mit. Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture, to lift its hand,-look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but ashes.-No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping school.-I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she could by any possibility marry. -It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing. It is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though,-it depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;-they must have been grinding it at home.—Another morning walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air before school. -The throbbing flushes of the poetical inter mittent have been coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that electrical experi ment which consists in passing a flash through letters of gold leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire? There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if the flash might pass through them,— but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer worship,-the immortal maid, who, name her what you will,-Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty, sits by the pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreams. MUSA. O MY lost Beauty!—hast thou folded quite Thy wings of morning light Beyond those iron gates Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, And Age upon his mound of ashes waits To chill our fiery dreams, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy straszas? Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair — Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn ? Come to me !-I will flood thy silent shrine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze. Come to me!-thou shalt feed on honied words, Sweeter than song of birds;— No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note, When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,— Fure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,— Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom,-for me no more,— • Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!- While blue-eyed Summer smiles On the green ripples round yon sunken piles And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer! Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild sweet pain On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,Once loving thee, we love thee to the last! Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine! XL [THE company looked a little flustered one morn. ing when I came in,-so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student, what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions involving a quibble or play upon words,-in short, containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the illustri ous historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a pun. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a paper containing some of the questions and their I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures. -It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day or two." Why an Englishman must go to the Conti. answers. small roll of |