is a splendid building, called the
Battle-Ground Sugar Refinery, on the rear of which is a group of
willows, with a mound in the centre, and surrounded by water. Here are
buried the 2000 British warriors who were slain in the battle of the 8th
of January. A planter’s house near the spot was occupied, previously to
the action, by General Packenham as his head-quarters. All these objects
form very suitable subjects for the pencils of our artists; and we are
only surprised that they have not been drawn, engraved and familiarized
to the public long ago.

                            EDITOR’S TABLE.

                         GOING AROUND THE HORN.

[Illustration: THE DIRECT ROAD TO FORTUNE.]

The search after the philosopher’s stone, after having vexed the
crucibles, and puzzled the brains of alchemists for ages, is about to be
rewarded with success. The New Eldorado promises wonders as great, and
riches as abundant, as the most vigilant of dreamers could imagine. The
phrase “untold gold” is meaningless now, for nothing but gold is talked
of, and the wealth, which was significant of immensity, when coupled
with “iron chests,” and “bank vaults,” is sicklied over, and feeble,
when contrasted with the fields of gold which glitter over thousands of
square miles. The very idea of “10,000 a year” has become paltry—it is
but the cost of a dish of bean-soup in California—suggestive of utter
poverty—the daily scrapings of the poorest and most indigent digger,
self-sold into slavery at the mines. The man who owns a square of brick
houses is nobody; an empty braggart, beside him who sits upon golden
rocks, with a cigar in his mouth, overlooking acres of the shining
metal. The very millionaire who used to strut about consequentially,
with his hands thrust into his pockets significantly, may be hooted now
by the veriest sweep in California, as a vulgar ragamuffin, who would
scarce have money enough to pay his board there on Saturday night, and
would be utterly at the mercy of his landlady.

Girard College, as a building, is very well, too, in its way, as
reminding us of an old gentleman who spent half a century in picking up
gold flakes, one at a time, with his fingers; a plodding, careful old
chap, who lacked the creative faculty altogether, and had no idea of
cradles and basins. His school-house on the Ridge Road will do very well
as a specimen of primitive architecture, and might answer very well as a
sort of outhouse to the palaces that we _will have_ in California—a
very good stable for the Master of Hounds to Col. Mason, or some other
grandee—but as it stands, it is _now_ a shocking evidence of parsimony,
utterly disgraceful to the spirit of the age. A sort of lame and
impotent conclusion to a long life foolishly spent.

The far-famed Genoese must have been a dull fellow, or he would have
cast anchor in the Pacific, near San Francisco, instead of sailing about
to no purpose. It is a wonder, too, how he could have been so stupid,
when there are so many routes to this desirable haven. He certainly must
have been a bad navigator, too, or he would have got around the Horn,
some how, at some time. But it was reserved for the adventurous sons of
Jonathan to make the successful voyage, and with _the sword_ to cut the
way to fortune; and instead of diverging like radii from a common
centre, to take the outermost limit, and to claim as his own all that he
walked around and into. Showing conclusively that instead of bothering
one’s brain about getting on the right side of a question, the safest
plan is to get around it, and capture it by force of arms, as the Irish
policeman did with the mob. It saves a vast deal of hair-splitting, in
argument, and of irrelevant discussion, first to knock down your man,
and then pinion him. Or like the Cockney sportsman, who winged the
farmer’s goose, to say that you “only came out for the sport, and now
that you have hit the bird, you have no objection to _buy him_.”
Jonathan in this case, and in this way, seems to have bagged the one
that laid the golden eggs, which we used to read of in the nursery, and
a whole army of his sons are now rifling her nest. She must have left
behind her a prolific brood if she satisfies the whole of them. The
veriest “madness of the moon,” must impart a feeble pulse, compared with
the fever which Jonathan’s lucky hit has created in the whole family.
Homeopathy is totally at fault in this disease. Nothing but very violent
depletion will answer.

The whole body of family physicians, and nurses of the body politic,
have their hands full, and the multifarious practice sets at naught the
popular idea of perfection, as a necessary consequence. It is gratifying
to know, however, that in the absence of consistent and regular
treatment, the popular remedy applied in its early stages is conducive
to longevity and temperance—those who suffer severely from the fever
here, and become exceedingly dry in consequence, are cured effectually
by GOING AROUND THE HORN. Lying water-logged under the
Tropics being rather a different thing from “getting up a breeze” at
home, and being eminently suggestive of sobriety of thought, and of
taking their cue from facts, and not from “Q Brandy” continually. Young
gentlemen whose systems were here so relaxed, that nothing but taking a
horn two or three times before dinner could impart to them sufficient
energy to attend to out-of-door business, go around it, and give it a
wide berth in the hot latitudes—shut their ears to all hints about the
nervous system, and with a hardihood and self command, acquired within
view of sharks and yellow fever, brave danger without stimulus, and
fatigue without “having a gale.”

Under the tropics, too, young men, who have at home found no difficulty
in getting three sheets in the wind, have rather an aerial difficulty in
getting a flowing sail, and with plenty of steam on board, in the
absence of propellers, decline all invitation to steam it, “to drive
dull care away”—the trouble greatest, for the time, being to get away
themselves. The boys who often declared in the hours of midnight that
they were the particular individuals who feared no noise, and who would
not go home till morning, wish themselves very quietly dozing there, and
are perfectly subdued and indolent under the Equator in a three days’
calm, and do not insist upon “three more—and again,” so that they have
an opportunity of candid inquiry and sober reflection, which may be
serviceable—promotive of a thirst for cold water, and an abhorrence of
dark brandy, in a “_sun_ny” clime. We do not see why something cannot be
done for Temperance in this way, as well as not. People talk very
disparagingly about “whipping the devil round the stump,” but so that
the old scoundrel gets soundly thrashed at last, I never could see that
the _modus operandi_ is so particularly important.

Now, without pursuing this question, or glancing at the disappointment
of the adventurer—the long days of toil in unhealthy waters—the
burning heat of the sun—the chilling nights on a dreary soil—the
fevers of the mind as well as of the body—the hope deferred—the horror
of being mixed with such society—the desolation of all good that he
must see around him, mingling with the memory of the calm delights, the
peaceful repose, the joys and purity of home—the glad eyes of sister or
mother left behind, but now seemingly looking out sadly upon the
scene—the longings for that paradise once more, where in boyhood he put
up a prayer at the parental knee:—Without speaking of all this, is the
reward, reader, worthy of your sacrifice or of mine, of present comforts
and present friends. I think not. The road to fortune, to honorable
advancement, is open and plainly marked here, and beaten as it is, with
the tread of many feet, it offers far greater chances of success than
all the sparkling sands of California, mixed as they are with all that
is vile and unworthy. In that immense crowd of adventurers, which is
pouring in from every clime, virtue and goodness will be but as pearls
dropped into the sea—selfishness unmitigated, vice unabashed, and even
red-handed murder, will rear aloft their hideous forms, overawing all
decency, and setting at naught “all law, all precedent, all right.” The
very absence of all female restraint, their tender charities, and gentle
generosities and affections, and noble self sacrifices, which knit the
bands of society together and render man human, will there cause to be
let loose all the savage passions and instincts of our natures, and a
vast army of unprincipled men, fierce in the pursuit of wealth,
unrelenting in their towering selfishness as the grave, will make
California a second Pandemonium. What is all the gold of the earth, in a
land of wrong and violence, and that smells of blood heaven-high, with
the whole atmosphere below tainted with its appalling odor?

No! let _us_ stay at home, and cultivate habits of industry, economy and
temperance. With a vigilant eye and a steady step pursue the path which
has been marked out for us to tread through life—never swerving from
our duty to the allurements of pleasure—or by the discouragements of
defeat—but up and on! fearless, determined, brave; looking all danger
manfully in the face; grappling with all difficulties, if not with the
strength, with the determination of giants to overcome; never growing
faint or weary in well doing—and my life for it, in ten years you will
not exchange places with the proudest aristocrat in California, whose
heart and brain have been seared in the acquisition of wealth. Above all
things, let those of us who stay behind imitate the self command of the
adventurers who have gone, and go boldly and resolutely “AROUND THE
HORN” here, and depend upon it, we shall find that the true
philosopher’s stone—the real Eldorado—the place where we may truly
enjoy the horn of Plenty and the cup of Peace, IS AT HOME—AROUND OUR
OWN HEARTH-STONE—where the light of kind eyes, and the prayers of warm
and true hearts ascend to heaven with our own, for guidance and
protection.

                                                             G. R. G.

                     THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY PRESS.

THE NORTH AMERICAN.—The very head and front of the offending party
journals, oracular, dignified, and eminently solemn. Doctor Bird’s
leaders have a stately look in solid column, and his political articles
read as if they had been subjected to a very patient drill before
showing themselves to the public eye; but his fine genius flashes out
the moment he touches a congenial subject. Of all American writers we
look upon him as the best qualified to conduct a literary journal, or a
monthly review. But, alas! he is a martyr, who must groan under the
daily responsibilities of a party organ, with a hearty disrelish of its
duties. Why should two such men as Bird and Bryant be sold into slavery
in politics, and be thus comparatively lost to the lovers of polite
literature? “Independent,” the Washington correspondent of the journal,
dashes in like Saladin, and wo to the Christian who gets a full stroke
of his scimitar; he is cloven to the chin, or has something to nurse and
to remember. His egotism has been objected to by those who dislike his
slashing style, but that, as much as his correctness of information, has
given his correspondence character. He is at least fearless in the use
of his weapon, and strikes at high and low with equal strength and
temerity. Hennis gives us once in a while his touching little essays,
conceived in the quiet beauty of Mr. Chandler’s style—the Gamaliel at
whose feet he sat and learned. For the rest, we do not like the paper.
It is heavy, cautious, and cruelly cold and selfish.

THE INQUIRER.—The model of a daily family paper, marked by continued
and unwearied industry, and beaming with the kindly nature of its
editor. Its ample pages are crowded with well-chosen selections and
active scissoring of news paragraphs; not, however, always carefully
pruned and clipped down. It is only once in a while that Mr. Morris
shows us that he can write, and his Saturday Readings are full of the
warm impulses and genuine kindness of the man, but are written more for
purposes of good than to display his powers. Occasionally he warms up in
his general articles, and lets out a spark or two, shows us a glimpse of
the wealth he hoards, and causes us to wish for continued examples of
the ability he possesses. In his political leaders he sometimes is
forced by unfair opponents into a little causticity at the opening of
his article, but he relents before he gets through, and will most likely
give his “friend” a chance to back out of his blunder. He has not the
heart, though he possesses the strength, to press his antagonist to the
wall, and to pin him there. Mr. Morris has an agreeable, ready and
devoted coadjutor in Mr. Crump, a man of various learning and diligent
application. This journal is shockingly “made up,” to our taste, and is
all over disfigured with staring black head-lines, which look to our eye
like the sable of a hearse—its “_postscript_” is our particular horror.

THE DAILY NEWS.—The absence of Judge Conrad from the daily press seems
to have reinvigorated his powers, and has given additional force to his
pen, and fire to his thoughts; like an unprisoned eagle, with a spring
he darts to the skies and gazes in the sun. Some of the finest articles
he ever wrote have appeared in the News. Every subject that Judge Conrad
touches, seems to have been fused, as in a furnace, and the metal flies
off in lumps from his gigantic mind. His intellect illumes and pervades
every part of his subject, and when he drops it, there is nothing more
to be said. His compact, all-grasping sentences, may furnish subjects
for whole leaders to others, but the vitality has been extracted, and
any treatment of the topic is tame and impotent in contrast. He does
not, however, always seem to know the power of the words he uses, and
will give a whack with his sledge-hammer with a will at a fly, which
would effectually knock down an ox. Hence he should never write short
paragraphs upon unimportant topics—his style is too ponderous. The
News, as a political sheet, is well managed, barring some desire,
occasionally manifested, to pull, for personal ends, the strings of its
influence; but it is sadly deficient in mercantile news and facts. At
this writing, too, it is shamefully brought out, and is made up as if
the matter had been sifted over the form, and then locked-up and
printed, and very badly printed at that. Mr. Sanderson should look to
this, for the general editing of his News is too good to come before the
public under so great a disadvantage.

THE PUBLIC LEDGER.—Unquestionably the best penny paper that has ever
been established—showing in all its appointments the very perfection of
mechanical execution, and in its news collection and collation,
sleepless enterprise and vigilance, as well as persevering ability. Its
leaders are unequal, for the most part written with great force and
adroitness, upon topics familiar or of practical utility, but
occasionally insufferably stupid and dull. On scientific topics it
affects the _ultra_-learned. We always drop the Ledger when it gets upon
“oligies.” Mr. Lane, whose quiet humor occasionally gleams out in his
short editorial articles, like lightning from the edge of a summer
cloud, is unquestionably the _best_ news man in our daily press; clear
and discriminative, you always find in his columns all that ought to be
said of any and every news fact, and no more. A nicety of judgment very
rarely attained, and never in our experience so fully, as in the case of
the late Mr. Holden of the Courier.

THE SUN.—Graced by a good humor that no annoyance can ruffle, but
occasionally inclined to mischief. Carelessly giving a whack, regardless
of consequences, and forgetting it at the same instant. We regard Mr.
Wallace as a most able man in any paper; enduring, persevering, and
always on the alert. We know of no one in his department of a newspaper
who can for so long a time continue to perform downright hard, honest
good labor. His nerves and his temper are equally enduring. He appears
to have been born where they sing “Old Virginy never tire,” and to have
lived through life, the music, the temper, and the sentiment of the
song. The topmost bubble of his heart always sparkles. He is, too, what
we like, a pretty good hater, though with a good deal more philosophy
than is often practiced, in taking his revenges. With _his_ editorials,
his SON makes a capital newspaper, agreeable, gossipy and gay. The news
is filled in with the coolness of an experienced hand, and with the
uprightness and newspaper devotion of his father, he will one day stand
as _high_.

THE PENNSYLVANIAN.—Col. Forney is the best political editor that his
party has ever had in Philadelphia—discerning, prompt and fearless. He
deals, however, too much in light skirmishing, and pops his enemy off
once in a while from an unsuspected cedar-bush, merely to show the
accuracy of his aim. But he is an able tactician, and when he _does_
close fairly, his opponent finds him a tough and sinewy customer. His
articles seem for the most part to have been dashed off at a heat, and
lack the polishing touch. He often, too, uses a hard word for its sound
where another would be more effective. Occasionally he sits down in
earnest, blocks out his ground, and makes sore and steady advances; and
especially when he has occasion to defend Mr. Buchanan, his intellect is
fully aroused and on the alert—he then writes with his full vigor and
spirit, and writes well. His partner, Mr. Hamilton, is one of the most
capable business printers that we know, and every thing in his
department is marked by exactness and proficiency. The press-work of the
Pennsylvanian, on each issue, is what the magazines would call “a
specimen number.”

THE TIMES.—A jaunty, crotchetty, impudent little sheet, filled with
quibs and quirks, and a sort of laughing philosophy that shouts over
seriousness. Its editor, would, if he could, go to his own funeral
dressed in ribbons, and wearing a look of rejoicing. He has the
happiness of never seeming for a moment anxious; and you might as well
punch at a wreath of smoke with a foil, as attempt to interest him in a
serious controversy. He will answer your arguments with a pun, your
serious reasoning with a laugh, and will set ridiculously on end your
most carefully rounded sentence, and go to hacking at its grammar.
Having got you out of humor, he will decline all controversy with you,
if you cannot observe the decencies and proprieties. So that the man who
urges a controversy with Du Solle, has his anger for his pains, and is
fuming while he is chatting and laughing unconcernedly upon some other
more agreeable topic. Yet the Times has never given him scope to show
the real ability and general information he possesses. He should be in
the Ledger with Lane, he would settle the “ologies” in short metre.

THE BULLETIN.—Our only evening paper, but managed with great enterprise
and vigor. Mr. Peterson’s strong Saxon words and nervous style, combined
with his various and correct learning, make the leading articles of this
journal among the ablest that we read anywhere, and have stamped a high
value upon the leading column. There is a want of editorial tact in its
less imposing, but equally important digest of news and facts. It has
all the news, but it has it in bulk, and looks at times, with its heavy,
solid nonpareil, like a little man covered with black patches, or as if
part of the paper had gone into mourning for the absence of an itemizer.
It is always up, however, to the full requirements of the public in its
telegraphic despatches, and it _had_—what has become of him—the writer
of money articles that was most regarded here. For the rest, it affects
a very nice morality in regard to the theatres, which we do not like,
and do not pretend to understand. It is too deep for us. It _advertises_
for the theatres, but does not _notice_ them. Are they wrong, or right,
or neither? We suppose there _must_ be a nice line, which casuists who
examine morals with a microscope have detected.

                                                             G. R. G.

DEAR GRAHAM,—Poor Tom says, “Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the
rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to women: keep thy hand out of
plackets, and thy pen from _lenders’ books_, and defy the foul fiend.”
Without misconstruing this text more than texts are usually
misinterpreted, I opine, that from those same “_lenders’ books_” of past
generations the current literature of our day is being manufactured. The
vast shapes of the Past have overshadowed the Present, and we are in the
umbra of the eclipse. Pray tell me if there is room left in the whole
length and breadth of the world for an epic, without trenching upon the
preëmption rights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso and Milton? Then as
regards dramatic poetry—“ahem! Shakspeare.” Wit and humor? What, after
Chaucer, Rabelais, Ben Jonson, Cervantes, Butler, Swift, Pope, Sterne,
the Spectator writers generally, Fielding and Smollet? Are there any new
Continents to be discovered? Our own Irving, to be sure, has been
cruising among beautiful summer islands, and returned with a wondrous
store of wealth—jewels and gold tissues, fragrant gums, Hesperidean
apples, painted Salvages, flowers and odorous spices, to the world
unknown before. The gentle Elia has embroidered incomparable tapestries,
and formed the school of the age. Scott gathers in his mighty arms the
banners of a hundred conquests, and for melodious versification (after
Spenser) Coleridge, Shelley and Moore, in

        “Numbers moving musically,”

have filled the world with harmonies, to which no echoes answer. Who
shall sweep the strings of passion after Byron! Truly, with much
thankfulness for the kind intentions of those who have written for
Posterity, we might add that it is a pity they did not leave Posterity a
little chance to write for himself. But since it is so, let us, with due
credit, make free for a time with some of those same “lenders’ books,”
for as George Wither quaintly says—

        “We are neither just nor wise,
        If present mercies we despise;
        Or mind not how there may be made
        A thankful use of what we had.”

Room, then! for one of Dante’s Angels—

        “And now there came o’er the perturbed waves,
        Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made
        Either shore tremble, as if of a wind
        Impetuous, from conflicting vapors sprung,
        That ’gainst some forest driving all his might.
        Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls
        Afar; then, onward passing, proudly sweeps
        His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.

                .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

                                        As frogs
        Before their foe, the serpent, through the wave
        Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one
        Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits
        Destroyed, so saw I fleeing before one
        Who passed with unwet feet the Stygian sound,
        He, _from his face removing the gross air_,
        Oft his left hand forth stretched, and seemed alone
        Of that annoyance wearied. I perceived
        That he was sent from heaven; and to my guide
        Turned me, who signal made that I should stand
        Quiet and bend to him. Ah me! _how full_
        _Of noble anger seemed he_. To the gate
        he came, and with his wand touched it, whereat
        _Open without impediment it flew_!”

Compare this with Milton’s Raphael—

                    “Down thither prone in flight
        He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
        Sailed between worlds and worlds, with steady wing,
        Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
        Winnows the buxom air; till within soar
        Of towering eagles, to all fowls he seems
        A phœnix, gazed by all, as that sole bird,
        When to enshrine his reliques in the sun’s
        Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.”

Or the flight of Satan—

                                    “Sometimes
        He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left,
        Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
        Up to the fiery concave, towering high.
        As when far off at sea a fleet descried
        Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
        Close sailing from Bengula, or the Isles
        Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
        Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood
        Through the wide Ethiopean to the Cape
        Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed
        Far off the flying fiend.”

Do you not think Dante’s angel the most spiritual? He says,

                                    “he wore
        The semblance of a man by other care
        Beset, and keenly pressed, than thought of him
        Who in his presence stand.”

And Milton—

            “——on some great charge employed
        He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.”

The thought here is evidently borrowed from the Italian “_lender’s
book_.”

There is a strange propensity to follow these lofty flights; as when in
looking from an eminence we feel a temptation to breast the blue ether
below us. We are fairly in the wake of Satan when he

          “_Shaves with level wing the deep_, then soars
        UP to the fiery concave—”

And now since we are pinion-mounted, like Icarus or Daniel O’Rourke, let
us select a few more familiar specimens of flying. “Look you,” from
Coleridge—

        “Triumphant on the bosom of the storm
        Glances the fire-clad eagle’s wheeling form.”

And lo! from Shelly on eagle,

                              “—— a winged form
          On all the winds of heaven approaching ever
          _Floated, dilating as it came_: the storm
        Pursued it with fierce blasts and lightnings swift and warm.”

The Viking’s war-ship, from Longfellow’s Saga of the Skeleton in Armor
is a brave picture,

        “As with his wings aslant,
        Sails the fierce cormorant,
        Seeking some rocky haunt,
            With his prey laden:
        So toward the open main,
        Beating to sea again
        Through the wild hurricane,
            Bore I the maiden.”

And Dryden, in his Annus Mirabilis, hath likewise a warship that
_flies_!

        “With roomy deck, and guns of mighty strength,
        Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
        Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
        She seems a sea-wasp flying o’er the waves.”

But of all winged things the sky-lark is the bird of the poets. Hear
Shakspeare—

        “Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
          And Phœbus ’gins arise,
        His steeds to water at those springs
          On chaliced flowers that lies;
        And winking May-buds begin
          To ope their golden eyes:
        With every thing that pretty bin,
          My lady sweet, arise.”

Or this from Shelley—

                “Higher still and higher
                From the earth thou springest,
              Like a cloud of fire!
                The blue deep thou wingest,
        And singing, still dost soar; and soaring, ever singest.

                “In the golden lightning
                Of the sunken sun,
              O’er which clouds are brightening,
                Thou dost float and run;
        Like an embodied joy, whose race has just begun.
              All the earth and air
                With thy voice is loud,
              As, when night is bare,
                _From one lonely cloud_
        _The moon rains out her beams and heaven it overflowed._”

Coleridge, too, in his Ancient Mariner—

        “Sometimes adropping from the sky
          I heard the sky-lark sing;
        Sometimes all little birds that are,
        Now they seemed to fill the sea and air
          With their sweet jargoning!
        And now ’twas like all instruments,
          Now like a lonely flute;
        And now it is an angel’s song,
          That makes the heavens be mute.”

And Wordsworth in that beautiful couplet—

        “Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;
        True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!”

There is a sweet little bird in the description of a Summer’s morning,
by Thomas Miller, which I would fain add to this goodly company—

              “A little bird now hops beside the brook,
              _Peeping about like an affrighted nun_,
            And ever as she drinks _doth upward look_,
        Twitters and drinks again; _then seeks her cloistered nook_.”

But alas the prettiest part of it is borrowed from one of those same
“lenders’ books.” John Bunyan’s—no less. The Interpreter takes
Christiana into the “Significant Rooms,” where he shows her that “one of
the chickens went to the trough to drink, _and every time she drank she
lifted up her eyes toward heaven_. ‘See,’ said he, ‘what this little
chick doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by
receiving them with looking up,’” And now, having winged our way from
angels to John Bunyan, let us lay these same lenders’ books upon the
shelves until a future period.

                                                     Truly thine,
                                                      RICHARD HAYWARDE.

                          REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

    _The Salamander: Found amongst the Papers of the late Ernest
    Helfenstein. Edited by E. Oakes Smith. Second Edition. New York:
    George P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._

Mrs. Smith has written nothing so well calculated to convey to the
majority of readers a clear sense of the richness, originality, and
elevation of her genius, as this wonderful little story. It evinces a
high degree of creative power, being an organic product of the mind,
with a central principle of life, and vital in every part. The scenery,
events and characters have all a living connection with the leading idea
of the work, and illustrate each other. The form is the ever facile and
yielding instrument of the plastic spirit within, and varies with the
variations in the story and the changes in the thought or feeling
expressed. By a felicity of nature, Mrs. Smith appears instinctively to
subordinate the material to the spiritual; and thus by making the former
simply the symbol by which she expresses the latter, she spiritualizes
matter, and makes it the living body of the soul. She vivifies and
vitalizes the form until it becomes o’er informed with spirit. Natural
objects as used by the poet, derive all their effect from being the
pictorial language of impassioned thought, the visible image being but
the embodiment to the eye of the viewless force which penetrates and
animates it; and fitly to employ objects as exponents of thoughts, a
firm, decisive grasp of spiritual realities, of something lying back of
all expression, is necessary. The moment the material predominates over
or precedes the spiritual, it becomes so much dead matter, without
significance, because without life. A great excellence of the present
story is the constant dominion exercised by the soul over or through its
forms of expression, and the physiognomical character of the style and
imagery. When we thus speak of it as pre-eminently spiritual, we of
course imply that it is thoroughly alive.

But the wonder of the book, and the quality which will give it a
permanent place in American literature, is the sure and fine audacity
with which it brings the supernaturally beautiful and the supernaturally
terrible into vital relations with human life, without any shock or jar
of the unnatural to disturb the exquisiteness of the combination; and
this is done in a manner purely original, awakening no reminiscences of
German or English supernaturalism, and giving unmistakable evidence of
being drawn from the writer’s own life and mental experience. Indeed, by
the very constitution of her mind, Mrs. Smith seems to see things in
their spiritual relations; consequently she not only looks at things and
into things, but she looks through them, and discerns the supernatural
region from which they proceed and on which they depend. This vision
into a sphere _above_ sense, is accompanied by an imagination of
sufficient force to shape what she sees into a form palpable _to_ sense,
and thus to reach the mystical elements in other minds through their
sensuous imagination. This vision and this faculty are possessed by all
high and powerful natures, and the test of the reality of the powers is
in the originality of the products. Similarity, even when it does not
approach plagiarism, indicates the intervention of another mind, and by
suggesting spectacles casts ominous conjecture on the soundness or reach
of the eyes. Now the supernatural, as it appears in this volume, is
strictly individual and peculiar, evidencing that the authoress has
herself contemplated, face to face, the spiritual truths she has
embodied.

While the present story is thus eminently a work of creative
imagination, working in the region of the supernatural, and ranking
“strange combinations out of common things,” it is at the same time
intensely human, touching at every step on some affection or aspiration
of the human heart, and full of the glee and gloom of our common life.
As every thing is realized to the eye and imagination, and the vital
relation between the natural feeling and the preternatural agencies is
clearly represented, the reader is conscious of no unharmoniousness in
the general impression left on his mind by the whole work, but simply
feels as though he had been brought nearer to the life of things, and
discerned evil and good in their spiritual natures. With a power of
thought, as felicitous in its delicacy as in its strength, moral beauty
and moral deformity are both seized in their intrinsic principles, and
embodied in such a manner that the material form ceases to be the veil
and becomes the vehicle of the nature it encloses.

To the shaping imagination which this work indicates, we must add that
form or expression of the imaginative faculty, by which things
inexpressible in images are suggested by cunning verbal combinations, or
which escape in the peculiar turn of a period, or which are breathed to
the inner ear of the mind in the rhythm of a sentence. This mystical
charm, this elusive, dreamy, ever vanishing and yet ever appearing
grace, gives to the whole work a character of strangeness almost
bewitching, and produces that fine and faint intoxication of the
imagination which makes it ready to receive and accredit wonders with as
much faith as it commonly awards to possibilities. It is this quality
also which makes it impossible to convey the moral of the story in any
didactic proposition. It has a profound moral, but it is a moral which
refuses to be comprehended in an ethical axiom, being felt in the brain
and “felt along the heart.”

We have been so much engrossed by the merits of this story that we have
little space left to notice some faults. The notes should not be
retained at the bottom of the page, but should be transferred to an
appendix. Occasionally the imagination of the authoress stutters in its
sublime talk, and gives fragments of gigantic images instead of wholes.
Here and there the philosophic prevails over the imaginative, and
discourse monopolizes a sentence which should be strictly sacred to
representation. But the sweetness, the tenderness, the beauty, purity
and majesty, with which the work is so replete, hardly allow even the
critical reader to be captious; and to the uncritical, the absorbing
interest of the story would be sufficient to hide even prominent
defects.

    _Poems. By James F. Fields. Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol.
    16mo._

Book-writing and book-publishing, according to the most approved
doctrines of the division of labor, are to be kept strictly apart, and
commonly there yawns a natural gulf between the two, as wide and deep as
that which separated Lazarus and Dives. The present volume, however,
illustrates this seemingly impossible combination, the author being also
one of the publishers, and it must be confessed that the intellectual
and mechanical execution reflect credit on each other. Mr. Fields has a
mind of great flexibility and fertility, and occasionally he has
compressed within the limit of this volume a large variety of matter,
answering to the mirthful, the pathetic, the satirical, the tender, and
the impassioned. He not only does not repeat himself, but the work is
too small adequately to express the whole range of his poetic faculty.
The two longest poems in the collection are the “Post of Honor” and
“Commerce,” both of them originally pronounced before the Boston
Mercantile Library Association, and each including many topics under the
general subject. These evince a keen, shrewd eye for practical life and
character, and the satirical portions are characterized by a mingled wit
and humor unexcelled for general sharpness. “The Post of Honor” is by
far the best, and its pictures of life, both serious and mirthful, are
exceedingly vivid and true. The versification evinces a complete mastery
of the heroic couplet, in all its ease, energy and harmony of flow, and
it is spangled with fine felicities of fancy and original verbal
combinations. The passages relating to Lamb and Grey, are replete with a
quiet searching pathos, which touches the inmost nerve of sensibility.

Many of the shorter poems have already had a wide circulation through
the newspapers. “Fair Wind,” originally published in “Graham,” and “The
Dirge,” we have seen in the poetical corner of at least a hundred
journals. The new ballads and lyrics, now first published, are among the
best in the whole collection. “The Ballad of the Tempest,” the “Pair of
Antlers,” and “Common Sense,” are very brilliant and beautiful. “Life at
Niagara,” and the “Alarmed Skipper,” are good specimens of mirthful
poetry as distinguished from versified mirth. “Children in Exile,” and
“A Bridal Melody,” have an intensity of deep and sweet feeling, which
wins its way into the very core of the heart. We might refer to others
as worthy of notice as these, but we must be content with quoting one
instead of naming many, and we accordingly present our readers with a
most beautiful specimen of blank verse, addressed to Rogers:

                ON A BOOK OF SEA-MOSSES,

             SENT TO AN EMINENT ENGLISH POET.

        To him who sang of Venice, and revealed
        How Wealth and Glory clustered in her streets,
        And poised her marble domes with wondrous skill,
        We send these tributes, plundered from the sea.
        These many-colored, variegated forms
        Sail to our rougher shores, and rise and fall
        To the deep music of the Atlantic wave.
        Such spoils we capture where the rainbows drop,
        Melting in ocean. Here are broideries strange,
        Wrought by the sea-nymphs from their golden hair,
        And wove by moonlight. Gently turn the leaf.
        From narrow cells, scooped in the rocks, we take
        These fairy textures, lightly moored at morn.
        Down sunny slopes, outstretching to the deep,
        We roam at noon, and gather shapes like these.
        Note now the painted webs from verdurous isles,
        Festooned and spangled in sea-caves, and say
        What hues of land can rival tints like those,
        Torn from the scarfs and gonfalons of kings
        Who dwell beneath the waters.
                                        Such our gift,
        Culled from a margin of the western world,
        And offered unto Genius in the old.

    _Raphael; or Pages from the Book of Life at Twenty. By Alphonse
    de Lamartine. New York: Harper & Brothers._

Lamartine, with many of the high qualities of genius, is deficient in
one of the most important—Common Sense. He is a fine and eloquent
singer of his own idealized and idolized self, but is gifted with very
imperfect powers of objective perception. He sees nothing as it is, but
every object is more or less a mirror of self. This is equally true
whether the object be Mont Blanc or a Paris mob. All his descriptions of
scenery, though often rising to a strain of rapturous eloquence and
beauty, are never accurate, even in an elevated poetical signification
of accuracy. Different scenes, in different climes, are all enveloped in
one atmosphere, and all stand for one tyrannizing class of emotions.
Lamartine is a sentimentalist, and no sentimentalist can celebrate any
nature but his own, or consider the universe as worth any thing in
itself. The excellence of the present volume consists in its subject
admitting of a strictly lyrical treatment, and it accordingly is full to
running over of Lamartine’s strong but narrow genius, and is resplendent
with glittering sentiment and decorative imagery. The work is not long
enough to tire by its egotism and fine writing, and is closed before
admiration has subsided from the interjection into the yawn of
satisfaction. A nature so rich as Lamartine’s might fill even a larger
book without exhausting its wealth of sentiment or thought.

    _The Moral, Social, and Professional Duties of Attorneys and
    Solicitors. By Samuel Warren, F. R. S. New York: Harper &
    Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

Mr. Warren’s works on Law are almost as entertaining as his novels. The
present book is full of matter important to the young lawyer, and
interesting to the general reader. All who are accustomed to have
dealings with the profession, can obtain from this little volume many
useful and some lucrative hints. The two points on which Mr. Warren
expends his sense and his eloquence are knavery and incapacity, as those
qualities exist among lawyers. As many lives and more fortunes depend on
the existence of the opposite qualities in the profession, this volume
will be equally valuable if it succeed either in expelling rogues and
dunces from the law, or in enabling clients to detect them.

    _Aurifodina; or Adventures in the Gold Region. By Cantell A.
    Bigby. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 16mo._

The author of this little volume has availed himself of the interest
excited by the late disclosures in California, to construct a story of
marvelous adventures in that region. In regard to probability the work
is half way between Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights. As every
thing wonderful relating to California is greedily devoured, the
disclosures of this work will undoubtedly receive their due attention.
They are nearly as much entitled to belief as many of the newspaper
accounts.

    _A New Spanish Reader: Consisting of Passages from the Most
    Approved Authors, in Prose and Verse. By Mariana Velasquez de la
    Cadena. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

The editor of this volume is Professor of the Spanish Language and
Literature in Columbia College. He has so arranged his matter as to
remove all possible obstacles in the way of the learner, and to conduct
him, step by step, into the heart of the noble language of Castile. The
selections are admirably made. The volume is not only well adapted for
schools and colleges, but for the private student, and we trust it will
induce many to study a language which will give them a key to the
versatile and fertile genius of Lope de Vega, the mystical beauty of
Calderon, and the profound and genial humor of Cervantes.

    _Essay on the Union of Church and State. By Baptist W. Noel, M.
    A. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

This work has produced a considerable sensation in England, being a
well-written protest against the Church Establishment, supported by a
long array of facts and arguments. The author was for twenty-two years
an Episcopal clergyman, and was at last forced by his reason and
conscience into his present position. Mr. Noel does not attack the
doctrines of the Church, but its union with the State, and he attempts
to prove that this union is condemned by the letter and spirit of the
Bible, is unjust, inexpedient, and productive of a host of evils, from
which free churches are exempt.

    _History of Hannibal the Carthagenian. By Jacob Abbott. With
    Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

This is one of a series of historical books for the people, prepared by
Mr. Abbott with his usual felicity of condensation and simplification.
The series so far includes the Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, Alexander
the Great, Charles I. and the present volume, and others are to follow.
The author manages his matter with much art, and while few can read his
volumes without an addition to their information, they must be
invaluable to a large class of minds almost altogether deficient in
historical knowledge.

    _A Catechism of the Steam Engine, Illustrative of the Scientific
    Principles on which Its Operation Depends, etc. By John Bourne,
    C. E. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 16mo._

Here, in the space of one small volume, is condensed a large amount of
available information on the steam engine, its principles, the practical
details of its structure, and its application to mines and mills, as
well as steam navigation and railways. The author evinces an intimate
practical acquaintance with his subject, and his work, while it is
invaluable to the engineer, possesses great interest to every reader
desirous of fathoming the mystery of the structure and operation of the
steam engine.

                          VIRTUE’S EVERGREEN.

                      POETRY BY THEODORE A. GOULD.

                MUSIC COMPOSED BY THEODORE VON LA HACHE.

                The ilied brow, the rosy cheek,
                Where beaming smiles of beauty play,
                Are transient things, they but beguile,
                As April’s bland and fickle smile,
                They charm us with their light awhile,
                Then

              fade, then fade at last away,
              They charm us with their light awhile,
              Then fade, then fade at last away.
              ’Tis Virtue’s Virtue’s evergreen.

                       SECOND VERSE.

              They fade at last away! the form
                So beautiful in youth’s gay prime,
              Must shrivel up—the hair turn grey,
              The eye abate its lustrous ray,
              The smooth and pearly teeth decay,
                        Beneath the touch of Time.

                       THIRD VERSE.

              Beneath the touch of Time! a price
                There is he cannot touch, I ween;
              It bloometh always fair and bright
              Through springs warm day or winter’s night,
              A plant his hand can never blight;
                        ’Tis Virtue’s Evergreen,

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 278, put into envelops with ==> put into envelopes with
page 279, Nous verrons, se que ==> Nous verrons, ce que
page 282, crop of whispers. ==> crop of whiskers.
page 291, most beautiful, all of the ==> most beautiful of all, the
page 291, many claim upon his ==> many claims upon his
page 292, drowned in the privater, ==> drowned in the privateer,
page 299, Orthrography, Etymology and ==> Orthography, Etymology and
page 306, of our benificent Father ==> of our beneficent Father
page 306, interrogatories to day pass ==> interrogatories to-day pass
page 307, widow from Manheim ==> widow from Mannheim
page 317, in all statutary Christendom ==> in all statutory Christendom
page 317, an apopthegm by one of ==> an apophthegm by one of
page 326, grande e beau physique ==> grande et beau physique
page 332, of his scimiter; ==> of his scimitar;
page 333, solid nonpariel, like ==> solid nonpareil, like
page 335, in images are sugguested ==> in images are suggested