A. E. Chalon, R.A. W. H. Egleton

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVI. April, 1850. No. 4.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

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

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVI. PHILADELPHIA, April, 1850. No. 4.

APRIL.

“The shower is past, the birds renew their songs,

And sweetly through its tears the landscape smiles.”

“April,” says the author of the “Fairie Queene,” “is Spring—the juvenile of the months, and the most feminine—never knowing her own mind for a day together. Fickle as a fond maiden with her first lover; toying it with the young sun till he withdraws his beams from her, and then weeping till she gets them back again.” April is frequently a very sweet and genial month, partly because it ushers in the May, and partly for its own sake. It is to May and June what “sweet fifteen,” in the age of woman, is to the passion-stricken eighteen, and perfect two-and-twenty. It is to the confirmed Summer, what the previous hope of joy is to the full fruition—what the boyish dream of love is to love itself. It is, indeed, the month of promises—and what are twenty performances compared with one promise? April, then, is worth two Mays, because it tells tales of May in every sigh that it breathes, and every tear that it lets fall. It is the harbinger, the herald, the promise, the prophecy, the foretaste of all the beauties that are to follow it—of all and more—of all the delights of Summer, and all the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious Autumn.” It is fraught with beauties itself, which no other month can bring before us.

“When proud, pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.”

It is one sweet alternation of smiles, and sighs, and tears—and tears, and sighs, and smiles—till all is consummated at last in the open laughter of May.

April weather is proverbial for a mixture of the bright and gloomy. The pleasantness of the sunshiny days, with the delightful view of fresh greens and newly opened flowers, is unequaled; but they are frequently overcast with clouds, and chilled by rough, wintry blasts. This month, the most perfect image of Spring —

“Looks beautiful as when an infant is waking

From its slumbers;”

and the vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine and gentle showers, have the most powerful effects in hastening the universal springing of vegetation, whence the season derives its appellation.

The influence of the equinoctial storms frequently prevailing, causes much unpleasant weather; its opening is—

“Mindful of disaster past,

And shrinking at the northern blast,

The sleety storm returning still,

The morning hoar, the evening chill:

Reluctant comes the timid Spring,

Scarce a bee, with airy ring,

Murmurs the blossomed boughs around

That clothe the garden’s southern bound;

Scarce a sickly, straggling flower

Decks the rough castle’s rifted tower;

Scarce the hardy ivy peeps

From the dark dell’s entangled steeps,

Fringing the forests devious edge,

Half-robed, appears the privet hedge,

Or to the distant eye displays,

Weakly green, its budding sprays.”

An ancient writer beautifully describes one of those bright, transient showers which prevail at this season.

Away to that sunny nook, for the thick shower

Rushes on strikingly: ay, now it comes,

Glancing about the leaves with its first dips,

Like snatches of faint music. Joyous bird,

It mingles with thy song, and beats soft time

To thy warbling notes. Now it louder falls,

Pattering, like the far voice of leaping rills;

And now it breaks upon the shrinking clumps

With a crash of many sounds; the thrush is still,

There are sweet scents around us; the flow’ret hides,

On that green bank, beneath the leaves;

The earth is grateful to the teeming clouds,

And yields a sudden freshness to their kisses.

And now the shower slopes to the warm west,

Leaving a dewy track; and see, the big drops,

Like falling pearls, glisten in the sunny mist.

The air is clear again, and the far woods

Shine out in their early green. Let’s onward, then,

For the first blossoms peep about the path;

The lambs are nibbling the short, dripping grass,

And the birds are on the bushes.

The month of April not unfrequently introduces us to the chimney or house-swallow, known by its long, forked tail and red breast. At first, here and there only one appears glancing quickly by us, as if scarcely able to endure the cold, which Warton beautifully describes —

The swallow for a moment seen,

Skims in haste the village green.

But in a few days their number is much increased, and they sport with seeming pleasure in the warm sunshine.

Along the surface of the winding stream,

Pursuing every turn, gay swallows skim,

Or round the borders of the spacious lawn,

Fly in repeated circles, rising o’er

Hillock and fence with motion serpentine,

Easy and light. One snatches from the ground

A downy feather, and then upward springs,

Followed by others, but oft drops it soon,

In playful mood, or from too slight a hold,

When all at once dart at the falling prize.

As these birds live on insects, their appearance is a certain proof that some of this minute tribe of animals have ventured from their winter abodes.

Thomson thus describes this busy month among the feathered tribes —

Some to the holly-hedge

Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;

Some to the rude protection of the thorn

Commit their feeble offspring. The cleft tree

Offers its kind concealment to a few,

Their food its insects, and its moss their nests.

Others apart, far in the grassy dale,

Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave;

But most in woodland solitudes delight,

In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,

Steep, and divided by a babbling brook,

Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong day,

When by kind duty fixed. Among the roots

Of hazel, pendent o’er the plaintive stream,

They frame the first foundation of their domes;

Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,

And bound with clay together. Now ’tis naught

But restless hurry through the busy air,

Beat by unnumbered wings. The swallow sweeps

The slimy pool, to build the hanging house

Intent. And often, from the careless back

Of herds and flocks, a thousand tugging bills

Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserved,

Steal from the barn a straw, till soft and warm,

Clean and complete, their habitation grows.

Another celebrated poet completes the picture: —

The cavern-loving wren sequestered seeks

The verdant shelter of the hollow stump;

And with congenial moss, harmless deceit,

Constructs a safe abode. On topmost boughs

The oriole, and the hoarse-voiced crow,

Rocked by the storm, erect their airy nests.

The ousel, long frequenter of the grove

Of fragrant pines, in solemn depth of shade,

Finds rest. Or mid the holly’s shining leaves,

A simple bush, the piping thrush contents;

Though in the woodland contest, he, aloft,

Trills from his spotted throat a powerful strain,

And scorns the humble quire. The wood-lark asks

A lowly dwelling, hid beneath some tuft,

Or hollow, trodden by the sinking hoof:

Songster beloved! who to the sun such lays

Pours forth as earth ne’er owns. Within the boughs

The sparrow lays her spotted eggs. The barn,

With eaves o’er-pendent, holds the chattering tribe.

Secret the linnet seeks the tangled wood,

The white owl seeks some antique ruined wall,

Fearless of rapine; or in hollow trees,

Which age has caverned, safely courts repose.

The velvet jay, in pristine colors clad,

Weaves her curious nest with firm-wreathed twigs,

And sidelong forms her cautious door; she dreads

The taloned hawk, or pouncing eagle,

Herself, with craft suspicion ever dwells.

As the singing of birds is the voice of courtship and conjugal love, the concerts of the groves begin to fill all with their various melody. In England the return of the nightingale in the spring is hailed with much joy; he sings by day as well as night; but in the daytime his voice is drowned in the multitude of performers; in the evening it is heard alone, whence the poets have always made the song of the nightingale a nocturnal serenade. The author of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” thus beautifully describes an April night, and the song of this siren: —

All is still,

A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,

Yet let us think upon the vernal showers

That gladden the green earth, and we shall find

A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the nightingale begins his song;

He crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,

With fast, thick warble, his delicious notes,

As he were fearful that an April night

Would be too short for him to utter forth

His love-chant, and disburden his full soul

Of all his music!

I know a grove,

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,

Which the great lord inhabits not; and so

This grove is wild with tangling underwood,

And the trim walks are broken up; and grass,

Thin grass and king-cups, grow within the paths;

But never elsewhere in one place I knew

So many nightingales. And far and near,

In wood and thicket o’er the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other’s songs —

With skirmish and capricious passagings,

And murmurs musical and swift—jug, jug!

And one low, piping sound, more sweet than all,

Stirring the air with such a harmony

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost

Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may, perchance, behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade

Lifts up her love-torch.

Oft a moment’s space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon

Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky

With one sensation, and those wakeful birds

Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if one quick and sodden gale had swept

An hundred airy harps! And I have watched

Many a nightingale perched giddily

On blossoming twig, still swinging from the breeze,

And to that motion tune his wanton song,

Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

Milton, too, in the first of his sonnets, has a beautiful address to this success portending songster:

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray

Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,

While hours lead on the laughing month of May,

Thou with fresh hopes the lover’s heart dost fill.

The fishes are now inspired by the same enlivening influence which acts upon the rest of animated Nature, and in consequence, again offer themselves as a prey to the art of the angler, who returns to his usual haunt.

“Beneath a willow long forsook,

The fisher seeks his ’customed nook;

And bursting through the crackling sedge

That crowns the current’s caverned edge,

He startles from the bordering wood

The bashful wild-ducks early brood.”

A considerable number of plants flower in this month, which Bloomfield beautifully describes.

Neglected now the early daisy lies,

Nor thou, pale primrose, bloom’st the only prize,

Advancing Spring profusely spreads abroad

Flowers of all hues with sweetest fragrance stored,

Where’er she treads Love gladdens every plain,

Delight on tiptoe bears her lucid train;

Sweet Hope with conscious brow before her flies,

Anticipating wealth for Summer skies.

In particular, many of the fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, the flowers of which are peculiarly termed blossoms. These form a most agreeable spectacle, as well on account of their beauty, as of the promise they give of future benefits.

“What exquisite differences and distinctions, and resemblances,” exclaims Warton, “there are between all the various blossoms of the fruit-trees; and no less in their general effect, than in their separate details.

“The almond-blossom which comes first of all, and while the tree is quite bare of leaves, is of a bright blush-rose color; and when they are fully blown, the tree, if it has been kept to a compact head, instead of being permitted to straggle, looks like one huge rose, magnified by some fairy magic, to deck the bosom of some fair giantess. The various lands of plum follow, the blossoms of which are snow-white, and as full and clustering as those of the almond. The peach and nectarine, which are now preparing to put forth their blossoms, are unlike either of the above; and their sweet effect, as if growing out of the bare wall or rough wooden paling, is peculiarly pretty. They are of a deep blush color, and of a delicate bell-shape; the lips, however, divided and turning backward, to expose the interior to the cherishing sun. But, perhaps, the bloom that is richest, and most promising in its general appearance, is that of the cherry, clasping its white honors all around the long, straight branches, from heel to point, and not letting a leaf or bit of stem be seen, except the three or four leaves that come as a green finish at the extremity of each branch. The blossoms of the pears, and, loveliest of all, the apples, do not come in perfection till next month.”

It is, however, an anxious time for the possessor, as the fairest prospect of a plentiful increase is often blighted. Shakspeare draws a pathetic comparison from this circumstance, to paint the delusive nature of human expectations:

This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost!

And Milton beautifully uses the same simile:

Abortive as the first-born bloom of Spring,

Nipped with the lagging rear of Winter’s frost.

Herrick indulges in the following “fond imaginings” to blossoms:

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do you fall so fast?

Your date is not so past

But you may stay yet here awhile

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What! were ye born to be

An hour and half’s delight,

And so to bid good-night?

’Tis pity Nature brought ye forth,

Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite!

But your lovely leaves where we,

May read how soon things have

Their end, though ne’er so brave;

And after they have shown their pride,

Like you away to glide

Into the grave.

The poet of the Seasons gives delightful utterance to the aspirations of many a bosom at this inspiring season:

Now from the town,

Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,

Oft let me wander o’er the dewy fields,

Where freshness breathes; and dash the trembling drops

From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze

Of sweetbriar hedges I pursue my walk;

Or taste the smell of daisy; or ascend

Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,

And see the country far diffused around,

One boundless blush of white empurpled shower

Of mingled blossoms, where the raptured eye

Hurries from joy to joy, and hid beneath

The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.

The farmer is busied in sowing early sorts of grain and seeds for fodder, for which purpose dry weather is most suitable, though plentiful showers, at due intervals, are desirable for feeding the young grass and springing seeds:

“The work is done, no more to man is given,

The grateful farmer trusts the rest to Heaven;

Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around,

And marks the first green blade that breaks the ground;

In fancy sees his trembling oats uprun,

His tufted barley yellow with the sun,

Sees clouds propitious shed their timely store,

And all his harvest gathered around his door.”

KATE LORIMER:

OR THE PEARL IN THE OYSTER.

———

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

———

“The pearl in ocean’s cavern lies,

The feather floats upon the wave.”

Kate Lorimer was neither a beauty, a wit, nor an heiress: she was only one of those many commonplace young ladies, who are “brought out” every winter to laugh, dance and flirt, for a season or two, then to marry, and fulfill their destiny by immuring themselves in a nursery for the rest of their lives. So said the world—but for once that many-eyed and many-tongued gossip was mistaken. Kate was very unlike most young ladies. With her Juno-like figure, and fine, though somewhat massive, features, there needed only a careful study of the mysteries of the toilet to make her appear what dandies call “a splendid woman.” But Kate, though in reality she was neatness itself, generally seemed but one degree removed from a sloven; so careless was she respecting the color, make, and adjustment of her clothes. Then she had what Shakspeare calls “a very pretty wit,” a certain shrewdness of intellect, and a quiet sense of the ridiculous, which wanted only the piquant sauce of boldness and ill-nature to make her what the witlings in primrose kids would style “bre-i-lliant.” But Kate was equally indifferent to her own looks and manners. She seemed like a kind of human machine, moved by some invisible springs, at the volition of others, but by no positive will of her own.

What, you will ask, was the secret of this cold abstraction in a young and not ungifted girl? There was no mystery about it; Kate was only one of the many instances of “a candle placed in the wrong socket,” as my poor friend —— used to say. She was one of a large family, but she was neither the oldest—the first inheritor of parental love—nor the youngest—the recipient of its fond dotage. Her elder brother, a tall, graceful youth, was the pride of both father and mother, and whatever privileges Kate might have claimed as the first of the troop of damsels who chattered their days away in the nursery and school-room, they were entirely forgotten in favor of the second daughter, who chanced to be extremely beautiful. The fact was that Kate occupied a most insignificant position between a conceited oldest son and a sister who was a belle. Her brother Tom’s sententiousness overwhelmed her and crushed her into nonentity, while Louisa’s beauty and vivacity threw her completely into the shade.

At her very first entrance into society, Kate felt that she had only a subordinate part to play, and there was a certain inertness of character about her, which made her quietly adopt the habits befitting her inferior position. Her mother, a handsome, stylish woman, with an easiness of temper which won affection but not respect from her children, and a degree of indolence which sadly interfered with the regularity of her household—sometimes fretted a little at Kale’s sluggishness, and wished she was a little less “lumpish” at a party. But there was a repose in Kate’s manner, which, upon the whole, Mrs. Lorimer rather liked, as it effectually prevented any rivalry between the two sisters. Aunt Bell, a somewhat precise, but sensible old maid, was the only one who was seriously dissatisfied. She remembered Kate’s ambition as a schoolgirl; she preserved among her most precious mementoes all Kate’s “prizes,” “rewards of merit,” etc. And she could not conceive why this enthusiasm and eagerness for distinction should have died away so suddenly and so completely. Aunt Bell suspected something of the truth, but even she, who loved Kate better than any body in the world, could not know the whole truth.

Kate Lorimer was like one of those still, quiet mountain lakes, which at one particular spot are said to be unfathomable, but whether because they are so deep, or because a wonderfully strong under-current carries away the line and plummet in its descent, is never clearly ascertained by those who skim over the surface of the sleepy waters. Almost every one liked her; that is, they felt that negative kind of liking which all persons have for a quiet, good-humored sort of a body, who is never in the way. At a crowded party Kate always gave up her place in the quadrille if there was a want of room on the floor; if beaux were scarce, Kate was quite content to talk to some frowsy old lady in a corner; if a pair of indefatigable hands were required to play interminable waltzes and polkas, Kate’s long white fingers seemed unwearied; in short, Kate never thought of herself, because she honestly believed she was not worth anybody’s thinking about.

Was she so inordinately humble as to set no value upon herself? Not exactly that; but she had so high a standard of excellence in her own soul, and was so conscious of her utter inability to attain to that standard, that she grew to feel a species of contempt for herself, and therefore she neglected herself, not as a penance, but because she would not waste thought or time upon any thing appertaining to herself. No one understood poor Kate, and of course nobody appreciated her. When she spent hours in dressing her beautiful sister for a ball, and then twisting up her own fine hair in a careless knot, and slipping on a plain white dress, was ready in ten minutes to accompany the belle to the gay scene where she knew she could never shine, people only called her slovenly and careless, but gave her no credit for the generous affection which could lavish decorations on another, and be content through a whole evening

“to hear

Praise of a sister with unwounded ear.”

When she refused invitations to parties that she might stay at home and nurse Aunt Bell through a slow fever, people said—“She is so indolent, she is glad of an excuse to avoid the trouble of going out.” No one knew that she was not too indolent to watch through the long hours of night beside the sick-bed of the invalid, while her lovely sister was sleeping off the fatigues of the dance. When she gave up a gay season at the Springs, rather than disappoint her old grandmother, who had set her heart upon a visit from one of the sisters—when she spent a long, dull summer in a hot country-house, with no other companions than Aunt Bell and the infirm old lady, and no other amusement than could be found in a book-case full of Minerva-Press novels, then people—those wonderfully knowing people—again said, “Kate Lorimer is turning her indolence to account, and will earn a legacy out of it;” while the fact was, neither Aunt Bell nor grandmother had a cent in the world beyond their life-interest in their old country home.

“If Louisa makes an engagement this winter, I think I shall hurry Ella’s education a little, so as to bring her out next season;” said Mrs. Lorimer to her husband, during one of those “curtain conferences” which are quite the opposite to “curtain lectures.”

“Why should you do that? You will have Kate still to provide for, and Ella will be all the more attractive for another year’s study,” was the reply of the calculating though kind father.

“Oh, Kate is a hopeless case; she will never be married, she is too indifferent; no man will take a fancy to a girl who at the first introduction shows by her manner that she does not care what he thinks of her.”

“Then you think Kate is one of the ‘predestinate old maids?’ ”

“I am afraid so.”

“Well, Kate is a good child, and we shall want one of the girls to keep house for us when we grow old; so I don’t know that we need regret it much.”

“You don’t consider the mortification of bringing out two daughters at a time and having one left on hand, like a bale of unsaleable goods, while such a woman as that vulgar Mrs. Dobbs has married her four red-headed frights in two seasons.”

“How was that done?”

“Oh! by management; but then the girls were as anxious as the mother, and helped themselves along. As to Kate, I don’t believe she would take the trouble to walk across the room in order to secure the best match in the country.”

“She certainly is very indifferent, but she seems perfectly contented.”

“Yes, that is the trouble; she is perfectly satisfied to remain a fixture, although she knows that she will have to rank with the ‘antiques’ as soon as I begin to bring out her four younger sisters.”

“Perhaps it would be better to bring out Ella next winter,” sighed the father.

“Yes, Ella is lively and fresh-looking, and during the festivities which will follow Louisa’s wedding, she can slip into her place in society without the expense of a ‘coming-out’ party.”

“You speak as if Louisa’s marriage were a settled thing.”

“Because she can have her choice now of half a dozen, and by the time the season is over she will probably decide.”

“Well, under your guidance, she is not likely to make an imprudent choice.”

“I hope not. To tell you the truth, I am waiting for one more declaration, and then there will be no more delay,” said the mother.

“Has she not admirers enough?”

“Yes, but if she can secure young Ferrers it will be worth waiting.”

“What! Clarence Ferrers? Why, he is worth almost half a million; is he an admirer of Louisa’s?”

“He is a new acquaintance, and seems very much struck with her beauty; but he is an odd creature, and seems to pride himself upon differing from all the rest of the world; we shall see what will happen. One thing only is certain, Louisa will be married before the year is out, and Kate will, I think, resign herself to old-maidism with a very good grace.”

And having come to this conclusion, the two wise-acres composed themselves to sleep.

Clarence Ferrers, so honorably mentioned by Mr. Lorimer as “worth half a million,” was a gentleman of peculiar tastes and habits. His father died while he was yet a boy, and he had struggled with poverty and hardship while acquiring the education which his talents deserved, and which his ambition demanded. He had stooped his pride to labor, and he had learned to submit to want, but he had never bowed himself to bear the yoke of dependence. Alone he had toiled, alone he had struggled, alone he had won success. His mother had been the first to encourage his youthful genius, and to plant the seeds of honorable ambition within his soul. He had loved her with an almost idolatrous affection, and when he saw her eking out by the labors of the needle the small annuity which secured her from starvation, in order that he might devote all his own little stipend as a teacher to his own education, he felt that gratitude and love alike required him to persevere until success should reward the mother by crowning the son.

There is something ennobling and hallowing in such a tie as that which existed between Mrs. Ferrers and Clarence. A gentle, humble-minded woman herself, she was ambitious that her son should be good and great. She knew the benumbing effect of poverty upon the soul, but she took care that the genial warmth of affection should counteract its evil influences upon the gifted mind of her darling son. She was his friend, his counselor, his sympathizing companion, sharing all his hopes, his aspirations, his pleasures, and his sorrows, as only a true-hearted and loving woman can do. Long ere he reached the years of mature manhood the bond between mother and son had been made stronger than death; and, alas! far more enduring than life. Mrs. Ferrers lived to see Clarence occupying a position of honor and usefulness as professor in one of our most distinguished colleges. Her death left him a lonely and desolate man, for so close had been their communion, so thorough had been their mutual sympathy, that he had never till then felt the need of another friend. But in the enthusiasm of his deep and fervent love, he felt that he was not dissevered by the hand of death; and many an hour did he hold converse in his secret soul with the “spirit-mother,” whom he felt to be ever near him.

Clarence Ferrers had counted his thirtieth summer, when an old great-uncle, who had suffered him to struggle with poverty during all his early years, without stretching forth a finger to sustain him, died very suddenly, leaving behind him an immense fortune, which he distributed by will, among some dozen charitable associations, whose very names he had never heard until they were suggested by his lawyer, and making not the slightest mention of his nephew. Luckily for him, the will was unexecuted, and the neglected Clarence learned that, as heir-at-law, he was entitled to the whole of his miserly uncle’s hoarded wealth. Years had passed since Clarence had even seen the old man; and he certainly owed him no gratitude for the gift which would have been withheld from him if death had not been more cruel even than avarice. But Clarence was not a man to feel selfishly on any subject. One hundred thousand dollars, the fifth part of his newly-acquired fortune, was distributed among the charities named in the will, thus fulfilling the supposed wish of the deceased. With another large portion he endowed a “Home for Poor Gentlewomen,” as a tribute to the memory of his mother, whose life had been one of struggle and care for want of such “a home” in the early days of her widowhood. Then, after liberally providing for all who had any claims upon the old miser, he placed his affairs in the hands of a trusty agent, and sailed for Europe.

Clarence Ferrers set out upon his travels with no fixed purpose, except that of acquiring knowledge of all kinds, and of compelling occupation of mind to quiet yearnings of the heart. Eight years elapsed ere he revisited his native land. During that time he had explored every part of Europe, treading the greensward of its by-ways, no less than the dust of its high-roads. From the islands of the Archipelago to the most northerly part of Russia, he had traveled, commanding respect by his scientific attainments, receiving attentions every where for his courtly elegance of manner, winning love wherever he went by his suavity and kindness. Then to the East, that land of sacred memories, he turned his steps; Egypt, the land of mystery, too, was not forgotten, and when Clarence returned to his own country, he bore with him treasures of learning and wisdom from every land where the footsteps of man had trod. Yet was he as modest as he was learned, and few would have suspected that the quiet, gentlemanlike person, whose tall figure bent so gracefully over some timid girl at the piano, or who so carefully escorted some old lady to the supper-room at a party, was the celebrated traveler and man of world-known science.

Such was the man whom Mr. Lorimer pronounced to be “WORTH half a million!” I have sketched him at some length, because this is no fancy portrait, and memory has been faithful to her trust in thus enabling me to trace, though but in faint and shadowy outline, the noble character of one of God’s noblest creatures.

But all this time I have forgotten poor Kate Lorimer. She would have thought it strange that she ever should be remembered, especially when Clarence Ferrers was in one’s mind. Kate had seen Clarence Ferrers introduced to her beautiful sister, and had felt a glow of pleasure as she marked his look of genuine admiration. She had listened to words of graceful compliment, so unlike the vapid flattery of others. She had heard the tones of that thrilling voice, whose musical accents had been able to move alike the wild Arab, and the wilder Cossack, by their melody. She sat alone in the only shadowy corner of a gay and crowded saloon, but she would not have exchanged places with the most flattered and courted of the guests; for she could listen unobserved to the gifted traveler, and look unnoticed upon his expressive countenance. She had heard of him from childhood; for Aunt Bell had been one of Mrs. Ferrers’ earliest friends, and the story of his early struggles, his devoted love for his mother, and his subsequent good fortune, had been one of Aunt Isabel’s favorite themes. But he was a man when Kate was still in the nursery, and was but a shy girl of fourteen when, as she remembered, he called to pay his farewell visit to his mother’s friend previous to his departure. To the unappreciated girl, living in the midst of an ungenial though not unhealthy moral atmosphere, the picture of perfect sympathy and affection, as it had existed between the gentle mother and her gifted son, was one which, unconsciously, left its reflection within her soul, and became a sort of ideal to her half-developed nature. She did not retain the slightest remembrance of his actual appearance, but so vivid an image of his mental and moral gifts was traced upon her memory, that she felt she needed not the intercourse of social life to make her know him better. Yet as the beauty and vivacity of her sister attracted him closer to her side, it was impossible for Kate, with all her shyness, to avoid becoming acquainted with him; and it sometimes happened that when the beautiful Louisa was led off to the dance by one of her host of admirers, she would leave Kate to entertain Mr. Ferrers till her return, thus flattering him by her evident desire to retain his society, and, at the same time securing him from all rival belles.

Clarence Ferrers was now eight-and-thirty, an age when a man, however gifted, will not be insensible to the evident admiration of a very young and extremely pretty woman. He was still a fine looking man, but he was no longer youthful in his appearance. His teeth were fine, and his eyes, those soft, bright, tender eyes, were as beautiful as in boyhood, when his mother loved nothing so well as to kiss those full, heavily-fringed lids for the sake of the beaming look which rewarded the caress. But Clarence had not escaped the touch of Time; his luxuriant locks were thinned, and the silver threads were mingled among those dark chestnut curls. He appeared full as old as he really was; but who could look on his magnificent brow, watch the play of his flexible lips, or listen to the tones of his exquisite voice, and think of the ravages of Time?

Kate Lorimer was one of the best listeners in the world. There was a certain negligent ease with which she inclined herself toward the speaker, and a look of quiet attention on her countenance which always gratified the self-love of those who conversed with her. To be sure, in nine cases out of ten, this pleasant manner arose only from her indolent good humor, which found a kind of luxurious repose in the monotonous hum of a busy talker. But when listening to Clarence Ferrers, (for she seldom talked with him, except as much as common politeness required,) Kate soon found that his conversation did not afford her a mere cushion for mental repose. Not that Clarence dealt much in the marvelous, or excelled much in narration, although he abounded in illustrative anecdotes and reminiscences on every subject; but he had the art—so rare and so delightful—of waking up every faculty in the mind of those with whom he conversed. He imparted knowledge in such a manner as to make his hearer feel as if the ideas were his own, and the corroborative facts only were the results of the traveler’s observation. Yet he was no flatterer, he only, as I said before, had the power of arousing and stimulating the intellect of his hearers.

If Clarence Ferrers had been at first struck with the extreme beauty of Louisa, he was not less sensible to the “surprises of sudden joy” with which he beheld the dawning of Kate’s peculiar qualities of character. Her moral nature he had read at a glance, and it inspired him with respect and esteem, but her intellectual being, which was a mystery even to herself, became a study to the man of science and research. There was so much freshness of thought in her hitherto slumbering mind; such clearness of perception when she was unconsciously led to exercise her mental vision; such harmony of movement between the reasoning and the imaginative faculty, that Clarence became daily more interested in the “lumpish” Kate, despite the attractions of her beautiful sister.

“Mamma, I do not believe I can put off Frank Dormer any longer; he is desperately in love, and determined to make a declaration,” said Louisa, one morning, as she sat assisting Kate to trim a ball-dress with which she expected to charm all eyes.

“It would be a pity to lose so rich and generous an admirer, Lou,” was the reply of the prudent mother.

“But suppose I should accept him, mamma?”

“That you would not do; Frank Dormer is only rich in expectancy, while Clarence Ferrers has both wealth and fame.”

“I like Frank best;” said the young lady, coolly.

“My dear Louisa, have you lost your senses?”

“No, madam; but you may as well let me tell you now, that, for all his fortune, I would not marry Clarence Ferrers.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, he is so frightfully sensible, I should never dare do or say an absurd thing for fear of seeing those great lamping eyes looking reproval at me. Besides, he does not seem inclined to offer himself.”

“How can you say so, Louisa? I am sure he never leaves us at a party, and seems never so happy as when sitting near us and watching your graceful movements when you are dancing.”

“Well, he can’t expect me to drop into his arms by the mere fascination of his look. If he were not so rich, I should not think of him for a moment, while I really like Frank. He is full of gayety and frolic, and with him I should have a merry life. Clarence Ferrers is too old and grave for me. Don’t you think so, Kate?”

Kate started at the question; she had evidently been in one of her dreamy moods, and perhaps had not heard a word of their conversation.

Poor Kate! she bent over her sewing, and seemed intent only on placing at proper distances the delicate white roses which looped the gauze drapery of Louisa’s new dress; but she felt a sudden faintness come over her, which required all her habitual self-control to subdue. Not until the dress was finished and displayed upon the sofa to her mother’s criticism; not until the pearl ornaments had been laid upon the beauty’s dark curls by the skillful fingers of the all-enduring Kate; not until she had listened to all her sister’s ideas respecting the sash, which was to be tied at the side, with long floating ends; in short, not until all the important trivialities of a belle’s ball-costume had been discussed and decided upon by the aid of Kate’s taste, was she at liberty to retire to her own room. At last she was released, and as Louisa sprung up stairs, humming a lively Opera air, Kate, gathering up her sewing materials, slowly followed till she arrived at the door of her own apartment, which, in consideration of its being the smallest room in the house, and in the fourth story, she was permitted to occupy alone. This had long been poor Kate’s sanctuary, where she could think and feel and act as she pleased. Now she quietly locked the door, and then, when she had secured herself from intrusion, she sat down in the rocking-chair which had been her companion from childhood, and gave way to the tears which were pressing so painfully against her hot eye-lids.

Kate had often wept—much oftener than those who called her indifferent and cold in temper, could have imagined—but never had she shed such bitter, burning tears as now. There was grief and shame, and wounded affection, and mortified pride, all blended in the emotion which now agitated her. She could not have analyzed her own feelings; she only knew she was very unhappy and very lonely.

That evening Kate was too unwell to accompany her sister to the ball. A severe headache, arising from an attack of influenza, which accounted for the humid eyes that would weep in spite of all poor Kate’s efforts, was sufficient apology. So Mrs. Lorimer, with her tall son and beautiful daughter, were whirled off to the gay scene, leaving Kate to read the newspaper and play backgammon with her rheumatic father, who never went out after sunset.

But the old gentleman’s evenings were generally short. By nine o’clock he was comfortably fixed in bed, and Kate sat alone in the deserted drawing-room, when she was startled by the sound of the door-bell. It was too late for a visiter, and Kate’s first thought was that it might be a message for a parcel for her brother. She did not alter her position, therefore, but sat with her head bent, her hands listlessly lying in her lap, and her whole attitude one of the deepest dejection. A gentle footstep, and the tones of a well-known voice, startled her from her painful dream, and as she looked up her eyes fell on the stately form of Clarence Ferrers.

“I heard you were kept at home by indisposition, Miss Lorimer,” said he, “will you pardon me if I have availed myself of this opportunity of seeing you alone?”

Kate was a little bewildered, but she murmured something about “the pleasure of seeing him,” etc. like a well-bred young lady.

“Kate—Miss Lorimer—will you answer me frankly? I have lately indulged the hope that we may be united in a closer bond than even the friendship with which you have honored me; have I deceived myself with vain fancies?”

Kate’s heart seemed to stand still for a moment, and an icy coldness ran through her veins. She saw it all in a moment. Clarence Ferrers wanted to learn from her his chance of success with her beautiful sister. What should she do? Louisa did not love Clarence, but it was a desirable match. Should she sacrifice the prospects of her sister, or should she betray the noble confidence of him who called her his friend? How could she decide when her own heart was just awakened to a dim sense of its own mad folly and weakness?

Clarence watched her countenance, and marveled at the lights and shadows that flitted so rapidly across it. “I am afraid I have given you pain, Miss Lorimer,” said he at length: “I meant not to distress you; only tell me whether I have done wrong in believing that I might yet occupy a nearer and dearer place in your esteem; whether I have been mistaken in my hope of finding you my strongest advocate?”

Kate felt that she must speak. “You can scarcely need an advocate,” said she timidly: “I presume I understand your meaning, and I can only say that any woman might be proud to be the object of your choice.”

“And is this all you can say? Am I to think that on the empty gifts of fame, or the paltry advantages of fortune, I must depend for that most precious of earthly things, a sympathizing heart. ‘Proud to be my choice’—oh! Kate, I did not expect such a cold rebuff from you.”

Tears rushed into Kate’s eyes; she felt herself growing weaker every moment, and she determined to put an end to the conversation.

“Have you spoken to my sister, Mr. Ferrers?” said she, while she strove in vain to check the quick gasps that almost suffocated her.

“To your sister!” said Clarence, in some surprise. “No, Miss Lorimer, I preferred coming first to you.”

“I have but little influence over Louisa,” said the trembling girl, “but all that I have shall be exerted in your behalf.”

“Louisa!—your sister!—I really do not comprehend you, Kate.”

A momentary feeling of wounded pride aroused Kate, and mastered her coming weakness. She rose from her seat; “Did you not ask me to be your advocate with my sister?” asked she, while her cheek and lip grew white as ashes.

“My advocate with your sister!” exclaimed Clarence; “no indeed: Kate! my own dearest Kate! it was with your own sweet self I wanted an advocate, and hoped to find my strongest one in your heart.”

Kate grew dizzy and faint; a mist gathered before her eyes, and when it cleared away she was sitting on the sofa, with a strong arm lovingly twined about her waist, and on the soft white hand which lay in the grasp of Clarence glittered the betrothal ring, though how or when it was placed there she never clearly could remember.

“How strangely Clarence Ferrers disappeared from the ball to-night,” exclaimed Mrs. Lorimer, as she puffed her way up to her room at two o’clock in the morning.

“I was not sorry he went, mamma, for it gave Frank the chance he has so long wanted. He offered himself last night, while we were in the midst of that last polka; and I referred him to papa,” said Louisa, as she turned toward her own room.

“Well, I only hope you have not been too hasty,” said the mother, too sleepy just then to care much about the matter.

The next morning Mr. Lorimer was visited in his private office by the young and handsome Frank Dormer. He was an only child; his father was prepared to “come down” handsomely with the cash, and Mr. Lorimer gave a ready assent to the proposition of the enamored youth. He had scarcely finished his after-dinner nap, on the same day, when Clarence Ferrers sought an interview. Matters were soon arranged with a man who was “worth half a million,” and Mr. Lorimer chuckled and rubbed his hands with infinite glee, as he reminded his wife of her prediction that “Kate was a predestinate old maid.”

Kate has been more than two years a wife, and in the elegant, self-possessed, dignified woman, whose statuesque repose of manner seems now the result of the most perfect grace, no one would recognize the dull, indifferent, “lumpish” Kate of former years. In the atmosphere of affection every faculty of mind and body has attained perfect development. She has learned to value herself at her real worth, because such a man as Clarence Ferrers has thought her deserving of his regard. She is not the less humble, but she is no longer self-despising and self-neglectful. In order to do honor to her husband, she has striven to be all he would have her, and the result is one of the most intellectual and elegant women of whom our country can boast. The “light” which was threatened with extinction has now found “its right socket,” and no brighter luminary shines either in the world of fashion, or in the circle of home.

BALLADS OF THE CAMPAIGN IN MEXICO. NO. III.

———

BY HENRY KIRBY BENNER, U. S. A.

———

Monterey.

It was early in September, in the morning of the day,

When our army paused admiringly in front of Monterey; —

Like Cortez, had our general led his gallant little band

Through hosts of savage foemen to the centre of the land; —

Guerilla and Ranchero had followed on his track,

Like hungry wolves, but steadily our men had beat them back.

There lay the noble city—its cathedrals, and its towers

And parapets; its palaces, and gardens bright with flowers —

With the sunlight falling on it, over tower and dome and spire,

Through the mellow morning radiance, in a rain of golden fire:

Never, even in dreams of Orient lands, had Saxon eyes looked down

On so glorious a country, or so beautiful a town.

Through the grove of San Domingo our general led the way,

Reconnoitring in silence the city as it lay —

When from the Citadel, which frowned scarce half a league before,

We saw a flash of flame leap out, and heard a cannon’s roar:

The enemy were there in force, and we braced us for the fray,

Though retiring for the time before the guns of Monterey.

All day our parties scanned the place; and never had our eyes

Beheld a spot so guarded from all danger of surprise;

Its fortresses apparently all human force defied,

For what nature left unfinished, consummate art supplied:

We felt, while gazing on it, that many a bloody day

Would pass before our gallant troops were lords of Monterey.

Next morning came the order; and we saw chivalrous Worth,

With his regulars, march silently and determinedly forth.

On the heights that overhung his road the Bishop’s Palace rose,

Like a giant looking down on the columns of his foes;

But his men pressed bravely on, led by Hays and noble May,

Till from their eyry in the hills they gazed on Monterey.

Meanwhile we stood like restive steeds, fretful and full of fire,

And anxious for the conflict which every hour brought nigher.

Day waned, and morning came again, and then the word was given

And answered by a thousand shouts that shook the vaults of heaven,

For our troops, long curbed, now held the reins, and lightly leapt away,

Sweeping with headlong fury toward defying Monterey.

We saw brave Worth, whose noble band was ordered to the right,

Lead on his men through sheets of flame, and storm the castled height,

And the Mexic flag go down, and the stars and stripes expand

In the golden yellow sunlight, like a rainbow o’er the land,

As, led by gallant Butler, our division fought its way,

Foot by foot, and step by step, toward the town of Monterey.

The Citadel had greeted us, but we passed along the plain,

While its showers of grape and musket-shot deluged our ranks like rain;

But fierce and hot as was its fire, ’twas naught to what ensued

When in the suburbs narrow ways our little phalanx stood;

But Butler led us on, and we swore to win the day

Or die, like Yankee volunteers, in the streets of Monterey.

The cannon of the Citadel still swept our falling flanks —

The guns of Fort Teneria sent death throughout our ranks; —

Every window, door and house-top concealed a hidden foe,

Who sent his leaden welcome to the files that fought below:

Death reigned supreme: we stood aghast; but not a man gave way,

Though never yet was fight so fought as that at Monterey.

Sudden! arose a cry—a yell! and we saw our banners wave

Over Fort Teneria’s summit: God! what a shout we gave!

Quitman and his brigade were there, and the enemy’s flag went down,

As, with another rallying cry, we hurried through the town:

Fort Diablo’s guns received us, and one third our columns lay

Gasping—wounded—dying—dead—in the streets of Monterey.

The rest grew sick at heart; but we closed our ranks and dashed

Onward, with cheers, as all around our enemies’ muskets flashed;

But Butler, tottering on his steed, staggered, and reeled, and sank,

And with him, at the same discharge, went down our leading rank: —

Human nature could endure no more, and the now departing day

Saw us retreating slowly through the town of Monterey.

Another day passed slowly by, and we made our bivouac

Where we fought, for, though our foes were brave, they could not drive us back;

But the morrow brought fresh orders, and our men with hurrying feet

Pressed on again, troop after troop, contesting street by street;

From door to door, from house to house, we fiercely fought our way,

Determined that the night should see us lords of Monterey.

Then came the deadly conflict, foot to foot and hand to hand,

For at every nook and corner our foemen made a stand;

From the barricades which swept the streets, from the roofs above our head,

And the windows at our sides, descended showers of iron and lead;

And the crash of tumbling timbers, and the clash of steel, that day,

With the death-cries of the dying, rent the skies of Monterey.

That night the conflict ceased, and the crimson morning sun

Beheld the city in our hands—the bloody battle won.

Next day our conquered foes marched out, and slowly over the plain

Moved from our sight in silence—a sad, disheartened train;

But many an eye glanced backward, remembering the affray,

While we gazed on, like statues—the Men of Monterey.

THE SUNSHINE OF LOVE.

LOITERINGS AND LIFE

ON THE PRAIRIES OF THE FARTHEST WEST.

———

BY J. M. LEGARE.

———

In October of forty-six, while on a visit to St. Louis, I met a college-mate, Charles G., who, after a two years’ ramble toward the South, was now about to lace on his moccasin again, from a pure love of adventure, and distaste for the so-called comforts of life in the States. He had once before traversed the prairies skirting the Mississippi, and even passed a winter among the Chippeways on the frozen lakes, but his present design was to build a lodge somewhere in the neighborhood of the head-waters of the Missouri, and run the risk of losing his scalp, for the sake of the abundance of game of all sorts, and freedom from the trammels of civilization, to be found on the farther side of the Yellow-Stone river. As I had abundance of leisure, and not a little fancy for stirring adventure myself, he readily made me a convert to his way of thinking, and in three days we were steaming up the Missouri for Fort Leavenworth, where we designed taking a canoe and paddling the rest of the voyage. This outpost is fully six hundred miles from St. Louis; but as these sketches are such as one would scrawl off, lying full-length on the grass, with rifle within reach, and a blazing fire in front, drawing savory steams from a haunch of antelope or deer, or buffaloe-hump, I will describe nothing so commonplace as a voyage in the high-pressure steamer which landed us in company with half a regiment of raw dragroons en route for New Mexico.

We were all anxiety to begin our expedition in earnest, and the same day purchased a dug-out of sufficient capacity from a couple of traders on their way down stream, in which we embarked the next morning by daylight, with a cargo consisting of a keg or two of powder, pig-lead, Mackinaw blankets, biscuits, coffee, and liquor enough to take the clayey taste out of a few gallons of the river-water. Our party consisted of four, Charlie G., myself, a Canadian trapper, named Jean le Louche, from an outrageous squint in one eye, whom Charlie had hunted with formerly, and hailed as an old acquaintance, and now hired to add to the physical strength of the future little garrison, and lastly, a woolly-headed servitor of mine, (Jock,) more honest than brilliant, (I mean intellectually—for his face shone,) who had begged hard to accompany me, in place of being sent back to Carolina. The true banks of the Missouri are from two to twenty miles apart, and two or three hundred feet in perpendicular height, sometimes rising in pinnacles and terraces studded with glittering fragments of gypsum, making a splendid show in the full blaze of the sun, and variegated with broad parallel stripes of red, yellow, and gray, where the stratas of different soils appear in their natural position laid bare by the heavy rains. The space between is occupied by a rich plain, deposited by the river during its frequent overflowings; and through this beautiful meadow, shaded as it is here and there by forests and groves of cotton-wood, beech, sycamore, and oak, the current flows, winding, from bank to bank, with an average rate of speed of four or five miles. From the summit of the cliffs stretches a vast level prairie quite to the falls of the Missouri, a distance of perhaps 2,500 miles; but of this great pasture for game I will say nothing for the present, but return to the region of the river, which abounds with antelopes, deer, bears, and big-horns—the former trooping down the grassy slopes in herds of from fifty to a hundred, stamping their little feet and stretching out their necks, in their impatience to learn the errand of the voyageurs, and the last-mentioned making their appearance on the most inaccessible heights, often standing motionless between the looker and the blue sky above, like images carved out of the chalk which capped many of the peaks. These wild sheep or goats, (for they resemble both,) I observed frequently perched on the precipitous banks within reach, or very nearly, of a good rifle from the shore, but on pointing this out to Jean, the Voyageur, he only laughed, saying, “Sacré! monsieur, dat vere true—a’most, tourjours a’most—but nevare anyting else. Monsieur bighorn a bien de connaissance—all de Injens call him ‘med’cine’—ha! Him stan’ vere quite—him not move an pouce. Mais, tenez, him eye fix on you steady, not so much as make vink. Ven you come assez close, you raise your fusil—oh, vere softly—den you quite sure ob him rib for supper. Mais—dans l’instant—sacré!—where him jomp? You look leetle more high up de cliff, and dare him stan’ a’most in de—de—how you call? Ah, in de shot-rifle. Nevare mind, you say, I not so slow anoder time. Den you climb up leetle vay and take de aim agen. Mais, come autrefois, him no longer dere—mais a’most—ah, diable! toujours a’most!”

We laughed at Jean’s odd description of the habits of these wonderful mountain-sheep, which he rendered more forcible by his extravagant gestures, sometimes rising suddenly in our narrow canoe, at the risk of turning it bottom upward.

“But,” said I, “what if one were to drive one of your ‘medicine’ goats where he would have no higher place to leap to, and only a sheer precipice before him?”

“Oh ho, monsieur, you tink you got him vere safe now—mais, monsieur, med’cine not tink so—him laugh, oh vere much in him sleeve—diable! in him hide! Eh bien, you much fatigué—you say to yourself, now or nevare! Den you raise your rifle for de last time—your finger feel for de trigger—n’est-ce pas?—Hola! sacré, diable, ventrebleu—were him? You rub your eye, you open him wide—so wide. Presently you look more closer—you not see no terrace, noting but deep prec’pice—ha! Den you smile vid yourself, you quite sure him break de neck at de bottom. You creep down, creep down vere slow, dat your neck might not brake aussi. Mais, ven you reach de bottom, you not see him novere!”

“How—you don’t mean to say that this devil of a goat can fall a hundred feet or more without breaking every bone in his body?”

“Précisement, monsieur, précisement. Vhen him jump down, him fall on him big horn—him not broke noting at all. Den à l’instant him on him four foot—him cut caper—him say, bec—bah! And dat is de last you shall see of monsieur vid de grandes hornes—eh bien!”

This was all very fine, but I credited about one-half of Jean’s assertions, and determined to embrace the first opportunity of trying a shot on my own account. Accordingly while the others were constructing our usual night-camp one afternoon, I slipped quietly away, and after a half hour’s prying about, discovered a big-horn, and crept cautiously under the cliff upon which he was perched, but the animal discovered me before I could get within long-shot. I followed, however, and to do so, was obliged to begin the ascent, which was toilsome and sometimes dangerous, from the narrowness of the ledges affording foot-hold. Several times my eye glanced along the rifle-barrel, but before I could draw trigger, a sudden leap would again place him out of reach; and in this manner I persisted in creeping and clambering higher and higher, until I found myself near the edge of the prairie above, and the big-horn some distance below, with only a sloping ledge intervening between us. I saw in a moment that he could not escape me this time, unless he threw himself over the brink of the precipice, as Jean related—a feat I placed no faith in.

To reach the nimble animal it was necessary to slide a portion of the way down the inclined shelf, which I did sitting, with my eye fixed on the game; the first part of the slope was hard clay, and I counted on putting a stop to my descent a dozen or so yards below, where a stratum of sand appeared; but when I reached what I had taken for sand, I found it to be sand-stone instead, and so smooth, that my velocity was augmented rather than retarded. Away I went faster than ever—I quite forgot the big-horn, and only thought of saving myself from a leap which would certainly prove fatal without a pair of monstrous spiral horns. Luckily, the ledge became horizontal before it terminated, which saved my neck; but the seat of my trowsers, although of stout buckskin, were grated away, and it was a great marvel I was not ground off to the waist. As for the big-horn, he had thrown himself over even before I touched the rock, and up the face of this last I was obliged to climb, breaking holes in the slippery surface with my hatchet to serve as steps, before I could regain my former position. I related my disaster with the best grace I could to a grinning audience around the camp-fire, and sought consolation in the broiled ribs of a fat doe Jean had brought in, during a running fire of jokes and mock sympathy directed against me, sitting in naturalibus as to my legs, while Jock stitched in a new piece of leather where it was most needed. A day or two after this we came upon a herd of buffaloes for the first time. A party of Kanzas, whom we met on their way to Fort Leavenworth, informed us that not many leagues due west large game abounded—an assertion borne out by the long strips of jerked meat with which their pack-horses were loaded. The same day we arrived opposite Bellevue, and after a council held, determined to land, drag our canoe and freight into the enclosure of the station, and spend a week or two in collecting a good store of buffaloe-tongues and pemican. Accordingly, we disembarked, and found no difficulty in lodging our small vessel in a block-house not far from the water’s edge, the main fort being situated on the brow of a hill of considerable elevation. Here we purchased horses with the condition of returning them to the traders from whom they were obtained, should we return in the course of a few weeks, and desire to continue our voyage. On the second or third day, (I forget which,) Jean, on mounting a steep eminence somewhat in advance, cried out, “Voilà des buffaloes!” in a rapturous manner, which quickly brought us to his side. Sure enough, some miles off, a vast number of black specks were to be distinguished scattered over the plain below, a semicircular range of low hills, separating the prairie we had just traversed, and which terminated at the banks of the Missouri, from that stretching to the Platte River. As a light wind was blowing in the direction of the buffaloes, we retraced our steps down the side of the hill, and following the direction of the range, after a couple of hours’ ride, came into the immediate vicinity of the grazing herds, but this time to leeward. From the thicket of dwarf bushes bordering the ravine in which we stood, and extending into the plain a short distance, was little more than three hundred yards to the nearest group, and we could see all the cows and half-grown calves lying about in the sunshine, or feeding by twos and threes, while the bulls paraded themselves, occasionally tearing up the soil with their hoofs, bellowing, and locking horns with a chance antagonist, all wholly unsuspicious of the proximity of an enemy. We determined to descend the ravine cautiously, and if possible get a standing shot from the extremity of the cover before making a dash into the open plain; but our care was thrown away, for before we had advanced fifty yards, a pack of wolves, who were lurking about the skirt of the herd, in the hope probably of making a meal of a sick individual, galloped off toward the next line of thicket, and drew the attention of those closest to our party. There was now no chance of approaching unperceived, so dashing boldly out, we each selected a victim as we rode, and made straight for it, regardless of the rest. The rest, however, were far from unmindful of our presence, and such a bellowing roaring, and scampering, I never saw or heard before. Some of the larger bulls stood for an instant eyeing us through the shaggy mane in which their heads were buried, cast earth into the air, lowered their horns as if for a rush, but immediately after wheeled, and, tail on end, followed their companions in an ungainly sort of race, which, when hard pushed, they exchanged for a lumbering gallop.

The whole surface of the prairie, as far as eye could see, was now in motion, the nearer masses thundering along amidst clouds of dust, and making the plain quake with the dint of thousands of hoofs, while those in the distance were just beginning to take the alarm, and stopped frequently, fronting about to distinguish the cause of the disturbance. We had only time to make these hasty observations, when our horses bore us into the very midst of the melée, and as, of course, every thing was literally lost sight of, as well as forgotten for a time, with the exception of one’s own deeds and misdeeds, I will confine myself for the present to what befell me in person. I cannot say whether the others succeeded in reaching the buffaloes they had selected from the cover, but for my part, I lost sight of the cow I had chosen before I was fairly among the panic-stricken multitude; my horse, however, was a thorough Indian hunter, and entering into the spirit of the thing, presently brought me alongside of a huge bull, who, with his stump of a tail elevated at an angle of forty degrees, head down, and small, red eyes dilated with terror, was making the most of his time under the circumstances. At first our course took us into a dense crowd of fugitives, who would have been only too glad to afford us plenty of space, had it laid in their power to do so; as it was, I saw myself at one hasty glance, surrounded on all sides by the flying throng, some ahead, striving their utmost to keep out of harm’s way, others on each side jostling and pressing their fellows, and others again, those we had passed in our career, bringing up the rear, and laboring to overtake their more vigorous companions, and all seen dimly through a cloud of dust, and in the midst of an uproar which I never saw equaled. I think this must have been the last general observation I made, for a moment after, the bull to whom we had attached ourselves broke from the flank of the moving mass, toward which he had been by degrees edging, and made across the prairie at an acute angle to the line of flight pursued by the greater number. This manœuvre gave him a start of some yards, as it was no easy matter to extricate ourselves at a moment’s warning; but when we did, the superior speed of my horse rapidly decreased the distance between us. Now that there was only one object to engross my attention, I entered heart and soul into the wild excitement of the chase, and as far as my individual senses were concerned, the world was compressed in a single buffalo, hotly pressed by a half-mad horseman, the one endeavoring as strenuously to preserve his life, as the other to take it. Away we went—sometimes over the short-tufted sward, then into a wooded hollow, and out again on the other side—up hills and down, at the same furious pace at which we had parted from the herd. I was soon enabled to use my rifle which the denseness of the throng in which we had at first ridden had prevented me from doing to advantage, as there was no room to wheel, and to have attempted a halt would have been a sure means of finding ourselves run down and possibly trampled to death by the press behind. We were now running abreast, and holding my rifle across the saddle, and braced against my left arm, I fired without sighting, and lodged the ball in his bushy neck instead of behind the fore-shoulder, as I intended.

At the report, my steed, who knew well what he was about, dashed off at a tangent just in time to avoid a furious charge from the horns of the huge brute, but in a short while we had recovered the lost ground, and were bearing hard upon his flank. This time I used my pistol, and, as it happened, with success; for my finger pressing the trigger sooner than I designed, the charge hamstrung the bull and brought him down headlong in an instant, rolling over in a whirlwind of dust. As he was now safe enough, I dismounted, reloaded, and approached with the bridle over my arm, to give the coup de grace; and this I was glad to do, for the poor brute had raised himself on his fore legs and was making violent efforts to regain his feet, his eyes blood-shot and rolling, and a bloody foam flying from his nostrils, while he bellowed as much from terror and rage as pain. A third bullet put an end to his sufferings, and after cutting out the tongue, I looked about for the rest of the party. Nothing whatever was to be distinguished moving on the great level, but far away to the north, a low, gray mist showed the route pursued by the herds. A perfect stillness had fallen over all nature, and this sudden change from the recent life and tumult was startling and even oppressive. No idea can be formed of the solitude of these vast tracts from that experienced in the midst of a forest; for in the latter there are either birds, or living creatures of some sort, or if there be none of these, every trunk aids in creating an echo, and the very motion and rustling of leaves convey an idea of existence; but alone in the open prairie, the voice is lost in the vast space if a shout is attempted, and a solemn hush succeeds which overawes the rudest heart. I felt much relieved, then, when from the summit of a mound some hundred yards removed, I perceived on the farther side of a low ridge, a number of buffaloes which had been headed off, and were now making straight for where I stood. They must have been nearly two miles distant, and it was not until they were near enough to distinguish my presence and wheel as I approached, that I perceived any one in pursuit. It was Charlie, who fired at the moment, and brought down a fat cow, as I discovered when I reached the spot. I assisted in cutting off the choicest portions of the meat, after which we rejoined the others half a mile farther on. Jean’s horse was loaded with thin strips of meat, two or three tongues, and a couple of humps, the greatest delicacy of the prairies; and on these we feasted that night, building our camp at the foot of the ravine down which we had descended some hours before. Every one had some exploit or misadventure to relate. Jean had killed two bulls and a cow, and Charlie a couple of cows, but the last had received a fall and bruised his shoulder in rather an odd manner. When a herd of buffaloes are excited and begin running, a number of the bulls are usually found in the rear, and these, in the first panic, rushing blindly onward, and being more clumsy than the cows, not infrequently stumble in some of the numerous holes in the surface, and roll over and over before they can recover their legs; although occasionally the violence of the shock is such that they are maimed and unable to make much progress afterward. Charlie had just finished his first cow, and was in the act of pursuing another, when one of these accidents occurred directly in his path, and both he and his horse were precipitated over the shaggy monster on the instant. Fortunately, he was not at full speed, or the fall might have been fatal; and he possessed presence of mind enough to retain fast hold of the bridle, so that, although dragged a short distance, he was enabled to prevent his hunter from following the throng and ultimately to regain his seat. But the worst off of all was Jock, who had begged so hard to be allowed to try his chance also, that we had given him a heavy horseman’s pistol, and left him to tie the pack-horse in the ravine when we sallied forth from cover. It seemed that having done so securely, as he thought, he galloped after a cow, which, from frequently facing about to protect the retreat of her calf, had fallen behind the others. This female buffalo turned out to be a regular vixen, for either exasperated at the color of her pursuer, or unwilling to abandon her offspring without a struggle, contrary to their usual custom, instead of scouring off the faster when pushed hard, she wheeled and made a determined rush at the terrified Jock. He managed to fire full at her breast, but without the least apparent success, for the next instant his horse was knocked over broadside by the impetus of her charge, and he himself projected through the air, and landed on his head with a shock which would have fractured the skull of any but a negro.

However, on rising, he had the satisfaction of seeing his late antagonist lying quite dead, the ball having entered her heart, and the effort which overthrew her enemy being the last of life. There was a slight drawback to this self-gratulation in the fact, that his horse had taken advantage of the moment of liberty to dart after a detachment of the great herd which had thundered by, and could now be distinguished afar off, the flapping of Jock’s Mackinaw-blanket, which had been tied about the steed’s neck, and served the rider in place of a saddle, every instant accelerating his speed. When he came to look about, nevertheless, his face expanded into a grin of delight, for the calf had stopped short when the dam was slain, and now returned, stamping his feet and eyeing the sable hunter with some signs of anger, and certainly very few of fear. Jock from the first moment had coveted the calf, and now, in his charming ignorance, thought nothing easier than to catch it by the ears and drag it into the ravine, where he could secure it alive with a cord. With this design he marched directly up to his proposed prisoner, who stood his ground by the side of the carcase, his small, red eyes watching the enemy from under his shaggy brows; but the instant Jock stretched out his hands to clutch him, the undaunted little brute plunged forward and gave the former a thump in the stomach, which knocked the breath fairly out of his body, and laid him flat on his back in the grass. Greatly indignant, the discomfited aggressor scrambled up and began a search for his pistol, which in the fall from his horse he had lost possession of, but before he could recover it, the calf, emboldened by success, made a second attack on him, and taking Jock at a disadvantage in that portion of his body which is most prominent in stooping over, cleverly caused him to perform an involuntary somerset. This was the last of Jock’s adventure, for as soon as he could recover his perpendicular, he took to his heels, and now related his ill-luck with a crest-fallen air enough. We all went to see this sturdy calf, but the little fellow had no sooner caught sight of our white (or what passed for white) faces, than he scampered off, and we saw no more of him. Jock profited by this retreat to find his pistol, but when we returned to the ravine, we discovered a worse misadventure had occurred; the pack-horse had broken loose, and gone off at full speed, to judge from the numerous cups, pans, and a dozen other miscellaneous articles scattered for some yards along his track until he got clear of the bushes. If he chanced to cross the path of the wolves we started up earlier in the day, I am sorry for him.

LINES.

———

BY GEO. D. PRENTISS.

———

The sunset’s sweet and holy blush

Is imaged in the sleeping stream,

All nature’s deep and solemn hush

Is like the silence of a dream;

And peace seems brooding like a dove

O’er scenes to musing spirits dear —

Sweet Mary, ’tis the hour of love,

And I were blest if thou wert here.

The myriad flowers of every hue

Are sinking to their evening rest,

Each with a timid drop of dew

Soft folded to its sleeping breast

The birds within yon silent grove

Are dreaming that the spring is near —

Sweet Mary, ’tis the hour of love,

And I were blest if thou wert here.

On yon white cloud the night-wind furls

Its lone and dewy wing to sleep,

And the sweet stars look out like pearls

Through the clear waves of heaven’s blue deep;

The pale mists float around, above,

Like spirits of a holier sphere —

Sweet Mary, ’tis the hour of love,

And I were blest if thou wert here.

The pale full moon, in silent pride,

O’er yon dark wood is rising now,

As lovely as when by thy side

I saw it shining on thy brow;

It lights the dew-drops of the grove

As hope’s bright smile lights beauty’s tear —

Sweet Mary, ’tis the hour of love,

And I were blest if thou wert here.

Ah! as I muse, a strange, wild thrill

Steals o’er the fibres of my frame —

A gentle presence seems to fill

My heart with love and life and flame;

I feel thy spirit round me move,

I know thy soul is hovering near —

Sweet Mary, ’tis the hour of love,

And I am blest, for thou art here.

AILEEN AROON.[^[1]]

———

BY WILLIAM P. MULCHINOCK.

———

Girl of the forehead fair,

Aileen, aroon!

Girl of the raven hair,

Aileen, aroon!

Girl of the laughing eye,

Blue as the cloudless sky,

For thee I pine and sigh,

Aileen, aroon.

Girl of the winning tongue,

Aileen, aroon!

Flower of our maidens young,

Aileen, aroon!

Sad was our parting day,

Fast flowed my tears away,

Cold was my heart as clay,

Aileen, aroon.

When o’er the heaving sea,

Aileen, aroon!

Sailed the ship fast and free,

Aileen, aroon!

Wailing, as women wail,

I watched her snowy sail

Bend in the rising gale,

Aileen, aroon.

I watched her course afar,

Aileen, aroon!

Till rose the evening star,

Aileen, aroon!

Then fell the shades of night,

Wrapping all from my sight

Save the stars’ pensive light,

Aileen, aroon.

Stranger to grief is sleep,

Aileen, aroon!

What could I do but weep?

Aileen, aroon!

Worlds would tempt in vain,

Me, to live through again

That night of bitter pain,

Aileen, aroon.

Oh! but my step is weak,

Aileen, aroon!

Wan and pale is my cheek,

Aileen, aroon!

Come o’er the ocean tide,

No more to leave my side,

Come, my betrothed bride,

Aileen, aroon.

Come, ere the grave will close

Aileen, aroon!

O’er me and all my woes,

Aileen, aroon!

Come with the love of old,

True as is tested gold,

Pet lamb of all the fold,

Aileen, aroon.

By the strand of the sea,

Aileen, aroon!

Still I’ll keep watch for thee,

Aileen, aroon!

There with fond love I’ll hie,

Looking with tearful eye

For thee until I die,

Aileen, aroon.

SONNET.

———

BY CAROLINE MAY.

———

Love before admiration! Yes, oh yes!

Far sooner than give up the quiet love

Of a few warm, strong hearts, or even less,

Of one true heart alone, where like a dove,

To her own nest, I may for comfort press,

I’d yield the admiration of the world,

Were the world’s admiration mine! Confess,

Thou, over whom Fame’s banner is unfurled,

Can that broad banner hide thee from distress?

Thou, in whose ears the trumpet-peals of Fame

Forever sound, can those loud peals suppress

The secret sigh that trembles through thy frame?

Ah no! Take empty Fame away, and give

Love before admiration, or I cannot live.

THE LADY OF THE ROCK.

A LEGEND OF NEW ENGLAND.

———

BY MISS M. J. WINDLE.

———

(Continued from page 181.)

CHAPTER V.

The convent bells are ringing,

But mournfully and slow;

In the gray, square turret swinging,

With a deep sound, to and fro,

Heavily to the heart they go!

Hark! the hymn is singing—

The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so!

Byron’s Parisina.

The thirtieth of January, memorable in history, rose gloomy and dark, as though the heavens would express their sympathy with the tragedy about to be enacted.

Three days only had been allowed the condemned prisoner between his sentence and his execution. This interval, during the day, he had spent chiefly in reading and prayer. On each night he had slept long and soundly, although the noise of the workmen employed in framing his scaffold, and making other preparations for his execution distinctly reached his ears.

On the morning of the fatal day he rose early, and calling his attendant, desired him to employ great care in dressing and preparing him for the unusual solemnity before him.

At length he appeared attired in his customary suit of black, arranged with more than his wonted neatness. His collar, edged with deep lace, set carefully round his neck, and was spotless in color, and accurate in every fold, while his pensive countenance exhibited no evidence of emotion or excitement.

Bishop Juxon assisted him at his devotions, and paid the last melancholy duties to the king. After this, he was permitted to see such of his family as were still in England. These consisted only of his two younger children, the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester.

Notwithstanding the tender years of the young Elizabeth, she seemed fully to appreciate her father’s unhappy situation, and her young heart appeared well nigh bursting.

“Weep not for thy father, my child,” said Charles, kissing her tenderly; “he but goeth where thou mayest one day meet him again.”

She threw her arms around his neck, and sobbed aloud. He pressed her to his bosom and soothed her gently, but seemed for the first time since his interview with Alice Heath, on the night previous to his sentence, half unmanned. “It is God, my love, who hath called thy poor parent hence, and we must submit to his will in all things. Bear my love to your mother, and tell her that my last thoughts were with her and our precious children.”

Separating himself from her by a great effort, and then pressing the boy to his heart, he motioned to the attendants to remove them, lest the trial of this interview might, at the last, unnerve his well-sustained resolution and courage.

The muffled bells now announced with mournful distinctness, that the fatal moment was approaching. The noisy tramp of the excited populace—ever eager to sate their vulgar gaze on any bloody spectacle, but anticipating extraordinary gratification from the novel sight of the execution of their king—was plainly audible. Presently, the guard came to lead him out. He was conducted by a private gallery and staircase into the court below, and thence conveyed in a sedan-chair to the scaffold, followed by the shouts and cries of the crowd.

About the time that these sounds were dying away from the neighborhood of Lisle’s house, William Heath hastily entered the library, and taking pen and paper, wrote the following brief letter.

My Dear Alice,—I cannot but rejoice, that after finding, as we believed, all hope for Charles Stuart at an end—your visit to Cromwell having been unsuccessful—I removed you to a distance, until the tragical scene should, as we thought, be ended. The tumult and noise which fill the city, together with the consciousness of the cause creating it, would have been too much for your nerves, unstrung as they have been of late, by the feeling you have expended for the unhappy king. There is yet, though—I delight to say, and you will delight to hear—a single hope remaining for him, even while the bells now ring for his execution. Lord Fairfax, who though, like myself, friendly to his deposition, still shudders at the thoughts of shedding his blood, will, with his own regiment, make an attempt to rescue him from the scaffold. There is, in fact, scarce any reason to doubt the success of this measure; and this evening, Alice, we will rejoice together that the only cloud to dim the first blissful days of our union has been removed—as I shall rejoin you at as early an hour as the distance will permit.

I write this hastily, and send it by a speedy messenger, in order to relieve, by its agreeable tidings, the sorrowful state of mind in which I left you a few hours since. I am, my own Alice, your most affectionate husband,

William Heath.

The street before Whitehall was the place prepared for the execution. This arrangement had been made in order to render the triumph of popular justice over royal power more conspicuous, by beheading the king in sight of his own palace. All the surrounding windows and galleries were filled with spectators, and the vast crowd below were kept back by soldiery encircling the scaffold. Charles mounted it with a steady step, and the same dignified resolution of mien which he had all along so admirably maintained. Uncovering his head, he looked composedly around him, and said, in a clear, unfaltering voice, though only sufficiently loud to be heard by those near him, owing to the buzz of the crowd,

“People of England, your king dies innocent. He is sentenced for having taken up arms against Parliament. Parliament had first enlisted forces against him, and his sole object—as God is his judge, before whom he is momently to appear—was to preserve, as was his bounded duty, inviolate for himself and his successors, that authority transmitted to him by royal inheritance. Yet, although innocent toward you, and in that view undeserving of death, in the eyes of the Omniscient his other sins amply merit his coming doom; in especial, having once suffered an unjust sentence of death to be executed against another, it is but meet that he should now die thus unjustly himself. May God lay not his death in like manner to your charge; and grant that in allegiance to my son, England’s lawful sovereign at my decease, you may speedily be restored to the ways of peace.”

Lord Fairfax, with his regiment, prepared for the rescue of Charles, was proceeding toward the place of execution by a by-street, at the same time that the king was being conducted thither. On his way, he was passed by Cromwell, who then, for the first time, became aware of his purpose.

Much disturbed in mind at the discovery of a project so likely to thwart his own ambitious views, just ripe for fulfillment, the latter walked on for some moments in deep reflection. Presently quickening his pace, he turned a corner, and stepped, without knocking, into a house near by. His manner was that of a person perfectly at home in the premises, which, indeed, was the case; for James Harrison, the tenant, was one of his subservients, chosen by him in consequence of his austere piety, and great influence with his sect, of whom it will be recollected that Fairfax was one. Harrison’s appearance, though coarse, was not actually vulgar. He was a middle-aged man, tall and strongly made, and his manner, rough and military, might command fear, but could not excite ridicule. Cromwell found him in prayer, notwithstanding all the tumult of the day.

“I have sought thee, Harrison,” he said, “to beseech thee engage in prayer with Lord Fairfax, who is now on his way to rescue this Saul from the hands of the Philistines. He should first crave the Lord’s will in regard to his errand. Wilt thou not seek him and mind him of this?”

“I will e’en do thy bidding, thou servant of the Most High,” said Harrison, rising and accompanying him to the door. “Where shall I find Fairfax?”

“Thou wilt overtake him by turning speedily to the right,” replied the other, parting from him.

“One of his lengthy supplications at the throne of grace,” said Cromwell to himself, as he walked on, “will detain Fairfax until this son of Belial is destroyed.”

Meanwhile, upon the scaffold, Charles, after delivering his address, was preparing himself for the block with perfect equanimity and composure.

“There is but one stage more, sire,” said Juxon, with the deepest sympathy of look and manner. “There is but one stage more. Though turbulent, it is a very short one; yet it will carry you a long distance—from earth to heaven.”

“I go,” replied the king, “from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no downfall can transpire.”

So saying, he laid his head upon the block, and the headsman, standing near, in a visor, at one blow struck it from his body. Another man, in a corresponding disguise, catching it and holding it up, exclaimed, “Behold the head of a traitor!”

At this moment Lord Fairfax and his regiment came up. His humane purpose, so artfully defeated, becoming known, with the strange perversity of mankind, now that its benefits were too late to reach the king, an instant revulsion in the feelings of the populace took place; and the noise of quarrels—of reproaches and self-accusations rent the air, until the tumult grew terrific.

But the reverberation of no thunder-clap could have reawaked the dissevered corpse of the dead monarch. Charles Stuart, the accomplished scholar and elegant poet—Charles Stuart, the husband, father, friend—Charles Stuart, the descendant of a long line of sovereigns, and legitimate king of the most potent nation upon earth—was no more; and a human life was blotted from existence! That life, what was it? Singular and mysterious essence—capable of exquisite pleasure and intense pain—held by such a precarious tenure, yet valued beyond all price—the gift of God, and destroyed by man—a moment past here, and now gone forever—tell us, metaphysician, what was it, for we cannot answer the question.

——

CHAPTER VI.

Patience and sorrow strove

Which should express her goodliest.

Shakspeare.

We pass over that brief period in history during which the new form of government established by Cromwell flourished, and the usurper and his successor, under the title of Protector of the Commonwealth, enjoyed a larger share of power than had previously been attached to the regal dignity. It will be remembered that the deficiency of the latter in those qualities requisite to his responsible position soon led him formally to resign the Protectorship, and his abdication speedily paved the way for the restoration of Charles II. to the throne of his ancestors. Unfortunately for the chief characters of our tale, one of the first and most natural aims of the new king on his accession, was to seek the conviction and punishment of the Court who had so presumptuously, although in many instances, so conscientiously, passed that sentence against his father, which we have seen reluctantly carried into execution.

Many of those had fled at the first rumor of the restoration, in anticipation of the worst, so that, on the command of Charles, only twenty-seven persons—judges and accomplices inclusive—could be arrested. These had now been incarcerated three weeks awaiting their trial, which was deferred from time to time in the hope that more of the regicides might yet be brought to justice.

Among those thus imprisoned were Henry Lisle and William Heath, whose fates are interwoven with this narrative.

Leaving this needful preface to what is to follow, let us again visit Lisle’s mansion—the same which witnessed the marriage of his daughter. Several years have elapsed since that event; and after the mournful impression caused by the death of the ill-fated king had been obliterated from her mind—for Time has the power speedily to heal all wounds not absolutely inflicted upon the affections—till within the last few weeks, the life of Alice Heath had flowed in as smooth a current as any who beheld her on her wedding-night, could, in their most extravagant wishes, have desired. In their untroubled union, her husband had heretofore forestalled the wife’s privilege to minister and prove devotion—a privilege which, however, when the needful moment demanded it, no woman better than Alice was formed for exerting. Trouble had not hitherto darkened the young brow of either; nor pain, nor sorrow, nor the first ungratified wish, come nigh their dwelling. Under the same roof with her pious and austere but still affectionate father, the daughter had been torn from no former tie in linking herself to another by a still nearer and more indissoluble bond. There had been nothing to desire, and nothing to regret. The life of herself and husband had been as near a type as may be of the perfect happiness we picture in Heaven—save that with them it was now exchanged for sorrow—more difficult to bear from the bitter contrast.

It is an afternoon in September. Alice, not materially changed since we last saw her—except that the interval has given, if any thing, more of interest and character to her features—is in her own room, busily engaged in arranging articles in a traveling-trunk. Her countenance is sad—with a sadness of a more engrossing and heartfelt kind than that which touched it with a mournful shadow when she grieved for the fate of Charles Stuart—for there is an incalculable difference between the sorrow that is expended between a mere object of human sympathy, and that which is elicited by the distress and danger of those we love. And the sadness of Alice was now connected with those dearer to her than life itself. No tear, however, dimmed her eye, nor shade of despair sat upon her brow. Feeling that the emergency of the occasion called upon her to act, not only for herself but for others, the bravery of true womanly resolution in affliction—resolution which, had she alone been concerned, she might perhaps never have evinced, but which, for the sake of others, she had at once summoned to her aid—was distinguishable in her whole deportment as well as in her every movement.

As she was engaged with great seeming interest in the task we have described—the articles alluded to consisting of the clothing suitable for a female child of tender age—the little creature for whose use it was designed was sitting at her feet tired of play, and wondering probably why she was employed in this unusual manner. Alice frequently paused in her occupation to cast a look upon the child—not the mere hasty glance with which a mother is wont to satisfy herself that her darling is for the moment out of mischief or danger—but a long, devouring gaze, as though the refreshing sight were about to be removed forever from her eyes, and she would fain, ere the evil moment arrived, stamp its image indelibly on her memory. Who shall say what thoughts, what prayers were then stirring in her bosom?

The little object of this solicitude had scarcely told her fifth year; and the soft ringlets which descended half way down the shoulders, the delicate bloom, the large, deep blue eyes and flexile features made such an ideal of childish beauty as artists love to paint or sculptors model.

When Alice had finished her employment, she took the little girl in her arms, and strained her for some moments to her heart, with a feeling, as it would seem, almost of agony. The child, though at first alarmed at the unusual vehemence of her caresses, presently, as if prompted by nature, smiled in reply to them. But the artless prattler had no power to rouse her from some purpose on which her thoughts appeared deeply as well as painfully intent. Putting the little creature aside again, she drew near to her writing-desk, and seating herself before it, penned the following letter:

My dear Friend,—It is now some weeks since the imprisonment of my husband and father, who are still awaiting their trial. The active part which the latter is known to have taken in the punishment of the late unhappy king, precludes all hope of their pardon. But I have matured a plan for their escape, which I am only waiting a fitting moment to put into execution. When this is effected, we will take refuge in your American Colonies. I have the promise of influential friends there to assist in secreting us until it shall be safe to dwell among you publicly—for this country can never again be our home.

In the meantime, as some friends are about embarking, after a struggle with myself, I have concluded to send my little daughter in advance of us, lest she might prove an incumbrance in the way of effecting the escape alluded to, inasmuch as she has already been a great hindrance to detain me at home many hours from the dear prisoners—to both of whom my presence is so needful, especially to my husband, who is extremely ill in his confinement.

I need not say that I feel all a mother’s anxiety in parting with my child. But I have confidence that you, my friend, will faithfully supply my place for as long a time as may be necessary. It has occurred to me that it would be well to let the impression go abroad among you that my daughter is the young relative whom you were to receive by the same vessel, and of whose recent death you will be apprised. This may shield her in some measure from the misfortunes of her family; and I would be glad, therefore, if you would humor the innocent deception even with all of your household, until such time as we may reclaim her. With a firm reliance on my Heavenly Father, I commit my precious infant to His protection.

Alice Heath.

She had just concluded, when a servant appeared at the door. “Some ladies and a gentleman, madam,” said he, “have called, and are awaiting you in the drawing-room. They came in a traveling-carriage, and are equipped as if for a long journey.”

“Remove this trunk into the hall,” replied Alice, “and then say to the visiters that I will see them presently. They have already come to bear away my darling,” added she to herself. “I scarce thought that the hour had yet arrived.”

As she spoke, she set about attiring the child with great tenderness, seemingly prolonging the act unconsciously to herself.

“Now the Lord in Heaven keep thee, precious one!” she exclaimed, as, at length, the motherly act terminated; and imprinting on her face a kiss of the most ardent affection, though without giving way to the weakness of a single tear, she bore her from the chamber.

We leave the reader to imagine the last parting moments between that mother and her child. She who had framed the separation as an act of duty, was not one to shrink at the last moment, or betray any faintness of spirit. With a nobly heroic heart she yielded up the young and helpless treasure of her affections to the guardianship of others, and turned to expend her capacities of watchfulness and care upon another object. How well she performed this labor of love, notwithstanding the trial she had just experienced—how far she succeeded in dismissing the recollection of it from her mind sufficiently to enable her to sustain the weight of the responsibilities still devolving upon her—we shall now have an opportunity to determine.

Within another half hour Alice entered the cell of a prison. It was one of those constructed for malefactors of the deepest cast, being partially under the ground, and partaking of the nature of a dungeon. The mighty stones of the walls were green and damp, and together with the cold, clay floor, were sufficient of themselves to suggest speedy illness, and perhaps death, to the occupant. Its only furniture consisted of a single wooden stool, a pallet of straw, and a rude table.

On the pallet alluded to lay a man in the prime of life, his eyes closed in sleep, and the wan hue of death upon his countenance. One pallid hand, delicate and small as a woman’s, rested upon the coarse coverlet, while the other was placed beneath his head, from which streamed forth a profusion of waving hair, now matted and dull, instead of glossy and bright, as it had been in recent days.

When Alice first entered, the sleeper was breathing somewhat disturbedly, but as she approached and bent over him, and raising the hand which lay upon the quilt, pressed it to her lips, his rest suddenly seemed to grow calm, and a faint smile settled upon his mouth.

“Thank God!” whispered she to herself, as she replaced the hand as quietly as she had raised it, “my prayer is heard—the fever has left him, and he is fast recovering.”

Seating herself on the wooden stool by his side, she remained watching him with looks of the most devoted interest and affection. In about half an hour he heaved a deep sigh, and opening his eyes, looked around to the spot where she was sitting.

“You are a guardian angel, dear Alice,” said he; “even in my dreams I am conscious of your presence.”

“Saving the little time that I must steal from you to bestow upon my poor father, I shall now be ever present with you,” answered Alice. “I have placed our little one in safe-keeping, and henceforth, while you remain here, I shall have no other care but yourself.”

“Methinks I have already been too much your sole care, even to the neglect of your own health. Yet, except that sad look of sympathy, you seem not the worse for the tending me, else I might, indeed, reproach myself for this illness.”

Well might William Heath say she had nursed him with unselfish care—for never had it fallen to the lot of sick man to be tended with such untiring devotion. For weeks she had watched his every movement and look—anticipated his every wish—smoothed his pillow—held the cup to his parched lips—soothed him with gentle and sympathizing words when in pain—cheered him when despondent—and seized only the intervals when he slept to perform her other duties as a mother and daughter. It is no wonder, therefore, that it appeared to him that she had never been absent from his side.

Gently repelling his insinuation that she had been too regardless of herself, she turned the conversation to a topic which she was conscious would interest and cheer him.

“Continue to make all speed with this recovery, which has thus far progressed so finely,” said she, “for the opportunity for your escape from this gloomy place is only waiting until your strength is sufficiently recruited to embrace it.”

“That prospect it is alone,” replied the invalid, “held up before me so constantly as it has been during my illness, which has had the power to prevent my sinking joyfully into the grave from this miserable bed, rather than recover to die a more violent and unnatural death.”

“It waits alone for your recovery, dearest,” repeated his wife; “and once in the wild woods of America, you will be as unconfined and free as her own mountain air, till the very remembrance of this dungeon will have passed away.”

“Sweet comforter,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it gratefully, “thou wouldst beguile my thoughts thither, even before my footsteps are able to follow them.”

“Thank me for nothing,” said Alice; “I am but selfish in all. The rather return thanks to the Lord for all his mercies.”

“True, He is the great fountain of goodness, and his greatest of all blessings to me, Alice, is bestowed in thyself.”

“I fear thou art conversing too much,” said Alice, after a moment’s pause, “and I would not that a relapse should retard this projected escape a single day. Therefore I will give thee a cordial, and thou must endeavor to rest again.”

So saying, she administered a soothing potion, and, seating herself by his side, she watched him until he fell into a peaceful slumber. Then, stealing so noiselessly away from his pallet that her footsteps were inaudible, she gently approached the door, and groped along a gallery—for it was now dark—until she reached another door. It communicated with a cell similar in all respects to that we have described.

Within this, before a table, sat the figure of a solitary man. He was elderly, but seemed more bent by some recent sorrow than by the actual weight of years; yet his brow was somewhat wrinkled, and his locks in many places, much silvered with gray. But his countenance was remarkable, for it evinced a grandeur and dignity of soul even through its trouble. Beside him, upon the table, burned a solitary candle, whose long wick shed a blue and flickering light upon the page of a Bible open before him.

Unlatching the door, Alice paused, for the clear and deep voice of the inmate fell upon her ear: “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore, despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his hands make whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven, there shall no evil touch thee.”

Advancing, Alice threw her arms affectionately round the neck of the person we have described, and interrupted the reading, which, even more than her occasional visits, was his chief stay and solace in his imprisonment.

“Thou wilt rejoice with me, my father, that William is recovering. All that is needful now is for him to gather strength sufficient to quit this place. I trust that ere six weeks have elapsed, we shall be on our way to America.”

“Forget not, my child, Him to whom thy thanks are due for thy husband’s prospect of recovery. Remember the Lord in the midst of his mercies.”

“I do, my father, and we will return praises together ere I leave you.”

“Saidst thou, Alice,” asked the old man, after a short silence, “that before six weeks have passed away, we may be freed from this prison-house?”

“Yes, even so; and I have this day sent my infant in advance of us.”

“The Lord hath indeed been gracious to us, my daughter. Let us arise at once and give thanks to his holy name.”

At these words they arose together, after the manner of their sect, and in an earnest, pathetic tone, the voice of the aged Puritan ascended to Heaven. No palace-halls or brilliant ball-rooms, or garden walks, or trellised bowers have ever shown so interesting a pair—no festive scenes, or gorgeous revels, or glittering orgies ever rose upon so beauteous an hour as did the captive’s cell in that season of prayer!

——

CHAPTER VII.

A lovely child she was, of looks serene,

And motions, which, on things indifferent shed

The grace and gentleness from whence they came.

Shelley.

The child shall live.

Titus Andronicus.

Here are two pilgrims,

And neither knows one footstep of the way.

Heyword’s Duchess of Suffolk.

With equal virtue formed, and equal grace,

The same, distinguished by their sex alone.

Thompson.

A short gap in this narrative places the present action of our story in America. It is needless here to narrate the first settlement of the New England Colonies. The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers has been immortalised both in prose and verse until it has become as familiar to each American as any household word. We will not, therefore, ask the reader’s detention at the perusal of a thrice-told tale. It is likewise known that that landing was but the herald of a succession of immigrations, and the establishment of numerous colonies. Owing to the talent and liberal education, not less than the enterprise of the early settlers, this wilderness was not long, in spite of repeated obstacles, ere it grew up into flourishing villages and towns, some of them fairer than had ever graced the stalwort ground of Old England.

We introduce the reader into one of those villages, situated some twenty miles distant from New Haven. It might somewhat surprise him when we say, were it not for the frequent instances of the rapid growth of cities in our western wilds, which we would remind him have sprung up within his own recollection, that the latter place was, even at the period to which we refer, a flourishing and important town. Yet, notwithstanding the superior size and consequence of New Haven, the village of L—— was the place in which the governor of the colony chose to reside.

Had the course of our narrative not led us thither, we could have selected no better sample than L., of the truth of what we have asserted regarding the existence of neat and attractive villages in New England at that early day. It was situated on the high-road, in a small valley, through which wound down certain rocky falls, a clear rivulet, that afforded excellent opportunities of fishing to such of the inhabitants as were fond of the occupation of the angle. These, however, were few, for then, as now, the people of Connecticut possessed much of the same busy spirit which is one of their distinguishing characteristics. The glassy brook alluded to, served yet another purpose during the season when the sportive inhabitants of the watery element had disappeared. In the winter-time, when thickly frozen over, it formed, out of their school-houses, the grand resort of the children of the village for the purpose of skating and sliding. There, at those times, on a clear, bracing day, such as no country but New England ever shows in perfection, might always be seen a crowd of these happy beings, of both sexes, and of various ages, all collected together, some to partake and others merely to observe the amusements mentioned.

Upon a certain day, the neighborhood of the brook was thronged even to a greater extent than usual, owing to the exceeding brightness of the weather, which had led some of the tenderest mothers to withhold their customary mandate enjoining immediate return from school, lest the beloved object of the command might suffer from playing in the cold. Among those who had thus had their ordinary restrictions remitted, was a little girl whose extreme loveliness must have arrested the attention of any observer. Her features were not merely beautiful, but there was a charm in her countenance more attractive still—that purity and mildness which our fancy attributes to angels. There was a bewitching grace, moreover, in her attitudes that might have furnished delighted employment to the painter and sculptor, had there been any time or inclination among the colonists to bestow upon the cultivation of the arts.

This child was seemingly about five years old. She was standing, with a number of other little ones of her own age, looking on with great apparent delight—now at the larger boys, who were skating dexterously, and describing many a circle and angle, unknown in mathematics, upon the smooth surface of the brook, and then at a number of girls merrily chasing each other upon a slide at one side.

As one of the large boys spoken of passed her, he said, “Come, Jessy, I will give you a ride upon the ice;” and taking her in his arms, he was soon again gliding rapidly along.

“Take care!” shouted a noble-looking youth, whose glowing complexion and sparkling eye shone with the excitement of the exercise. “Take care, the ice is slightly cracked there, and it will scarcely bear the double weight.”

It was too late. Ere the words were well spoken, the ice gave way, and the boy who bore the fair burden sunk beneath the congealed element.

One loud shriek from the mingled voice of the young spectators announced the frightful accident.

With the speed of lightning, the youth who had uttered the words of warning darted forward, and plunging under the ice, disappeared from view.

Great consternation prevailed for some moments. Many of the children gave way to loud cries; others quietly wept; while a few of the older and more considerate ran toward their homes, in order to summon assistance.

In less time than it has taken to represent the state of feeling which prevailed during his absence, Frank Stanley rose to the surface, bearing in his arms the unconscious form of the young creature he had saved. Recovering his position on the ice, he speedily regained the shore, and overcome with the exertion, laid her gently on the ground.

The heart in his bosom was frozen with cold, but a quickening thrill passed through it, boy as he was, as he gazed upon those sweetly composed features. Her hair was dripping, and her long, wet lashes by upon her cheek as quietly as upon that of a dead child. Her garments hung heavily around her, and her tiny hands, which were half lost in their folds, were cold and still, as well as beautiful as gems of classic sculpture.

As his companions came up bearing the other sufferer, Frank Stanley hastily snatched off his own saturated coat, and spread it over her senseless body, ere he again, with recovered strength, raised her in his arms.

The alarmed villagers by this time came flocking to the spot, among whom was the governor of the settlement, whose venerable and striking countenance manifested peculiar anxiety.

“Your niece is safe, Governor H——,” said Frank Stanley, pressing forward and exposing his fair burden. “She is merely insensible from fright.”

“Thank God that she is saved!” exclaimed the governor, receiving her in his arms. “But whose rash act was it,” continued he, looking sternly around among the boys, “that exposed my Jessy to such peril?”

Something like a flush of indignation passed over the countenance of young Stanley, as he replied, “It was an accident, sir, which might have happened in the hands of more experienced persons than ourselves.”

“Thou hast been in danger thyself, Frank, hast thou not?” asked the governor, his stern mood giving way immediately at the sight of the youth’s dripping clothes. “And is there no one else more dangerously injured?” inquired he, casting an anxious, scrutinizing glance among the collected group.

“Frederick, here, is wet too, but not otherwise the worse for the accident.”

“Let him and Frank, then, immediately return to their homes, and don dry garments; and I must look to my little girl here, that she do not suffer for this.”

So saying, the governor turned and departed, pressing the little lifeless one more closely in his arms.

His disappearance was the signal for the dispersion of the group, the young members of which turned toward their homes, much sobered in spirits from the accident here related.

Following Governor H. to his home, we will leave him a moment and pause to describe that rustic dwelling. It was situated at some little distance from the main village, and was of larger size than most of the cottages there. Like them, however, it bore the same rural name, though it looked more like an English villa of some pretensions. On each side of a graceful portico stretched piazzas, covered in summer with roses and woodbine, while the neat enclosure in front, surrounded by its white paling, bloomed richly with American plants and shrubbery. At this season, however, the roses were dead, and the shrubbery lifeless; and the frozen ground of the well-kept walk rung under the tread of the stout governor, as he flung open the gate and rapidly approached the house.

The brilliant lustre of the brass-knocker, the white and spotless door-step, and the immaculate neatness of every thing around, were types of the prevailing habits of the proprietors.

At the door, awaiting Governor H.’s arrival with great anxiety depicted on their faces, stood two female figures, the one being a genteel matron, somewhat advanced in years, and the other a young lady of less than twenty summers.

“Relieve yourselves of your apprehensions,” said the governor, in a loud voice, as soon as he came within speaking distance. “She had merely fainted from fright, and seems to be even now gradually recovering.”

“The Lord be praised!” exclaimed the ladies, advancing to the steps of the portico to meet him.

They entered the house together. In a moment the fainting child was laid upon a couch, and being quickly attired in dry clothing, restoratives were actively applied. The elder female chafed her small, chilled palms in her own, while the younger administered a warm drink to her frozen lips.

After a short time she unclosed her eyes, smiled faintly, and throwing her dimpled arms around the neck of the young lady who bent over her, burst into tears. “My dear sister,” she said, faintly, “I dreamed that I had gone to Heaven, where I heard sweet music, and saw little children like myself, with golden crowns upon their heads, and beautiful lyres in their hands.”

“God has not called thee there yet. He has kindly spared thee to us a little longer,” said the young person to whom she spoke, stooping down and kissing her tenderly, while she, in like manner, relieved herself by a flood of tears.

“The Almighty is very merciful,” said the matron, wiping her eyes, while something like a moisture hung upon the lashes of the governor’s piercing orbs, and dimmed their usual keenness.

“I am not ill, uncle, aunt, Lucy, and we need none of us cry,” said the child, with the fickleness of an April day and the elasticity of her years, instantly changing her tears for smiles. “See, I am able to get up,” she added, disentangling herself from the embrace of her whom she had called her sister, and sitting upon the side of the couch.

At that moment a shadow without attracted her attention. “There is Mr. Elmore, Lucy!” she exclaimed, with childish glee.

The young lady had barely time to wipe away the traces of her recent emotion, when a tall figure crossed the portico and entered the room without ceremony. The new comer was a young man in the bloom of youth. As he entered, he lifted his hat, and a quantity of fair brown hair fell partially over a commanding forehead. His features were handsome, and his aspect both manly and prepossessing.

The governor and his wife advanced and greeted him cordially, while the blush that mantled on the of Lucy Ellet, as she half rose and extended her hand to him, told that a sentiment warmer than mere friendship existed between them.

“Where is the young heroine of this accident, which I hear had well nigh proved fatal?” asked the stranger, after he had exchanged congratulations with the rest.

The little Jessy, who had at first shrunk away with the bashfulness of childhood, here timidly advanced. The stranger smiled, stroked her soft ringlets, kissed her fair brow, and she nestled herself in his breast.

The whole party drawing near the fire, an interesting specimen was now exhibited of those social and endearing habits of the early settlers peculiar to their intercourse.

The simple room and furniture were eloquent of the poetry of home. Not decorated by any appendages of mere show, whatever could contribute to sterling comfort was exhibited in every node and corner of the good-sized apartment. The broad, inviting couch on which the rescued child had lain was placed opposite the chimney. The heavy book-case, containing the family library, occupied a deep recess to the right. On the left was a side-board, groaning with plate, the remains of English wealth. The large, round dining-table, polished as a mirror, stood in its customary place in the centre of the room. Two great arm-chairs, covered with chintz and garnished with rockers—the seats belonging to the heads of the family—filled a space on either side of the hearth, within which burned a huge turf fire, that threw its kindly warmth to the remotest walls. Over the mantel-piece hung a full-length miniature portrait of the first Protector of the British Commonwealth. Coiled on a thick rug before the fire lay a large Angola cat. A mastiff dog had so far overcome his natural antipathy to her race, as to keep her company on the other side; while the loud breathings of both evinced the depth of their slumbers.

The huge arm-chair on the left was the throne of the governor. There he received and dispatched the documents pertaining to his office. There also he wrote his letters, read his papers, received his visiters, conversed with his friends, and chatted with his family. There, besides, he gave excellent advice to such of the members of the settlement as needed it: and there, above all, arose morning and evening the voice of his pious worship.

The lesser arm-chair on the right was the seat of Mrs. H., who, in like manner, had her established routine of duties which she discharged there, with not less laudable exactness and fidelity. Nor was there at any time a more pleasing feature in the whole apartment than her motherly figure and cheerful visage fixed within its comfortable embrace.

While the party were agreeably engaged in conversation they were suddenly interrupted by a loud knock at the door.

“Who can that be?” said the governor. “Will you ask who knocks, Mr. Elmore?”

The latter rose and unlatched the door, when two figures crossed the threshold.

“Pray pardon us,” said one of the new comers, in a courteous voice, “but having business of importance with the governor, we have ventured to intrude,” and he lifted his hat with something of foreign urbanity.

The speaker was not handsome, but there was a certain elegance in his air, and intelligence in his countenance that were agreeable. He was clad in a velvet traveling-dress, and possessed an address greatly superior to any of the villagers, at the same time that his height and the breadth of his muscular limbs were calculated to induce that admiration which the appearance of great strength in his sex always inspires.

His companion was totally different in all outward respects—being a man of about fifty years of age, attired in a garb which was chiefly distinguished by an affectation of ill-assorted finery. A colored silk handkerchief, in which glittered a large paste brooch, was twisted around his neck, and his breeches were ornamented with plated buckles. His harsh countenance was traced with furrows, while his hair fell over a low and forbidding brow, on which hung a heavy frown, unrelieved by any pleasing expression of the other features.

“Walk in, gentlemen, and approach the fire,” said Governor H., rising and eyeing the strangers with a keen and rather dissatisfied glance.

In drawing near the younger gallant cast an unsuppressed look of admiration upon Lucy Ellet, that caused her to bend down her sparkling eyes, which had previously been fixed on himself and his companion with an arch expression of penetrating curiosity.

It was not surprising that the attention of the stranger had been attracted by the appearance of this young lady, for, like the little Jessy, she was endowed with a more than ordinary share of personal attractions. Yet it must be admitted that the styles of their beauty were of an exactly opposite cast. One of those singular freaks of Nature which sometimes creates children of the same parents in the most dissimilar mould, seemed to have operated in their case to produce two sisters as unlike in every particular relating to outward appearance as possible.

While the young countenance of Jessy was of the tenderest and softest Madonna cast, her eyes of a delicate azure, and the light golden locks parted upon a fair brow, like a gleam of sunshine upon a hill of snow, her sister’s face was precisely the opposite. Lucy’s complexion, indeed, was of the darkest hue ever seen in maidens of English birth, yet mantled withal by so rich a shade of color, that for many it might have possessed a greater charm than the fairness of a blonde. Her hair was black as night; and her eyes, of the same hue, were never excelled in lustre or beauty by the loveliest damsels of Spain. Her countenance was of a lively and expressive character, in which spirit and wit seemed to predominate; and the quick, black eye, with its beautifully penciled brow, seemed to presage the arch remark to which the rosy and half smiling lip appeared ready to give utterance.

“We have ridden far,” said the younger stranger, breaking the silence which ensued when they had taken seats, and turning his eye again on Lucy, as though he hoped to elicit a reply to his remark.

He was not disappointed. “May I ask,” said she, “what distance you have come?”

“We left Massachusetts a couple of days ago,” he replied, “and have been at hard riding ever since.”

“You spoke of business, gentlemen,” remarked the governor, rather impatiently; “will you be so good as to proceed with the object of your visit?”

“I address Governor H., sir, I presume?” said the ill-looking stranger, speaking for the first time.

He signified ascent.

“Our business is official and private,” continued the speaker, in a voice harsh and unpleasant, looking around uneasily at the spectators.

“All affairs with me are conducted in the presence of my family,” said the governor drily.

“It is imperative, sir, that we see you alone,” urged the other, in a dictatorial tone.

“Will you look whether there is a good fire in your little sanctum?” said her uncle to Lucy, giving her at the same time a significant glance, and having referred in his remark to a small room adjoining, where Lucy not unfrequently repaired, surrounded by numbers of the village children—with whom she was a general favorite—to dress their dolls, cover their balls, and perform other similar acts. Here, too, she retired for the purpose of reading, writing, and other occasions of privacy. More than all, it was the spot sacred to an hour’s conversation with Mr. Elmore apart from the rest of the family during his visits.

The little Jessy anticipated Lucy, just as she was rising, and opened the door leading to the room spoken of.

“The fire burns brightly, uncle,” said the child.

“Will you walk in here with me, gentlemen?” said the governor.

The two strangers rose, and Governor H. held the door until they had preceded him into the room. Going in last, he threw another expressive glance at Lucy, and followed them, leaving the door ajar.

Lucy, with the quickness of her character, read in her uncle’s look that he wished her to overhear the conversation about to take place between himself and his visiters. Moving her chair, therefore, near the half open door, while her lover was engaged in speaking with her aunt, and playing at the same time with the soft curls of the fair Jessy, who was leaning on his knee, she applied herself to listen.

“Your names first, gentlemen: you have not yet introduced yourselves,” said her uncle’s voice.

“Mr. Dale,” replied the pleasing tones of the young stranger who had spoken on their first entrance, “and Mr. Brooks.”

“Be seated, then, Messrs. Dale and Brooks,” observed the governor, “and have the kindness to proceed in unfolding the nature of your errand.”

“I am the bearer of these documents for you,” said the harsh voice of him who had been introduced as Mr. Brooks.

Lucy here heard the rattling of paper, as though the governor were unfolding a letter. He proceeded to read aloud:

“The bearers, James Brooks and Thomas Dale, having been empowered by His Majesty, in the enclosed warrant, to seize the persons of the escaped regicides, Lisle and Heath, you are hereby desired, not only to permit said Brooks and Dale to make thorough search throughout your colony, but likewise to furnish them with every facility for that purpose; it being currently believed that the said regicides are secreted in New Haven.

ENDICOTT,

Governor of Massachusetts Colony.”

There was now again a rattling, as if occasioned by the unfolding of paper. The governor continued:

“Whereas, Henry Lisle and William Heath, of the city of London, having been confined under charge of treason and rebellion, have made their escape—and whereas it is believed they have fled to our possessions in America, we do hereby authorize and appoint our true and loyal subjects, James Brooks and Thomas Dale, to make diligent search throughout all the New England colonies for the said traitors and rebels. Moreover we do hereby command our subjects, the governors and deputy-governors of said colonies, to aid and abet by all possible means their capture and imprisonment: And we do hereby denounce as rebels any who may secrete or harbor said Lisle and Heath, in the accomplishing of this our royal mandate.”

Lucy heard her uncle clear his throat after he had ceased reading, and there was a moment’s pause.

“It will be impossible,” said he at length, “Messrs. Brooks and Dale, for me to act officially in this matter until I have convened the magistrates of the colony.”

“I see no necessity for any thing of the kind,” said Mr. Brooks, in an irritated tone.

“Nevertheless, there exists a very great necessity,” answered the governor, decidedly; “so much so, that as I have said, it will be utterly out of the question for me to proceed independently in relation to the affair.”

“How soon, then, can this convocation be summoned?”

“Not certainly before twenty-four hours from this time,” replied the governor: “or perhaps a day later. You are aware that the meeting will have to take place in New Haven, which is twenty miles distant.”

“We might easily proceed there at once, and reach the place in time to call a convention, and settle the affair to-night,” urged Mr. Brooks, dictatorially.

“I am a slow man, and cannot bring myself to be in a hurry. One night can make no possible difference, and to-morrow I will call a meeting of the magistrates.”

Lucy here arose and approached a door leading to the outer piazza. Her lover’s eye followed her graceful figure with a feeling of pride as she crossed the room. She turned at the door, and seeking his eye ere she closed it, gave him a signal to follow her.

In some surprise, he instantly obeyed.

“Henry,” she said earnestly, and in a low voice, as if fearing that some one might chance to be near, “Henry, I have overheard what has passed between my uncle and his visiters. The latter are persons commissioned by King Charles to apprehend the escaped prisoners who have taken refuge in New Haven. They wish to obtain authority for their arrest and re-imprisonment, as well as for making a strict search throughout the colony, and will probably obtain this to-morrow. What do you think can be done in this emergency?”

“I scarce know what to say, dear Lucy,” said he, as he took her hand involuntarily, and seemed to be reflecting deeply on her words.

“Could not you,” resumed Lucy, “return at once to New Haven, and apprise the exiles of their danger?”

“Excellent: I will set out at once.”

“I have thought of a place of security for them likewise,” continued Lucy, and she drew nearer and whispered a word in his ear.

“Admirable girl!” exclaimed her lover, delightedly. “Why, Lucy, I believe you are inspired by the Almighty for the exigencies of this moment. But I must depart without delay.”

“Yes,” said Lucy, “there is not an instant’s time to be lost; and I will contrive to detain the officers until you are too far on your way for them to overtake you, in case they should design proceeding to New Haven to-night.”

He pressed her hand affectionately to his lips, and was gone.

Lucy returned into the room she had left just at the moment that her uncle and the strangers re-entered.

“Your visiters, uncle, will probably remain and take some refreshment,” said she, as she perceived they were about to depart, and giving him at the same time an arch look to second her invitation. “Tea will be in a short time, gentlemen,” she added, fixing her eyes on the younger stranger with such a coquettish urgency as to make her appeal irresistible.

“Take seats, gentlemen,” said the governor, in a more cordial tone than he had yet assumed.

“I thank you,” said Mr. Brooks, “but we will—”

“We will remain,” interrupted Mr. Dale, giving a wink to his companion, and turning toward the fire.

Mr. Brooks had no alternative but to follow his example; and the governor and his wife held him in conversation, while Lucy exerted all her powers of entertainment for the benefit of Mr. Dale. The little Jessy, more wearied than usual in consequence of her late adventure, fell asleep upon the couch, and did not awake until tea was over, and the visiters had departed.

True to his promise, early on the following morning Governor H. set out for New Haven, and convened the magistrates of the colony. After a short consultation, the determination was arrived at, that the exiled regicides not having violated any of the laws by which the community was governed, were not subject to arrest under their order. But to that part of the mandate authorising a search to be made, and prohibiting a secretion of the offenders, they paid loyal respect, and the sanctity of every house resigned and exposed to the inquisition of the officers. Their search, however, was unsuccessful, and they set out the next morning on their return to Massachusetts.

——

CHAPTER VIII.

Which sloping hills around enclose.

Where many a beech and brown oak grows,

Beneath whose dark and branching bowers

Its tide a far-famed river pours,

By Nature’s beauties taught to please

Sweet Tusculan of rural ease.

Warton.

Have I beheld a vision?

Old Play.

The gentle breath of spring-time was now stirring in L. The trees had begun to blossom, the flowers to bud, and the tender grass to spring up beneath the tread. Birds were returning from exile, and fishes were re-peopling the village rivulet. Nature, in short, was assuming her most attractive and becoming dress—that attire which many a worshiper has celebrated in songs such as not the gaudiest birth-night garb of any other queen has ever elicited. After these, it is not we who dare venture to become her laureate on the occasion referred to, when she outshone herself in that gentle season, in the balminess of her breath and the brightness of her sky, as well as in all those other particulars which are dependent upon these. Those who have lived the longest may recall every return of spring within their recollection, and select the fairest of the hoard, but it will still refuse comparison with the spring of which we speak.

The pretty English custom of children celebrating the first of May by an excursion into the country had been preserved among the colonists. On that day, from every village and town a flock of these happy beings, dressed with uncommon attention, and provided with baskets, might be seen merrily departing on one of these picknick rambles. Every excursion of this kind was not merely an event in the future, but an epoch in the past. The recollection of each successive May-day treasured up throughout the following year, never became so swallowed up in that which came after it, that it did not preserve in its own associations and incidents a separate place in the memory.

But an occurrence transpired on the May-day of which we are about to speak, for the little villagers of L., calculated to fix it indelibly on their remembrance. The morning rose as serene and clear as if no pleasure excursion had been intended. A large party of children set out from their homes on the day alluded to. This was composed, with very few exceptions and additions, of the same group which had been collected the previous winter about the frozen brook on the day of the accident to the young niece of the governor.

The utmost harmony and good conduct prevailed among the youthful corps, which was generaled by the sage and skillful Lucy Ellet, who, in order to preserve order on all festive occasions, lent the young people her decorous example, and the experience of her superior years. The young procession made a beautiful appearance as it wound along the verdant banks of the village rivulet, and was lost among the neighboring hills.

The spot selected as the place of rendezvous was an umbrageous woods in a green valley, surrounded by various rocky hills of considerable height, rising in some places one above another with great regularity, the highest apparently touching the horizon, and the progressive ascent seeming like a ladder of approach to the sky. The cavities and crevices of these hills were numerous, serving as excellent retreats for the children in their game of hide-and-seek, as well as for the retirement of separate groups apart from each other. This vicinity had, therefore, for years been the stated resort on May-day occasions; yet not alone for the advantages mentioned, since the shady grove attached to it, well cleared beneath the tread, might of itself have been sufficient cause for its selection. Even in winter it was a sheltered and sequestered spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of Spring, the earth bringing forth all her wild-flowers, the shrubs spreading their wealth of blossoms around it, and the thick branches interweaving their leaves to intercept the sun, it was a peculiarly appropriate place for the purpose in question. If a gardener would have deplored the opportunities of embellishment which had been here suffered to lie undeveloped, a true lover of scenery would have been glad that the wild and picturesque spot had been left undisturbed by the hands of industry or art. The situation had been first discovered, and its aptitude for the purpose which it served, pointed out by Lucy Ellet, ever interested, since she had emerged from her own childhood, in considering the happiness and pleasure of the little community.

On the day in question it was therefore remarked as somewhat strange that that young lady strove to exert her influence in prevailing on the party to turn another way, expending much eloquence in extolling the superior advantages of a spot of ground situated in an opposite direction. The former prejudice in favor of the other prevailed, and the assemblage repaired thither as usual.

In this glade the forest trees were somewhat wildly separated from each other, and the ground beneath was covered with a carpet of the softest and loveliest green, that being well shaded from the heat of the sun was as beautifully tender as such spots are in the milder and more equable climes of the South.

The morning was occupied in crowning and doing honor to the lovely little Jessy Ellet, who had been unanimously chosen, according to a custom prevalent, the queen of the day. At noon dinner was served upon the grass from the contents of the various baskets, and the afternoon passed in the customary sports.

It had been noticed by such of the children as were old enough to be in any wise observant, that Lucy Ellet, so far from busying herself as usual to devise rambles among the hills, and promote diversity of amusement, would have used her persuasions to detain the young people the whole day in the grove. Her amiable disposition, however, prevented her from employing positive authority in restraining their footsteps, and she had been obliged, however regretfully, to behold them wander abroad at their pleasure.

When the members of the scattered assemblage were re-collecting around her, late in the afternoon, previous to their return home, she anxiously scanned their several countenances as they appeared, as if to detect whether any individual had made an unusual or curious discovery. She seemed satisfied, at length, that this was not the case, and evinced extreme satisfaction when, a little before sunset, the party set out on their return to L.

They had not proceeded far, however, ere it was discovered that the young May-queen was missing from the party. In small alarm, they retraced their steps, expecting to find her fallen asleep under the trees where they had dined. But on arriving at the spot, she was nowhere to be seen. Her name was next loudly called, yet there was no reply. Apprehension now seized every member of the young party, who dispersed in various directions in search of the lost child.

Frank Stanley, the youth who, it will be remembered, had once been her preserver from a watery grave, evinced especial uneasiness at her singular absence, and was, perhaps—her sister excepted, whose anxiety amounted almost to frenzy—the most active in his endeavors to discover her. Separating himself entirely from the rest, he climbed among the rocky hills, and searched in every nook and cavity, at the same time shouting her name until his voice was drowned in the resounding echoes.

At length he had given up his search in despair, and was in the act of descending, when he heard a soft call from behind him. He turned, and on a higher hill than any of the young villagers had ever been known to climb, stretched out upon its side in calmness sleeping, lay the fair object of his search! On the rock above her, round which the dew of evening had gathered the thickest, he beheld standing, apparently to keep watch upon the child’s slumbers, a full-grown female figure. This form, reflected against the sky, appeared rather the undefined lineaments of a spirit than a mortal, for her person seemed as light and almost as transparent as the thin cloud of mist that surrounded her. The smoky light of the setting sun gave a hazy, dubious, and as it were, phantom-like appearance to the strange apparition. He had scarcely time, however, to note this, ere she vanished from his view, so suddenly and mysteriously, that he could hardly distinguish whether he had been subjected to a mere illusion of the senses, or whether he had actually seen the aereal figure we have described. Yet he could in no other wise account for the voice he had heard, except by ascribing it to the same vague form, for the child was evidently in too deep a sleep to have uttered any sound. Doubtful what to believe in regard to this phantom-image, and in that perplexed state natural to one not willing to believe that his sight had deceived him, ere he yielded himself up to the joy of recovering Jessy Ellet, whom he loved with the depth and sentiment of more mature age, he hastily climbed to the spot where it had appeared. There was no trace, however, of the vision to be seen. It had melted again into that air from which it had seemed embodied. Immediately descending again, he lifted the slumbering child, whom he had found at last, and imprinting a kiss upon her face, proceeded to bear her down the hill.

On reaching the valley, he found the rest of the party collected in the grove, after an unsuccessful search, in great anxiety awaiting his return.

——

CHAPTER IX.

Night wanes—the vapours round the mountain curled

Melt into morn, and light awakes the world.

Man has another day to swell the past,

And lead him near to little but his last.

Byron’s Lara.

The double night of ages, and of her,

Night’s daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wraps

All round us; we but feel our way to err!

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

The adventure of young Stanley, recorded in the last chapter, made a strong impression on his mind. The more he reflected on what he had beheld, the more he became convinced that it was no mere conjuration of his fancy. Nothing in his feelings at the moment, absorbed as they were with thoughts of the little truant he had been seeking, could have suggested to his imagination the image which arose before him. That it was an embodiment of some kind he became therefore convinced, though he could not believe either that it was human, when he remembered the sudden and mysterious manner of its disappearance.

Frank Stanley was by nature neither timorous nor credulous, and a course of reading, more extensive than usual for boys at his age, had in some degree fortified his mind against the attacks of superstition; but he would have been an actual prodigy, if, living in New England in the end of the seventeenth century, he had possessed a philosophy which did not exist there until much later. Those, therefore, who will recall to mind the superstitious feelings at that time prevalent among the early settlers, will not be surprised that our youthful hero should have closed his reflections with the conviction that he had beheld a supernatural visitant. That its mission, however, was not an unholy one he might have believed, when he recollected that he had seen it keeping watch over the lost child of his boyish love, and that its voice had been the means of directing him to the spot where she lay. But he had so strongly imbibed the common idea that all supernatural indications were demonstrations of the Evil One, that his cogitations the rather resolved themselves into fears that she who had been so guarded by one of His emissaries, though in the form of the being of light that he had beheld, was marked out as a victim of future destruction.

This idea became agony to the sensitive mind of the boy, whose heart had outstripped, in a great measure, his years, and was fixed with sentiments of strong attachment upon the little girl. He determined, therefore, to keep constant watch upon the child’s movements, and should he behold her again in the hands of the tempter, by timely warning to her sister to enlist her in attempts to destroy the power of the enemy by fasting and prayer.

Thoughts of the kind described had disturbed Stanley’s mind during the whole night succeeding his adventure, and caused him the first sleepless pillow he had ever known. He rose earlier than usual the next day. Feeling languid from want of his customary rest, he walked out to recover his freshness in the morning air. Even to those who, like Stanley, have spent a sleepless and anxious night, the breeze of the dawn brings strength and quickening both of mind and body. He bent his steps involuntarily toward the place of the previous day’s innocent revel.

The day was delightful. There was just enough motion in the air to disturb the little fleecy clouds which were scattered on the horizon, and by floating them occasionally over the sun, to checker the landscape with that variety of light and shade which often gives to a bare and unenclosed scene, a species of charm approaching to the varieties of a cultivated and planted country.

When Stanley had reached the borders of the grove in which the party had dined, he cast his eyes upward on the hills where he had climbed in search of Jessy Ellet. Curiosity suggested to him to ascend again to the spot where he had beheld the strange apparition. Fear for himself knew no place in his brave young soul. He felt that his virtuous and strong heart was even proof against the power of Satan and his agents. He proceeded, therefore, to remount the hills, in hopes that he might again behold the shadowy spirit, and perchance have time to question it of its errand to earth, ere it a second time disappeared. When he arrived beneath the well-remembered rock, he raised his eyes, more however in the expectation of being disappointed in the object of his quest, than with any actual idea of meeting a return of his former vision.

It was consequently with the astonishment of one utterly unprepared, that he beheld, standing upon the rocky elevation, the same figure of the mist which had filled his waking dreams throughout the night. The sudden sight took from him, for the instant, both speech and motion. It seemed as if his imagination had raised up a phantom presenting to his outward senses the object that engrossed his mind. She seemed clad in white, and her hair of threaded gold, while her complexion looked radiant and pure through the rising beams that reflected upon it. In the morning vapor she appeared even more transparent than in the sunset dew; so much so, that the broken corner of the rock which she had chosen for her pedestal, would have seemed unsafe for any more substantial figure than her own. Yet she rested upon it as securely and lightly as a bird upon the stem of a bush. The sun, which was rising exactly opposite, shed his early rays upon her shadowy form and increased its aereal effect. Internal and indefinable feelings restrained the youth from accosting her as he had thought to have done. These are easily explained on the supposition that his mortal frame shrunk at the last moment from an encounter with a being of a different nature.

As the boy gazed, spell-bound, he observed that this being of the vapor was not alone. Ere long, however, he became aware that near her, in the middle of the rock, where the footing was more secure, stood another form. Fixing his bewildered gaze steadily upon this second object, in order to scan it as carefully as he had done the other, he became convinced that it was a familiar figure. For a moment his memory failed him, and he could not place that round and coquetish form, with its garb of rich pink, nor that face, with its sparkling eyes of jet, and its raven braids. His doubt, however, lasted but for an instant. It was Lucy Ellet whom he beheld. She perceived his proximity before her companion, for, turning to the phantom-form, she pointed to him just as he himself was about to speak. Ere his words were uttered, the misty figure had vanished from her side, and she remained upon the rock alone.

Awe-struck, the youth turned to depart. “Both the sisters, then,” thought he, “are in league with this spirit-messenger of darkness. Alas! each so fair in their different styles, so idolized in the village, one of whom, too, I have treasured up her childish image in my heart, and mixed it with all my young dreams of the future!” He perceived, moreover, that such an association as he had witnessed with the emissaries of evil, might not only be a soil upon the virtue of Lucy and Jessy Ellet, but a lasting disgrace to their names, should the knowledge of it come to the ears of the pious community. Congratulating himself that he alone was privy to the unhappy circumstance, he was wending his way down the declivity when his meditations were interrupted by the gay voice of Lucy Ellet behind him.

“Out on your vaunted politeness, Master Frank, to trudge down hill in front of a lady, and never turn to offer her your arm.”

“Excuse me, Miss Lucy,” replied Stanley, stopping and much embarrassed, “methought you would not desire to be troubled with my company.”

“I honour your delicacy, Frank,” resumed Lucy, taking his arm, as they walked on. “You saw me but now in circumstances which you rightly judge I intended to be secret, and would not mortify me by forcing me to meet you just at the moment of my detection.”

After an instant’s pause, she continued. “I will let you into the secret, Frank, for there may one day be need to employ your services; and I am sure I may rely on your judgment and discretion not to divulge what I shall unfold. Your occasional assistance is the only return I demand for my confidence. Yon stranger lady is——”

“Hold, Miss Ellet, I cannot consent to obtain any knowledge of your secret under the condition that I am to become a party in the sinful affair. I not will unite in league with any daughter of the clouds or spirit of darkness.”

“Then you deem her whom you saw beside me on the rock one of those visionary beings you mention?” asked Lucy, looking at him steadily, to learn if he were in earnest, and an arch smile curling on her mouth, and sparkling in her eyes, when she perceived that he had spoken seriously.

“What else can I think of one who hath scarce the weight of a feather, is transparent as a cloud, and dissolveth in a moment into air?”

Lucy Ellet here laughed outright. But instantly checking herself and looking grave, she replied in a mysterious tone, “I have, indeed, a strange associate in yonder lady of the mist. And you positively decline an introduction to her?”

“I did not think thou would’st thus seek to destroy others as well as thyself, Miss Ellet. Is it through thine influence that thy sister has been made acquainted with the evil spirit?”

“Oh, thou fearest for her, dost thou?” said Lacy, mischievously seizing the opportunity of turning the conversation. “Thou wouldst have her kept stainless from sin in order that she may be thine when thou art a man, eh, Frank? Nay, you need not blush, though you see I read your heart.”

Stanley’s thoughts were now completely diverted from the first topic of conversation, and talking on indifferent subjects, Lucy Ellet and himself entered the village.

[To be continued.

URIEL.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

A haughty, high-born maiden was the Lady Uriel,

With stately step, majestic mien and royal falcon eyes,

Whose glory scintillated like auroras in the skies.

She sat her steed, and held her hawk, and ruled her father’s board,

Among her maidens, like a queen; and all her noble guests

Swore fealty to her beauty, and obeyed her least behests.

From East to West, from North to South, the wonder of her charms

Had been the theme of troubadours, who sang, with many sighs,

The splendor of her beauty and the grandeur of her eyes.

From East and West, from North and South, came many a gay gallánt,

Like pilgrims to Jerusalem, to worship at her shrine;

And each one swore that song did wrong to beauty so divine.

All day in panoply of steel these young chivalrous knights

Strove gracefully and gallantly in deeds of bold emprise,

Seeking to call down sunny smiles from her imperial eyes.

All night, beneath the icy orbs of the unheeding moon,

The invisible breath of music filled the castle’s gray arcades;

But Uriel’s heart replied not to her lovers’ serenades.

Some sought her father—paladins, whose names for centuries

Had sparkled, like a necklace, on the snowy bust of fame,

With hosts of anxious aspirants who struggled for a name.

And haughty merchant-princes, who, in countless argosies,

Possessed the wealth of Orient Ind, sued humbly at her feet;

And monarchs put aside command and followed in her suite.

But all in vain, for Uriel loved none, nor cared to love;

She only prized her sire and home; she sought no other ties;

So not a single suitor saw his image in her eyes.

More beautiful with every moon became the maiden’s face,

More queenly still her stately step, more luminous her eyes,

Until her lovers thought her charms translations from the skies.

One day, perchance attracted by the maiden’s marvelous fame,

An unknown knight, in humble guise, rode slowly to her gate.

No page, no man-at-arms had he; he came in simple state.

His armor was as dark as night, his tossing plumes were black,

As was his gaunt gigantic steed;—no arms were on his shield —

Only a deadly night-shade shone upon its ebon field.

Next day the tournament gave birth to doughty deeds of arms,

For down before the Nameless Knight the lady’s suitors went;

And, strange to say, that Uriel’s eyes now sparkled with content.

Next night a mournful melody swept from the plain below,

And from her oriel, bright as stars, peered Uriel’s luminous eyes:

Her heart made echoes to the strain, and answered it with sighs.

Hunting, or hawking, in the dance when jewels made the hall

Shine like the heavens on starry evens, the tall and shadowy knight

Followed her form from place to place, as darkness follows light.

And Uriel’s cheek grew crimson, and Uriel’s glorious eyes

Shone brighter when his step was heard in palace, or on plain,

Though her other guests shrunk from him with expressions of disdain.

For all her father’s titled friends—the lords who sought her hand —

Hated the bold adventurer; but no one spoke a word —

They only looked their anger;—they knew he wore a sword.

And sadly as he came he went, and Uriel’s anxious eyes

Followed him, step by step, until the distance closed their view;

And when her guests came once more round, they saw them moist with dew.

And Uriel’s cheek grew pallid, and Uriel’s eyes grew dim,

And Uriel’s form grew slender, and her beauty, day by day,

Seemed stricken like the morning moon, and sinking to decay.

Her father called her to him, and he kissed her icy brow,

And gave her gentle names; for he saw her mother’s eyes

Looking pleadingly upon him from her daïs in the skies.

A warm and rosy brightness, like the bloom upon a peach,

Blossomed on Uriel’s marble cheek, and the light in Uriel’s eyes

Came back at once, like light to stars, when clouds have left the skies.

For Uriel’s sire, forgetting his long ancestral line,

Consented that his gentle child should wed the nameless knight:

What wonder, then, that Uriel’s eyes resumed their olden light!

—The chapel bells were ringing; the priest was in his place,

And the incense clomb in clouds from the censers by his side,

While the organ’s billowy melodies breathed a welcome to the bride.

The princely train came slowly in, for Uriel’s satin feet

Fell fainter on the pavement than the snow-flake on the stream,

As she walked, in silence, by her groom, like a vision in a dream.

But when she reached the altar, grandly, and like a sun,

Shone out the marvelous brightness of her supernatural eyes

So vividly, the aged priest stepped back in mute surprise!

But the groom—his eyes shone brighter still, like lightning in the night.

As he motioned to the monk to expedite the rite;

But Uriel’s cheek grew pale again, and her eyes became less bright.

Slowly the priest proceeded, while the organ’s swan-like song

Swept toward the gilded dome and died, and lived and died again,

As the monk in mellow monotones chanted his deep refrain.

The priest was silent: with a sigh the bride sunk on the breast

Of him she loved so wildly, as a bird sinks on its nest,

As her sire, her bridemaids and her friends around the couple prest.

Suddenly, like an expiring lamp, her large, unusual eyes

Flashed, and went out, as forward, with a simple rustling sound,

The noble Lady Uriel fell lifeless to the ground!

The maidens shrieked in terror when she sunk, as through a mist,

For where the bridegroom stood was space—his form was gone in air;

And the lonely sire embraced his child in agonies of despair!

From his place behind the railing came the shorn and shaven priest,

And quoth he, while the expectant crowd stood mute and held their breath —

“Take up the dead: its Nameless Groom was the Invisible Death.”

OUT OF DOORS.

———

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

———

’Tis good to be abroad in the sun,

His gifts abide when day is done;

Each thing in nature from his cup

Gathers a several virtue up;

The grace within its being’s reach

Becomes the nutriment of each,

And the same life imbibed by all

Makes each most individual:

Here the twig-bending peaches seek

The glow that mantles in their cheek—

Hence comes the Indian-summer bloom

That hazes round the basking plum,

And, from the same impartial light,

The grass sucks green, the lily white.

Like these the soul, for sunshine made,

Grows wan and gracile in the shade,

Her faculties, which God decreed

Various as Summer’s dædal breed,

With one sad color are imbued,

Shut from the sun that tints their blood;

The shadow of the poet’s roof

Deadens the dyes of warp and woof;

Whate’er of ancient song remains

Has fresh air flowing in its veins,

For Greece and eldest Ind knew well

That out of doors, with world-wide swell

Arches the student’s lawful cell.

Away, unfruitful lore of books,

For whose vain idiom we reject

The spirit’s mother-dialect,

Aliens among the birds and brooks,

Dull to interpret or believe

What gospels lost the woods retrieve,

Or what the eaves-dropping violet

Reports from God, who walketh yet

His garden in the hush of eve!

Away, ye pedants city-bred,

Unwise of heart, too wise of head,

Who handcuff Art with thus and so,

And in each other’s foot-prints tread,