I grew frightened; the woman was well enough, though jogging upon forty. But the baby-what on earth should it be doing; suppose she were to put it in my arms in some retired part of the village? Only fancy me six leagues from Amsterdam, with only ten guilders in my pocket, and a fat Dutch baby squalling in my hands! But the woman-with a ripe, red, laughing cheek, had a charitable eye, and we set off together.

Not a bit, though, could we talk, and it was nichts, nichts, however I put the questions. Nature designed eyes to talk half a language, and the good soul pleaded to me with hers for the beauty of her village words of the oldest Cicerone could not plead stronger. And as for the village it needed none. like dreaming; it was like a fairy land.

It was

Away, over a little bridge we turned off the towpath of the canal, and directly were in the quiet ways of the town. They were all paved with pebbles or bricks, arranged in every quaint variety of pattern; and all so clean, that I could find no place to knock the ashes from my pipe. The grass that grew up everywhere to the edge of the walks was short-not the prim shortness of French shearing, but it had a look of dwarfish neatness, as if custom had habituated it to short growth, and habit become nature. All this in the public highway-not five yards wide, but under so strict municipal surveillance, that no horse or unclean thing was allowed to trample on its neatness. Once a little donkey, harnessed to a miniature carriage, passed us, in which was a Dutch Miss, to whom my lady patroness with the baby bowed low. It was evidently, however, a privileged lady, and the donkey's feet had been waxed.

Little yards were before the houses, and these stocked with all sorts of flowers, arranged in all sorts of forms, and so clean—— walks, beds, and flowers-that I am sure, a passing sparrow could not have trimmed his feathers in the plat, without bringing out a toddling Dutch wife with her broom. The fences were absolutely polished with paint; and the hedges were clipped-not with shears, but scissors. Now and then faces would peep out of the windows, but in general the curtains were close drawn. We saw no men, but one or two old gardeners and a half-a-dozen painters. Girls we met, who would pass a word to my entertainer, and a glance to me, and a low courtesy, and would chuckle the baby under the chin, and glance again. But they were not better dressed, nor prettier, than the rest of the world, besides having a great deal shorter

waists and larger ancles. They looked happy, and healthy, and homelike.

Little boys were rolling along home from schock-rolling, I mean, as a seaman rolls-with their short legs, and fat bodies, and phlegmatic faces. Two of them were throwing off hook and bait into the canal from under the trees; and good fishers, I dare say, they made, for never a word did they speak; and I almost fancied that if I had stepped quietly up, and kicked one of them into the water, the other would have quietly pulled in his line-taken off his bait-put all in his pocket, and toddled off in true Dutch style, home, to tell his Dutch mamma.

Round pretty angles that came unlooked for, and the shady square of the church-not a sound anywhere we passed along, the woman, the baby, and I. Half a dozen times, I wanted Cameron with me to enjoy a good Scotch laugh at the oddity of the whole thing; for there was something approaching the ludicrous in the excess of cleanliness-to say nothing about my stout attendant, whose cares and anxieties were most amusingly divided between me and the babe. There was a large garden, a phthisicky old gardener took me over, with puppets in cottages, going by clockwork-an old woman spinning, dog barking, and wooden mermaids playing in artificial water; these all confirmed the idea with which the extravagant neatness can not fail to impress one, that the whole thing is a mockery, and in no sense earnest.

From this we wandered away in a new quarter, to the tubs, and pans, and presses of the dairy. The woman in waiting gave a suspicious glance at my feet when I entered the cow-stable; and afterward, when she favored me with a look into her home, all beset with high-polished cupboards and china, my steps were each one of them regarded-though my boots had been cleaned two hours before-as if I had been treading in her churn, and not upon a floor of stout Norway plank. The press was adorned with brazen weights, and bands shining like gold. The big mastiff who turned the churn was sleeping under the table, and the maid showed me the women milking over the low ditches in the fields,-for the sun was getting near to the far away flat grounds in the west.

With another stroll through the clean streets of the village, I returned to my little inn, where I sat under the braided limbs of the beech-tree over the door. There was something in the quiet and cleanliness that impressed me like a picture, or a curious book. It did not seem as if healthy flesh and blood, with

all its passions and cares, could make a part of such a way of living. I am sure that some of the dirty people along the Rhone, and in the Vallais Canton of Switzerland, if suddenly translated to the grass slopes that sink into the water at Broek, would imagine it some new creation.

So I sat there musing before the inn, looking out over the canal, and the vast plain with its feeding flocks, and over the groups of cottages, and windmills, and far-off delicate spires.

**

OUR HOMES.-BERNARD BARTON.

Where burns the loved hearth brightest,
Cheering the social breast?
Where beats the fond heart lightest,
Its humble hopes possessed?
Where is the smile of sadness,

Of meek-eyed patience born,
Worth more than those of gladness
Which mirth's bright cheek adorn?
Pleasure is marked by fleetness,

To those who ever roam;
While grief itself has sweetness
At Home! dear home!

There blend the ties that strengthen
Our hearts in hours of grief,

The silver links that lengthen
Joy's visits when most brief;
There eyes, in all their splendor,
Are vocal to the heart,
And glances, gay or tender,
Fresh eloquence impart;

Then dost thou sigh for pleasure!
Oh! do not widely roam;
But seek that hidden treasure
At Home! dear home!

Does pure religion charm thee

Far more than aught below?

Wouldst thou that she should arm thes
Against the hour of woe?
Think not she dwelleth only

In temples built for prayer.
For Home itself is lonely

Unless her smiles be there;

The devotee may falter,
The bigot blindly roam;
If worshipless her altar

At Home! dear home!

Love over it presideth,

With meek and watchful awe,
Its daily service guideth,

And shows its perfect law;
If there thy faith shall fail thee,
If there no shrine be found,
What can thy prayers avail thee,
With kneeling crowds around?
Go! leave thy gift unoffered
Beneath Religion's dome,
And be her first fruits proffered
At Home! dear home!

MAY. PERCIVAL.

I feel a newer life in every gale;
The winds, that fan the flowers,

And with their welcome breathings fill the sail,
Tell of serener hours;

Of hours that glide unfelt away,

Beneath the sky of May.

The spirit of the gentle south-wind calls
From his blue throne of air,

And where his whispering voice in music falls,
Beauty is budding there;

The bright ones of the valley break
Their slumbers, and awake.

The waving verdure rolls along the plain,
And the wide forest weaves,

To welcome back its playful mates again,
A canopy of leaves;

And, from its darkening shadow, floats
A gush of trembling notes.

Fairer and brighter spreads the reign of May;
The tresses of the woods,

With the light dallying of the west-wind play;
And the full-brimming floods,

As gladly to their goal they run,
Hail the returning sun.

DESCRIPTION OF WYOMING.-CAMPBELL.

On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall;

Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.
Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore!
Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies,
The happy shepherd swains had naught to do
But feed their flocks on green declivities,
Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe
From morn, till evening's sweeter pastime grew,
With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown,
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew,
And aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town.

Then, where on Indian hills the daylight takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes-
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And every sound of life was full of glee,

From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men;
While, hearkening, fearing naught their revelry,
The wild deer arch'd his neck from glades, and then
Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.

And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime
Heard, but in transatlantic story sung,
For here the exile met from every clime,
And spoke in friendship every distant tongue:
Men from the blood of warring Europe sprung,
Were but divided by the running brook;
And happy where no Rhenish trumpet rung,
On plains no sieging mine's volcano shook,

The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruning-hook

Nor far some Andalusian saraband

Would sound to many a native roundelay

But who is he that yet a dearer land

Remembers, over hills and far away?

Green Albin! what though he no more survey

Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,

Thy pellocks rolling from the mountain bay,
Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,

And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar.