To one familiar with the dense swamps that skirt the rivers through the alluvial bottom lands of the South, there will be no difficulty in comprehending the fact that a fugitive may find temporary security within half a mile of his enemy, even where his pursuers hunt for him in numbers. Thus it happened that, in taking to the river, our little corporal’s guard of patriots, under the direction of Elijah Fields, the worthy preacher, swimming their horses round a point of land on the opposite shore, sought shelter but a little distance below “Bear Island,” in a similar tract of swamp and forest, and almost within rifle-shot of their late retreat. They had no fear that their enemy would attempt, at that late hour, and after the long fatigue of their recent march and search, to cross the river in pursuit of them; and had they been wild enough to do so, it was equally easy to hide from search, or to fly from pursuit. Dunbar felt all this as sensibly as the fugitives; and with the conviction of his entire failure at “Bear Castle,” he gave up the game for the present. Meanwhile, the little barque of Frederica Sabb made its way down the river. She made her calculations on a just estimate of the probabilities in the situation of Coulter’s party, and was not deceived. As the boat swept over to the opposite shore, after rounding the point of land that lay between it and “Bear Castle,” it was hailed by Fields, for whom Brough had a ready answer. Some delay, the fruit of a proper caution, took place before our fugitives were properly sensible of the character of the stranger; but the result was, that with returning consciousness, Richard Coulter found himself once more in safety with his friends, and, a still more precious satisfaction, attended by the woman of his heart. It was not long before all the adventures of Frederica were in his possession, and his spirit became newly strengthened for conflict and endurance by such proofs of a more than feminine attachment which the brave young girl had shown. Let us leave the little party for a season, while we return with the captain of loyalists to the farmstead of old Frederick Sabb.

Here Mat Dunbar had again taken up his quarters as before, but with a difference. Thoroughly enraged at his disappointment, and at the discovery that Frederica had disappeared—a fact which produced as much disquiet in the minds of her parents, as vexation to her tory lover; and easily guessing at all of the steps which she had taken, and of her object, he no longer imposed any restraints upon his native brutality of temper, which, while he had any hope of winning her affections, he had been at some pains to do. His present policy seemed to be to influence her fears. To reach her heart, or force her inclinations, through the dangers of her parents, was now his object. Unfortunately, the lax discipline of the British authority, in Carolina particularly, in behalf of their own followers, enabled him to do much toward this object, and without peril to himself. He had anticipated the position in which he now found himself, and had provided against it. He had obtained from Col. Nesbett Balfour, the military commandant of Charleston, a grant of the entire farmstead of old Sabb—the non-committalism of the old Dutchman never having enabled him to satisfy the British authorities that he was a person deserving their protection. Of the services and loyalty of Dunbar, on the contrary, they were in possession of daily evidence. It was with indescribable consternation that old Sabb looked upon the massive parchment, sealed, signed, and made authoritative by stately phrases and mysterious words, of the purport of which he could only conjecture, with which the fierce Dunbar denounced him as a traitor to the king, and expelled him from his own threshold.

“Oh! mein Gott!” was his exclamation. “And did the goot King Tshorge make dat baber? And has de goot King Tshorge take away my grants?”

The only answer to this pitiful appeal vouchsafed him by the captain of loyalists was a brutal oath, as he smote the document fiercely with his hand, and forbade all further inquiry. It may have been with some regard to the probability of his future marriage—in spite of all—with the old Dutchman’s daughter, that he permitted him, with his wife, to occupy an old log-house which stood upon the estate. He established himself within the dwelling-house, which he occupied as a garrisoned post with all his soldiers. Here he ruled as a sovereign. The proceeds of the farm were yielded to him, the miserable pittance excepted which he suffered to go to the support of the old couple. Sabb had a few slaves, who were now taught to recognise Dunbar as their master. They did not serve him long. Three of them escaped to the woods the night succeeding the tory’s usurpation, and but two remained in his keeping, rather, perhaps, through the vigilance of his sentinels, and their own fears, than because of any love which they entertained for their new custodian. Both of these were women, and one of them no less a person than the consort of Brough, the African. Mrs. Brough—or, as we had better call her, she will understand us better—Mimy, (the diminutive of Jemima,) was particularly watched, as through her it was hoped to get some clue to her husband, whose treachery it was the bitter resolution of our tory captain to punish, as soon as he had the power, with exemplary tortures. Brough had some suspicions of this design, which it was no part of his policy to assist; but this did not discourage him from an adventure which brought him again very nearly into contact with his enemy. He determined to visit his wife by stealth, relying upon his knowledge of the woods, his own caution, and the thousand little arts with which his race usually takes advantage of the carelessness, the indifference, or the ignorance of its superior. His wife, he well knew, conscious of his straits, would afford him assistance in various ways. He succeeded in seeing her just before the dawn of day one morning, and from her discovered the whole situation of affairs at the farmstead. This came to him with many exaggerations, particularly when Mimy described the treatment to which old Sabb and his wife had been subjected. It did not lose any of its facts or dimensions, when carried by Brough to the fugitives in the swamp forests of Edisto. The news was of a character to overwhelm the affectionate and dutiful heart of Frederica Sabb. She instantly felt the necessity before her, and prepared herself to encounter it. Nine days and nights had she spent in the forest retreats of her lover. Every tenderness and forbearance had been shown her. Nothing had taken place to outrage the delicacy of the female heart, and pure thoughts in her mind had kept her free from any annoying doubts about the propriety of her situation. A leafy screen from the sun, a sylvan bower of broad branches and thickly thatched leaves, had been prepared for her couch at night; and, in one contiguous, lay her wounded lover. His situation had amply reconciled her to her own. His wound was neither deep nor dangerous. He had bled copiously, and swooned rather in consequence of loss of blood than from the severity of his pains. But the hands of Elijah Field—a rough but not wholly inexperienced surgeon, had bound up his hurts, which were thus permitted to heal from the first intention. The patient was not slow to improve, though so precious sweet had been his attendance—Frederica herself, like the damsels of the feudal ages, assisting to dress his wound, and tender him with sweetest nursing, that he felt almost sorry at the improvement which, while lessening his cares, lessened her anxieties. Our space will not suffer us to dwell upon the delicious scenes of peace and love which the two enjoyed together in these few brief days of mutual dependence. They comprised an age of immeasurable felicity, and brought the two together in bonds of sympathy, which, however large had been their love before, now rendered the passion more than ever at home and triumphant in their mutual hearts. But with the tidings of the situation in which her parents suffered, and the evident improvement of her lover, the maiden found it necessary to depart from their place of hiding—that sweet security of shade, such as the fancy of youth always dreams of, but which it is the lot of very few to realise. She took her resolution promptly.

“I must leave you, Richard. I must go home to my poor mother, now that she is homeless.”

He would, if he could, have dissuaded her from venturing herself within the reach of one so reckless and brutal as Mat Dunbar. But his sense of right seconded her resolution, and though he expressed doubts and misgivings, and betrayed his uneasiness and anxiety, he had no arguments to offer against her purpose. She heard him with a sweet smile, and when he had finished, she said,

“But I will give you one security, dear Richard, before we part, if you will suffer me. You would have married me more than a year ago; but as I knew my father’s situation, his preferences, and his dangers, I refused to do so until the war was over. It has not helped him that I refused you then. I don’t see that it will hurt him if I marry you now; and there is something in the life we have spent together the last few days, that tells me we ought to be married, Richard.”

This was spoken with the sweetest possible blush upon her cheeks.

“Do you consent, then, dear Frederica?” demanded the enraptured lover.

She put her hand into his own; he carried it to his lips, then drew her down to him where he lay upon his leafy couch, and repeated the same liberty with hers. His shout, in another moment, summoned Elijah Field to his side. The business in prospect was soon explained. Our good parson readily concurred in the propriety of the proceeding. The inhabitants of the little camp of refuge were soon brought together, Brough placing himself directly behind his young mistress. The white teeth of the old African grinned his approbation; the favoring skies looked down upon it, soft in the dreamy twilight of the evening sunset; and there, in the natural temple of the forest—none surely ever prouder or more appropriate—with columns of gigantic pine and cypress, and a gothic luxuriance of vine, and leaf, and flower, wrapping shaft, and cornice, capital and shrine, our two lovers were united before God—our excellent preacher never having a more solemn or grateful sense of the ceremony, and never having been more sweetly impressive in his manner of performing it. It did not impair the validity of the marriage that Brough honored it, as he would probably have done his own, by dancing Juba, for a full hour after it was over, to his own satisfaction at least, and in the absence of all other witnesses. Perhaps, of all his little world, there were none whom the old negro loved quite so much, white or black, as his young mistress and her youthful husband. With the midnight, Frederica left the camp of refuge under the conduct of Elijah Fields. They departed in the boat, the preacher pulling up stream—no easy work against a current of four knots—with a vigorous arm, which, after a tedious space, brought him to the landing opposite old Sabb’s farm. Here Frederica landed, and the dawn of day found her standing in front of the old log-house which had been assigned her parents, and a captive in the strict custody of the tory sentries.

[Conclusion in our next.

Written on being presented by a lady with a wild flower that grew on his grave, near Buffalo.

———

BY W. H. C. HOSMER.

———

———

BY J. M. LEGARE.

———

It is part of the popular belief, I know, that our ancestors, of three centuries back, lived and talked in quite a different fashion from mankind at the present day; but as I entertain no political designs on that Great Caioled, the people, I may venture to assert an opinion of my own. I cannot persuade myself what is called human nature has undergone much alteration in the exchange of an iron for a broadcloth suit, and it is very certain people ate, drank, and slept in those remote times much as we now do, although your stilted romancers seldom recognise the fact, and make their heroines as unlike tangible women, “not too good for daily food,” as their heroes are exemplars of the mendacious gifts of their biographers. In the matter of speech, through which we mainly receive impressions of fictitious personages, it is extraordinary what fustian is palmed on a credulous posterity, as the veritable domestic talk of nobles, knights and folks of lesser condition. There is no comedy, high or low, in the conceptions of many of these authors; Man having apparently assumed the distinguishing trait of a laughing animal, or at best of an humorous one, at some more recent epoch of modern history. Every body struts about in buskins and speaks tragedy, nothing less; and as to the fooleries enacted by pages, grooms, and servitors of all kinds, there is no end to them, nor any like nowadays, except we find it on the boards of a country theatre.

What I say admits of easy illustration. Thus, when the page woke Don Pedro out of his morning nap—which, by the bye, he was taking not as the usual impression is, in greaves and a casque—he, the page, did not “lout low as it behooves trusty varlets” to do, but in a manner as straight-forward as a modern Thomas would employ, gave the drowsy knight to understand that some one had been sounding his horn at the gate for the last half hour.

“Very well,” returned the master, turning over to resume his doze where he was interrupted—the gate being the concern of the warder, of course.

“But, Sir Peter,” put in the page, by way of remonstrance, “it is mi seÑora who has sent.”

“Ah ha!” cried the knight, suddenly becoming wide awake, and leaning on both elbows in bed to regard the speaker. “Well, what message does she send?”

“That she wishes you to come up to the castle as soon as your comfort allows, as she has something special to say.”

“That I will, presently,” exclaimed Don Pedro, getting up so promptly his gaunt figure showed to no advantage in its scant costume. “And so tell Gil, or whoever came, to carry back word. How the dear lady talks of comfort to a man accustomed to the ease of camps! Fetch me those things, Iorge, and look behind the arras for my slashed doublet. Stop, before you go, reach down my sword and spurs from the hook behind the door.”

Now all this is very rational, much like what one would say at the present date, and unless the Spanish version of my story was never written, (which the Muse of veracity—whatever her name—it was not Clio, I know—forbid!) was the identical language employed on the occasion by my hero, as true a knight as Spain has produced since her Cid Rodrigo. This reminds me a hero of romance cannot be passed over as commoner folks, with a surmise as to his inches and the color of his hair, and moreover is expected to be an Apollo in shape, and sort of supernatural in virtues, provided his character is not cast in quite a different mould, and dependent for admiration on the enormity of its crimes. But Don Pedro, unfortunately for the interest his fortunes are destined to excite, fell into neither extreme, was neither a saint nor a monster of iniquity, and as far from being handsome as from being deformed. To have designated him in a crowd, you would have called attention to his overtopping the rest by a full head, or to a certain sinewy spareness of limb, or else the simplicity of his toilet, at a time when country gentlemen wore ribbons and gewgaws alternately with steel harness. But closer, the irregularity of his features, browned by the sun where the rim of the casque had not interposed, was compensated for by the singularly calm beauty of his eyes, which, in their serene intelligence, would have become the brows of any woman, and even in battle shone with a high sort of exultation, such as one would attribute to a victorious angel in the celestial wars. There was nothing about Don Pedro which harmonized with these eyes, except, perhaps, an undertone of gentleness pervading his voice; it was an undertone only, for nothing womanish characterized his speech, no mincing of words or petit-maÎtre modulations in addressing the other sex: there was not a particle of affectation in the man, because there was not a particle of untruth.

I think it was these same fine eyes and gentleness which first won the heart of the lady Hermosa, and his sincerity that safely kept it. Of where and how they first met, in what words our Don laid his little keep of a castle and patrimony at her feet, (his whole estate would not have paid her upholsterer’s bill,) history discloses nothing. It is only known she married him, and thereby raised a tempest of wrath and despair in the breasts of numberless admirers, who, however, all consented to eat of her cake on the happy occasion. Sir Peter was in nothing changed by the event, but lived as before in his tower, spent not a maravedi of his wife’s income on himself, and contented her by the frequency and tenderness of his interviews. It was his whim to lead this style of life, and she loved him enough to soon make it a whim of her own, the separations not being very remote it must be conceded, as the keep and castle stood perched on opposing hills, in full sight of one another. Such concession in a young wife was certainly praiseworthy, although some were found to be scandalized at its want of precedent. Of the husband’s crotchet I say only, it was a quaint piece of instinctive honor, which a few of his neighbors extolled, and the greater part laughed at as an act of arrant simplicity: although, to my mind, the less said about simplicity the better, by people who lived when dragons and giants were not yet supposed to have retired upon ultimate Thule, and Ponce de Leon’s search after the fountain of youth, (he was looking for it then in Florida!) counted no great waste of time.

The Don and his countess concerned themselves very little about such gossip, finding abundant occupation in a course of life which, without the bias one unavoidably entertains for his heroes, is a source of satisfaction to the writer hereof. It was in the lady’s nature to be charitable, being one of those unaffected well wishers of humanity with “abundant means,” whose part in this life seems to be to render everybody in reach as satisfied as themselves, and before Sir Pedro’s discretion and mature knowledge of the world came to her assistance, committed as many philanthropic blunders as would have made her eligible to an abolition chair, or seat in Exeter Hall. Of course I must not be understood to undervalue the good she continued to do in the dark. I have too great a reverence for money to suppose it capable of injury to any recipient under any circumstances, differing in this respect from all medicines whatever, which become poisons in quantity, and are defective in the important item of universal application. The truth is, I am led to this admission by an instance I have now in mind. There was one Don Carlo, (so he called himself: the fellow had a dog’s name, but any dog, short of a sheep-worrier, would have been compromised by his acquaintance.) A free-captain, who earned his crust by such little excesses as made the payment of black-mail an acceptable compromise on the part of his favorites, and even in Philip the Second’s time, brought an amount of civil odium upon his head which would have relieved him of that incumbrance, had he not disbanded his company and retired to the provinces to enjoy his honest gains. Here Captain Carlo—who was of a playful temper and delighted in masking—made the acquaintance of our heroine in the likeness of a veteran of the Moorish wars, and found waylaying her steps and asking an alms as many times a day as she walked out unattended (in as many different characters, of course,) so much more profitable, to say nothing of the safety of the proceeding, than poniarding a foot-passenger, or roasting a villager to discover hidden treasure, that he became a pattern of morality to the country round, and is currently said to have refrained more than once, when sorely tempted by the purse she carried, from cutting his benefactress’ slender throat; in this respect showing himself wiser than the avaricious owner of the goose Æsop tells us of.

Captain Carlo, however, lost his golden eggs, as did many others of scarcely less merit, when Sir Pedro de Padilh brought, as has been hinted, his longer head and more comprehensive benevolence to the aid of his young wife’s virtuous designs.

The latter quickly saw her mistake when once its results were laid bare, and fell to correcting it with a feminine energy which constituted a strong element of her character; Sir Peter meanwhile contenting himself with a vigilant guardianship of her interests and benevolent projects, and a hearty participation in her active measures—suggestions of his own, not unfrequently too—which it was his fancy to conceal under an assumption of caution; although I can’t say his wife was ever deceived by the cloak worn on such occasions, for her tender affection would have lent intelligence to faculties much duller than my heroine’s.

Sir Pedro very well knew it was some such work ahead which brought a summons to his gate so early, and was in his saddle, breathing in the fresh, moist air, and galloping through the fields and olive plantations between, before Gil reached his lady’s castle.

I see the good knight now in my mind’s eye: Andalusian steed and housings both spotless white, the first as much over the average height of his race as was his master above that of common men: sitting straight, with doublet buttoned easily across the breast, and a cap with a trailing plume, which a branch caught off and forced him to wheel his horse, with a gracias seÑor, to recover: so, picking a way up the hill, and stooping under the portcullis, ready open, diminishing the stature of the men around by contrast with his figure dismounted. Up the wide steps, and into a room where his countess met him with her usual happy face whenever this giant of a husband was nigh her. Perhaps I call attention too often to Sir Peter’s seven feet of altitude, but in this case the mention was involuntary; for I was thinking how, when she put her arms about him, there being no one near, she was constrained to kiss him where she laid her cheek, on his breast, being able to reach no higher; and he, as a pine might an ash in windy weather, stooped and kissed her on the forehead.

“Lady mine,” he said with a grave smile, holding her off to look down in her face, “what is the matter? You were scarcely more troubled when I rode against the Moors.”

“SeÑor—husband”—she replied, “what I have to tell may induce you to leave me again. It is that troubles me.”

“Humph!” returned the knight, “a crusade against something or somebody?”

“Yes,” answered the countess, “one full of danger.”

Don Pedro smiled as a soldier of his inches, of course, should at the idea of the thing.

“A week ago, my cousin Vida Inique came to me in much distress. You remember her?”

“Certainly! She is the betrothed, Heaven help her, of that vagabond nephew of mine.”

“She stopped here, for she came from Madrid with that purpose; partly because she needs sympathy now, and I am her nearest relative, and partly for the sake of society during the absence of her father with the Marquis of Santa Cruz.”

“Santa Cruz!” repeated the Don, with the animation of his Andalusian snuffing a whiff of cannon smoke.

“Yes. The king has ordered an armament under the marquis against Tercera.”

“Not a word of this reached me in the mountains. A handful of good knights would drive every Portuguese into the sea; I wonder the marquis sails against such enemies, when he complained only the other day of their ill breeding in Portugal; there was scarce a skirmish in which their backs were not turned upon their Spanish guests.”

“You will think differently, my seÑor, when I tell you all; but let me tell it as I heard it. DoÑa Viola wept so incessantly at first, whenever she attempted to allude to Hilo—for, of course, he is the cause of her grief—that I could understand nothing. The silly girl loves him with her soul and heart, and pretty and wealthy as she is, this half nephew of yours feels the yoke of his connection intolerable, and has adopted the most outrageous means of extorting her consent to canceling the agreement.”

“Ha! what mischief has he been doing lately?”

“First, when his representations and contemptuous reception of her fond prayers failed to gain his purpose, he insulted her eyes by parading before them on all occasions his companions, the most notorious thieves and desperadoes of the capital, and women of the vilest character, flaunting, not unfrequently, in chains and baubles he had stooped to accept but never to wear, for the boy is as proud and wicked as Lucifer; all this done with a scornful, overbearing air, which plainly said, ‘these, madam, are my intimate friends; they will sit at your table and fill your house when I am master. Beware how you make me so!’ She is so subdued and heart-broken already, she only wept and endeavored to hide his insults from her father.”

“Santiago! what infatuation!”

“Then his vile nature broke forth still more insolently. His birth, as you know, gives him access to the company of numerous dissolute cavaliers, although the society he usually affects is of a much baser sort. Through their means, without other harm to himself than what is in store for his lying tongue, seÑor, he poisoned her life by spreading through all ranks tales in which her maiden name was coupled with that of infamy, and when this gossip was in the mouth of everybody, flung her off publicly with a show of horror and mental anguish, which probably had its weight on those who knew nothing of the man’s character.”

Sir Pedro’s brows contracted above his fine eyes, but he remained silent.

“The scandal reached at last the ears of Don Augustino Inique himself, in Portugal, and hastening from the frontier to the court, he laid the matter before the king, demanding redress. Unluckily, this was not until he had exhausted every source of information in tracing the flight of the young man, who had stabbed the Count of Villenos in a quarrel in the meanwhile, and disappeared from the city. Don Philip loves to be called the Prudent, and has no fancy for being second in any intrigue, and accordingly the enraged and baffled father was dismissed with polite promises that meant nothing. Since then he has received secret intelligence that Hilo has gone over to France, and either through unnatural hatred of his countrymen, or characteristic recklessness of every honorable purpose—for he is capable of any degradation—enlisted under the commander, De Chaste, who sails soon at the bidding of the queen mother to reinforce the Tercerans.”

“Why he is more depraved than his father, and he scrupled at little when his passions were roused!” exclaimed Sir Pedro, baiting suddenly in a walk which crossed the chamber at six strides. “This man is only my half relative, as his father was, and does not even bear my name; but I must save him from final ruin if that be possible. What steps have been taken by Inique?”

“He readily obtained the appointment of camp-master under the marquis, as no one at court knew his motive, and supposed he went abroad to find forgetfulness in active service. A singular feature in the affair, is his ignorance of Hilo’s relation to yourself; and although Viola is acquainted with its existence, the chief defect in her character, a timid reluctance to confiding any personal matter to her father, has prevented his learning the truth during his brief visits to his home. Yet a more gentle nature I have never found than hers.”

“I scarcely wonder at her shrinking from opening her heart to Don Augustino,” answered our knight, “and were you to see him frequently, you would entertain a like opinion. He is a soldier, and nothing better if nothing worse—stern, scrupulous of his word, and jealous of his honor; although what he calls by that name is of no wide compass; a man whose outbreak of rage against his daughter I would have awaited with strong apprehension, had I known any thing of this affair before. Perhaps, however, the purpose of swift vengeance so occupies his brain that feebler emotions is pushed aside.”

“I think you are right, Sir Pedro,” returned his lady, thoughtfully. “For during the short space he remained with us, he seemed pre-occupied, as if tracing a single idea through a maze of thought, and spoke little of his own accord. His bearing was frigid enough, but if any unjust anger toward his child remained, it was well concealed under the elaborate courtesy he shared between us.”

“Yes,” said the knight, with a half laugh. “His old way, I recollect it well; never more labored than when a volcano is smouldering under his doublet. Only once have I seen him forgetful of this courtesy, when his son, a mere stripling, and a coward by instinct, as others are brave without will of their own, in a skirmish with the French sheltered himself behind his father in sight of the opposing lines. He was his only son, but he had better have been thrust through by a Gallic lance, than taken refuge where he did.”

“Poor fellow! Did Sir Augustino strike him?”

“Worse. His boy was on foot, himself on horseback; when his threats and imprecations failed to drive him back into the melee, in a paroxysm of fury he struck him repeatedly on the head with the pommel of his sword, unsoftened by the fair, bleeding face the child turned up while clutching his leg, and begging for life. Not a gentleman in the two armies sympathised with the father except Capt. De Chaste, who, incapable of a like barbarity, is noted for pushing to an extreme all questions of honor.”

“He was scarcely less cruel than Beaumanoir, who cried, ‘Bois ton sang,’ to his fainting son,” exclaimed DoÑa Hermosa, with a cheek paled by the recital. “Did the poor lad die?”

“No. He lived by an accident, or Providence, which you will, a miserable idiot, his brain having been injured by the concussion, perhaps, also by the anguish endured. Sir Augustino takes him with him, no matter where he goes, studiously bent on concealing his existence, much more his presence from his companions in arms. In spite of every precaution, however, the fact is well known; and twice this wreck of a man has eluded his keeper, and appeared suddenly in the midst of the knight’s guests.”

“Was his father much moved?”

“No, very little in appearance, his usual proud composure concealing whatever pang he felt; and it is impossible to ascertain from his manner whether he adheres to this strange companionship from remorse, and a resolute purpose of atonement, or a less worthy desire to smother the reproach by a jealous guardianship of its living witness.”

“Or else, dear seÑor, from a return of natural tenderness which a false shame prevents him acknowledging for so mean an object.”

“Why some share of good belongs to every man; even it may be, to my next of kin, although warped by the supremacy of his passions.”

“That is the only sane argument Viola advances for her love.”

“Humph!” After an interval; “I would like to see the DoÑa, if only to remove the impression that she is no higher than this chair, as she was when I saw her some years since.”

“You will find her,” rejoined the countess, smiling, “less a child in height and style than her youth would lead you to suppose; for a comparatively self-dependent life in close vicinity to the court, has already converted girlish bashfulness into a becoming modesty enough. But stay here till I find her,” added DoÑa Hermosa, going out.

“A wretched state of things,” mused our knight, resuming his suspended strides, with hands clasped behind. “It is evident I have but one course left; to track that young knave down, and by dint of soft or hard words, turn him from a career which has already entitled him to a bench in the galleys, if nothing worse. It is a good way, at all events, to pay back the bitter hatred of his father, God forgive him!” and the soldier’s moody brows relaxed at the thought, while his eye ran down the steep road at the foot of which the father of the man he designed saving, had one evening shattered his carbine on the rocks, because its hanging-fire saved Sir Pedro’s life in passing. A quiet smile, called up, perhaps, by a recollection of the solicitude shown by the countess the day succeeding, still lingered about the knight’s mouth when he turned from the window and saw the lady herself approaching, accompanied by her guest, a fair girl, with the light, soft hair and eyes of an Englishwoman, which her mother was. Her beauty appeared less imposing than that of the thoroughly Spanish Hermosa, but much more delicate, and so Sir Pedro seemed to think, for advancing and taking her by both hands, he said, in a tone much more modulated than was common with him,

“DoÑa Viola—I called you Viola when we last met, and you were no taller than my sword.”

“Call me so now, seÑor,” put in Viola, gently. “I cannot afford to lose even the wording of friendship.”

The knight looked attentively at the speaker, whose eyes meeting his, swam in tears. He paused thoughtfully, and then with his usual straight-forward kindness, said,

“My child, I have learned your grievances through your cousin here. You are nearly alone in the world, let us both assist you in all we can. You see I am old enough to be your father, think of me as such for the present. Besides, the cavalier whose fiancÉe you are, is, you know, my half nephew; and the attempt I am about making to draw him from his wicked courses, will be materially assisted by any good traits I may become acquainted with; for while I confess my ignorance of the better side of his character, DoÑa Viola, I am sure one exists, or you would not have proved so faithful as you are.”

A faint red spot in the girl’s cheek had deepened and spread as Sir Pedro spoke, until at his last words, her whole face was flushed, and stooping quickly, she pressed her lips on his hand before he could withdraw it.

“You are right,” she said, eagerly to Padilh, who stood with something like a blush on his soldierly features at the impulsive action. “Save him from himself, from his temptations, for he has a virtue mated with every vice he practices, and ready to assume its place when the bad is uprooted. I know,” she added, with an impetuous accent which betrayed her Spanish blood, and was singularly impressive in her timid manner of speaking, “he is a professed gambler, yet I have seen him clothe and feed a company of beggars with the lavish generosity of a prince; I know he has repeatedly endeavored to rescind our contract of marriage, but how should this bind his love, since we were infants when it was drawn in our joint name; and I have no reason, surely, to complain that he has employed harsh means to accomplish his end, when I shut my eyes to the growth of his aversion. No, Sir Pedro, the fault has been mine in tempting him on; no one can say how different his life might have been, but for the incumbrance I would not consent to his putting away—and so let me suffer, not him. Save him, I earnestly beseech you, from himself, and if need be,” she added, dropping her voice, and becoming as suddenly pallid as before flushed, “save him from an encounter with my father.”

“That I will,” returned the Don, soothingly, “if interposition of my words or body can. And one of these days, DoÑa Viola, we will talk these matters over calmly, and discuss what is best to be done.”

“The poor thing is crazed,” he said an hour after to his countess, “to love this Hilo! It was not easy to bring my mouth to call the scamp ‘cavalier;’ but her innocent distress overcame the reluctance. When this feverish excitement, which forbids all close questioning, subsides, it will be well to learn more, if she knows more of her betrothed. And if I set out before that can be done—”

“What, do you really go to this war!” exclaimed our heroine, with the admirable versatility of the sex, “when you have resigned yourself to the gratification of a particular request not at all to your liking at first.

“Dear, Sir Pedro, don’t you think some better way may be found of accomplishing our purpose? For instance, let some trusty person find out this young man and carry him a letter from you, as from an uncle solicitous of doing him a benefit. Or, perhaps, SeÑor Inique might be moved from his design by your calm representations. Only don’t go!” she urged, with a tremulous lip.

To this outbreak Don Pedro de Padilh, with the tranquillity of one who remembers a story he is anxious to tell and overlooks the last question, rejoined,

“Did you ever hear, Hermosa, the history of the wonderful cat that lived in Biscay when I was of no great size myself? There is one of the tribe on the battlement yonder, marked as that intelligent animal must have been, and put the story in my head.”

“Pshaw!” said the countess, half inclined to laugh, with tears in her eyes.

“This cat was remarkable for ugliness and cunning, qualities which increased the umbrage the priest naturally took to a cat who was said to use better Latin than himself, to that degree he could not rest at ease until the object of his jealousy was condemned to be burned, on the rational plea of possessing more learning than was orthodox. But so sagacious a creature was not to be caught asleep, and at the first rumor of the affair took occasion to pay his respects to the most notorious gossip of the province.

“‘Ah!’ said the cat, in the course of conversation, “‘talking of merit, I am so delighted to find it rewarded occasionally, that I have been in a state of ecstasy since the news came from the capital.’

“‘Santomio!’ cried the old woman arrectis auribus; ‘what are they doing there, my dear cat?’

“‘Have you not heard about it! Our curÀ is to be rewarded with a bishopric instanter; and for my part I don’t think a better selection possible, when his scholarship is taken into consideration, and I have some cause to count myself a judge of such matters.’

“‘Yes, yes, SeÑor Miz,’ put in the other. ‘But this is important news to be sure; I hope you have it from good authority.’

“‘None better. My sister’s grandkitten is attached to the household of the cardinal resident, and has just come down to pay me a visit. Trust to my honor, seÑora most respected, you may talk of it without fear for your veracity.’

“Of course, this was all sheer invention on the part of the cat, but served his purpose for a time.”

“But why did not the foolish cat slip quietly away beforehand?” asked the countess, who began to feel an interest in his fortunes.

“Oh, because the familiars on watch were too alert, I suppose. But hear what followed. When the curÀ, who had been on a little expedition to bargain for the faggots, returned to his house, he was charmed to learn his approaching exaltation from a score of friends; and at this juncture, being seized with remorse at his precipitation, resolved to hear from the cat’s own mouth the state of his faith. ‘For,’ said he to himself, as he tucked up his cassock and waded through the mud to the latter’s door, ‘one should not burn a Christian beast by mistake; and who knows what influence the grandkitten of his very discreet sister may have in his eminence’s house.’

“‘Why,’ said the shrewd grimalkin, who saw in a twinkling how much this last reason had to do with the curÀ’s visit, ‘your reverend worship’s excellency must perceive at a glance how this seam in my upper lip forms a cross with the nostril above—a sign which I need not inform your worship, is found only on catholic quadrupeds.’

“‘Ha!’ cried the priest, struck with the idea, ‘so it is. I beg your pardon, SeÑor Miz, for overlooking it hitherto.’

“‘Not at all, the wisest sometimes err, as my relative, the cardinal’s favorite, remarked to me yesterday. I am glad your reverence was not within hearing, for she was good enough to repeat much of the praise his eminence bestows on your worship, knowing she could not better please me.’

“In such amicable conversation time passed, until the priest, bethinking himself that the preparations for AutodafeÏng his host, had gone too far to be hushed up without some plausible excuse, and seeing no way out of his dilemma, reluctantly confided his difficulty to the party interested, for whom he began to feel a very disinterested friendship.

“‘Make yourself easy,’ rejoined the other, scarcely able to hide his satisfaction, ‘if that is the whole difficulty, all your worship has to do is to fling my san-berito (faugh! the name makes me hot and cold all over!) into the fire, and give me a chance to clutch your reverend legs, under your worship’s gown.’

“‘To be sure!’ said the curÀ, in a tone of benignant admiration, which one should get Judge Belton, or the Mayor of Aiken, (who got it from the Spanish original,) to mimic.

“Even the joint sagacity of a cat and a priest may fall short of perfection. It was natural, certainly, for the curÀ to dream all night of his expected mitre, and allow the same agreeable subject to occupy his brain all day to the exclusion of every other. But I hold to it, that he should have remembered at the right moment, (as he might easily have done, of course, by tying a knot in his handkerchief or thread round his finger,) to slip off the san-berito, and not throw his unhappy friend into the fire. Why, but for his confounded (I beg pardon, but one has their feelings!) absence of mind, he might have seen his victim’s tail—his head being smothered in the conical caroza—as big as his arm, with rage and indignation.

“‘Wo is me!’ cried the wretched man, when he saw what was done, tearing his beard in anguish of mind, ‘I have burned a Christian cat, and lost my mitre!’”

While saying the last words, Don Pedro, who had been standing during the recital, took his cap and moved to the door. But his countess intercepted him with a wistful, half-perplexed face.

“Well?” said the knight, stopping, and looking at her with a scarce visible smile.

“I think,” returned Hermosa, doubtingly, “you mean I am no wiser than the curÀ, who, forgetting what he was about, threw his friend into the fire, and then fell to lamenting his loss. But who is the cat?”

“Ah!” rejoined Sir Pedro, laughing, “the pith of the story lies in six words,

A couplet I design putting into the mouth of that scape-gallows, Hilo de Ladron, in the next number of Graham, to serve as a thread, by closely following which, the somewhat tangled woof of the young gentleman’s character may in good time be unraveled.

———

BY R. PENN SMITH.

———

Sailor.All things must move in circles as earth doth.

The orbs that make space gorgeous move in circles;

E’en space itself is one eternal circle;

For were it not, its end would sure be reached.

All drag a chain still moving round and round

Until we join the two ends of the chain:

Thus man completes his circle. No escape then.

Stranger.You spoke, sir, of a voyage.

Sailor.Oh! pardon me:

I had forgot—those circles set me wild.

Where left I off? ’Tis strange, the thread is broken.

Stranger.In the South Sea.

Sailor.O, true!—’mong fruitful isles

The jocund waters leaped when morn arose,

And fringed each billow’s snow-white pinnacle

With golden tissue. Waves that wildly roared

Through night, like fiends contending for their prey,

Now smiled serenely as a lawn in spring

Spangled with herbage ’mid the wasting snow;

And as our gallant vessel glided on

The joyful waters, like some amorous dame,

Kissed the bright prow in very wantonness,

Regardless of the wound so rudely made

In the too pliant bosom.

Stranger.You liken well

The waters to a woman; beautiful

In the bright sunshine of prosperity!

But when the tempest rages, sea-tossed man

Oft finds a shoal there, where his barque may strand,

Expecting a safe haven.

Sailor.You are bitter:

But truth is not always sweet. All on board

Assembled on the deck to hail the sun

Weaving with gold God’s heaving world of green;

While lowly murmuring the gladsome waves

Sang matins to their master. Voices full

As deep-toned organ’s swell, and others shrill

As notes of linnets, mingled with the songs

The glad sea made in praising Him who made it.

Stranger.Let the great sea and all that therein is;

The earth—its fruit—and all that live thereby—

And all that live hereafter, praise his name.

Sailor.Amid our happy concourse there was seen

A father and his little family,

And the fair partner of his joys and griefs,

The mother of his children. While they gazed

Upon the wide expanse, their bosoms heaved

With admiration for His mighty works

Who rules the fearful sea. They thanked and trusted.

Stranger.All thank and trust, who know the God they trust in.

Sailor.Among them was a fair-haired rosy boy

Who hugged his father’s knee; his little hands

Clasped in devotion to the unseen God,

In ignorance adoring; for his spirit,

Unstained of earth, was redolent of heaven,

And instinct with the praises he had learnt

From angel-lips in his celestial birth-place.

Stranger.Childhood’s inheritance, which manhood squanders,

God gives us all, while we return but little.

Sailor.As the sun rose he sung a little hymn.

The words were these. I think his father made it.

In the morning of existence,

Earth smiles, as Eden smiled on Adam;

With God and angels for companions,

Man—little lower than the angels—

Receives the truth as it was given

Once—face to face, and fresh from heaven.

In the noontide of existence,

With bathed brow and stalwort limb,

Man, singing, struggles for subsistence

For those in sin begot by him,

Rejoices in those human frailties

Which make him imitate his God.

In the sunset of existence,

Alone, in thy Gethsemane,

Quaff the cup bravely and repine not—

For man, thy God is there with thee.

Meekly obey the mandate given,

It purifies thy soul for heaven.

Stranger.A strange thought that—childhood is Adam’s Eden,

Where man beholds his Maker face to face;

The close of life is his Gethsemane,

Where he must quaff the chalice to the dregs,

Without a prayer to take it from his lips.

I’ve heard that hymn before.

Sailor.Why call it strange?

The cup is sweetened though it smack of bitter,

And the most bitter drops become the sweetest.

Gethsemane was nearer heaven with him

Who bathed with tears and blood the sacred soil,

Than fresh blown Paradise appears to have been

With angel visitants. Perchance they are

The self-same garden, typed by Spring and Autumn,

Seed-time and harvest! If that thought be true,

With bathed forelock and with steadfast soul

Gather the harvest of Gethsemane,

More precious than the flowers that smiled in Eden.

The task is thine—first husbandman, then reaper.

Stranger.Talk further of the boy who sung the hymn.

Sailor.That spotless child, the rudest of the crew

Loved, for his presence made us better men.

Stranger.True, all men who love children still grow better;

And the best men are children to the last,

At least in thought and feeling.

Sailor.There’s the circle—

Extremes must meet, and we are hedged within them.

But to pursue our voyage—and the boy.

Day passed away, and as the night came on

The full-orbed moon roiled in a cloudless sky,

And the wide waters now lay hushed in sleep.

As gentle as the slumber of a child

Wearied with gambols through the live-long day.

The night-breeze from the orange-groves passed by,

Laden with odor. Heaven was chrisolite;

The sea a living mirror, in whose depths

The richly studded concave was reflected,

Making a perfect globe; and as the ship

Pursued her trackless flight, she seemed to be

Some spirit on errand supernatural,

So dark and silently she glided on

The babbling waves were scarcely audible.

Stranger.A pleasant sail which landsmen only dream of—

But never enjoy.

Sailor.All joy hath bitterness.

Stretched on the deck the sailor-boy reposed,

And lived in dreams his infant years again.

The seamen, ’mid the shrouds aloft reclining,

Told o’er their tales of wreck and lingering death,

And in the drowsy interval was heard

The rugged cadence of the helmsman’s song.

“A pleasant sail!” But pleasure has strange wings,

She comes a zephyr and departs a whirlwind.

Stranger.Kisses the flower to blooming, then destroys.

Sailor.Sudden the helmsman’s drowsy song was hushed.

A fearful cry arose—“The ship’s on fire!”

The seamen from aloft sent back the cry;

The sailor boy shook off his happy dream,

And woke to horror. All was wild dismay!

Half sleeping—half awake, the crew came forth;

Grim death, enveloped in his robes of flame,

Marched on and laughed. There was no human power

To put aside his footstep. On he moved

In awful majesty; whate’er he touched,

True to its origin, returned to dust,

And Nature’s master-work, man’s godlike frame,

Became as worthless as the spars and sails,

Each made its pile of ashes—nothing more.

Stranger.Ashes to ashes all, and dust to dust,

The self-same mandate both on earth and sea.

Sailor.The flames attained dominion. Tyrant-like,

They ruled and raged. Upon the shrouds they seized,

Kissing destruction—laughing as they kissed;

While the broad glare they spread upon the deep

Changed the sea’s nature. Water soon became

A lake of living fire. “A pleasant sail!”

Stranger.You weep. Go on.

Sailor.O that I then had perished!

I seized the boy and leaped into the waves.

Upon a fallen spar we safely rode

Until the ship went down. “A pleasant sail!”

Her knell one shriek of mortal agony.

We had no heart to weep for their sad fate—

No heart to pray for one less terrible.

I gathered fragments from the floating wreck,

And made a raft, where two immortal souls

Struggled with time to check eternity

With frail appliance. For three days we suffered;

And then a passing ship preserved our lives

For greater suffering.

Stranger.The boy—his fate?

Sailor.His parents dead—the lad became my charge.

I then was married to a worthy woman—

God’s kindest gift. We had an only child—

My wife brought up the children as if twins,

And at a proper age he sailed with me.

He grew to manhood—noble—cheerful—kind

As those who love the artless lips of children;

A very babe was he in his affections—

A very demon in his bitter passions.

The eagle and the dove oft make their nest—

The tiger and the ermin find a lair

In the same bosom.

Stranger.What became of him?

Sailor.My wife grew sick. He loved her as his mother;

He loved my daughter too. I sailed, and left him

To till my little ground and smooth their pathway.

After three years I came to port again.

Crossing my fields, which now poured forth their increase,

I saw a man resting upon his plough,

Singing right lustily.

Stranger.What did he sing?

Sailor.In the noontide of existence,

With swarthy brow and rugged limb,

Man bravely struggles for subsistence

For those in sin begot by him;

Rejoices in all frailties—sorrows,

They draw him nearer to his God.

Stranger.The hymn of early childhood still remembered.

Sailor.A bending in the chain to form the circle.

He led me to my home—and such a home!

It seemed as if the fairies had been there

Making their May-day—wife and daughter happy.

Then, from an arbor overgrown with flowers,

He placed a prattling child upon my knee,

And called him by my name. He laughed outright—

My daughter blushed. They now were man and wife.

I danced—then blubbered like a very child.

Tears are at times a truer sign of joy

Than smiles and laughter.

Stranger.’Twas a boy, you said?

Sailor.A boy—his bud of Paradise, he called him.

Such flowers, too, often yield most bitter fruit

In man’s Gethsemane.

Stranger.Thank God! not always.

Sailor.We dwelt together for a few brief months.

He then proposed to try the sea again,

To place the beings whom we fondly loved

Beyond the cold calamities of earth.

Three years we sailed—we prospered, and returned

With means to make those happy whom we loved.

On wearied pinions, like the dove of peace

When land was found, he flew to seek the ark

Where our best feelings day and night reposed,

While struggling with the ocean. God! O God!

No ark was there—no resting-place for him!

Even Ararat was covered with the deluge.

Stranger.I understand you not.

Sailor.His wife was false.

Stranger.Impossible!

Sailor.But true. You tremble sir.

Her father curst the memory of his child;

Her mother withered, and soon died heart-broken.

You seem disturbed.

Stranger.’Tis past. What did your son?

Sailor.He slew the slimy reptile that crawled over him;

Put his hard heel upon her glossy front,

Trampled her out in cold blood.

Stranger.God of heaven!

Sailor.And he did right.

Stranger.Your daughter!

Sailor.He did right.

She who betrays the honor of her husband,

Regardless of her parents, self, and children,

Should cease to live, though all unfit to die.

Better to rot in earth, than crawl through life,

Offending all things with her foul pollution.

I love my God; knowledge increases love.

I ask forgiveness of him, as Christ prayed.

I am his child, and yet I curse my child.

Her sin hath made the best of prayers from my lips

An invocation of a lasting curse

On her old father’s head a mockery!

Forgive as I forgive—a lie to God!

Her sin hath robbed me of my prayer of childhood—

The prayer I gathered from my mother’s lips—

The prayer that opens the celestial portals—

The prayer He taught when He appeared as mortal.

Stranger.His destiny.

Sailor.He fled and took his child;

But not as Cain fled with the brand upon him.

’Twas sacrifice to virtue, and no murder.

When I arrived my Eden was Golgotha;

I found a corpse—my wife bereft of reason.

I buried one, attended to the other

For years until she died. The fruits of lust!

I went to sea again in search of strife—

The quiet of the land near drove me mad.

The ship I sailed in scoured the southern sea,

To quell the pirates. We o’ertook a rover.

A deadly strife ensued—’twas life or death;

Their chief and I by chance met sword to sword;

I knew him not, and, strange, he knew not me.

O! grief outstrips the rapid wing of time

In marring youthful beauty! See this scar!

His cutlas gave it—but I mastered him.

Their chief subdued, the rover soon surrendered.

Stranger.His destiny?

Sailor.The yard-arm, and a halter.

I saw him pass away.

Stranger.And said he nothing?

Sailor.Naught to the crowd—but I remember this:

In the sunset of existence,

Alone in my Gethsemane,

I quaff the cup without repining,

For God, I feel thou’rt still with me.

Meekly obey the mandate given

That purifies the soul for heaven.

Stranger.His cradle-hymn still chanted to the grave.

Sailor.The circle, sir—the end and the beginning—

The two ends of the chain are linked together.

Stranger.You said he had a boy.

Sailor.I said not so.

There was a boy, whom I have searched for since;

But, like the shadows of all earthly hope,

He hath eluded me.

Stranger.I am that boy.

Sailor.Thou!—thou that boy! The wheel is still in motion!

Stranger.I stood beside the gallows when he died.

Sailor.His bird of Paradise! A cherub then!

I’ve seen you often sleeping among roses,

And he, a guardian angel, smiling o’er you.

You have not slept on roses often since,

But wept beneath your father’s gallows-tree.

And my blind deeds have shaped your destiny.

I brought your father to a shameful death,

Which your young eyes beheld. And I’ve made known

A thing, perhaps unknown to you before—

Your mother’s infamy. Alas! poor boy!

What an inheritance have we bequeathed you!

Stranger.You did your duty, sir.

Sailor.Ay, there’s the question.

Can duty lead man’s footsteps to God’s throne,

Making life death, the glad earth Tartarus?

I snatched a fellow-being, winged for heaven,

With God’s own impress on him still unblurred,

Who, but for me, would have flown chanting there

Anthems to angels. But with ruffian hands

I checked his flight, and stayed him for perdition.

Would that the ocean had received the child!

Would I had let him perish in the flames!

Would that this wound had marked me for the grave,

Ere I had saved him for an after life

Of sin and sorrow, though impelled by—duty.

Stranger.Why do you pluck those gorgeous poppy-flowers,

And cast them in the walk?

Sailor.They now are harmless;

Suffered to ripen, they are poisonous.

Let them die blooming, while they are innoxious.

Would he had perished as these simple flowers,

Ere his bloom faded, yielding deadly seed.

Stranger.I’ve sought you, sir, to solace your old age.

Sailor.God bless my child! We’re in the circle still.

Good begets evil often—evil good.

The grandsire and the grandson close the chain—

Alone—forlorn! Yet both have done their duty.

The world goes round and round, ’till hidden things

Stalk forth as spectres from the rotten grave.

All, all is plain! These circles drive me mad!

WITH FIDDLE ACCOMPANIMENT.

———

BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.

———

Perched, like a large gray owl with folded wings, upon the summit of the very highest hill within a day’s journey from “our village,” but within half a mile of the old meeting-house, stands a narrow stone dwelling, with a narrow, pointed roof, narrow windows, or loop-holes, as they might be more properly termed, and one narrow door; the whole inclosed within a narrow yard, from which two slender poplars point their “tall columns to the skies.”

One would scarcely imagine from so unpromising an aspect that a heart-history could be gleaned from “lifting” that narrow roof. I must confess, too, that there is certainly very little romance in the appearance of the inmate whom it shelters—so gaunt and cadaverous—nearly as tall as the poplars, and with arms like the evolving sails of a windmill. Yet, as by searching there is gold to be found even amid the most rocky and unpromising defiles of California, so is there sterling mettle hid beneath the rough exterior of Apollos Dalrymple, and this having found I will disclose.

When I say that Apollos is the sole tenant of this owl-like habitation, I need not add that he belongs to the bachelor fraternity—but in justice to him I will say that he was not made a bachelor from any contempt or irreverence of the fair sex, but from “sweet love’s teen” having “loved not wisely, but too well.”

It is now many years since Apollos thus retired from the world. His hair is nearly silver white, and old age sits upon his shoulders, yet still he washes and mends his clothes, with his long, bony fingers knits his stockings, and cooks his own food from the little plat of vegetables behind the house—for Apollos is a Grahamite, as well as a Gray-eremite. I must retrace some twenty years in the life of Apollos, for the first record of the heart-history I have promised—I will even go still further back, and introduce him a “puling infant in the nurse’s arms.”

It was the misfortune of Apollos to be born with an ear—I mean an ear for music! Whether the euphonious name by which he was christened had any thing to do with the quaverings of his innocent cradle-dom I cannot say, but certain it is, his infantine warblings were loud and incessant—“prestissimo” and “fortissimo,” seldom allowing a “rest” either to himself or his poor worn-out mother. The period of infancy passed, Apollos was sent to school, where he was distinguished for the long drawn nasal tones in which he might be said to chant his lessons, and being moreover somewhat given to whistling and tuning up of jews-harps, the terrible ire of Schoolmaster Ferule vented itself in drawing long scales upon his tender flesh, to which Apollos composed the notes upon a high key.

As soon as he could read the tenth chapter of Nehemiah without drawing a long breath, his father made him ruler over countless heads of cattle, and set him to ploughing and planting, sowing and reaping the fertile acres which were one day to become his own. Even into the drudgery of the farm Apollos bore with him his musical mania, and while he sowed the seed and planted the corn it was all done to music, so that when the green grain burst through the ground there was no stiff regularity about it, but falling off into minims, crotchets, quavers and demi-semi-quavers, it swept through the broad fields like a living sheet of music, from which no doubt the little ground-sparrow and the glassy-winged grasshopper, learned many new variations.

Not “blest as the gods,” Apollos could strike no harp but the jews-harp, for his father had no music in his soul, though a very clever man, Shakspeare to the contrary, and would never allow his son to spend his earnings in cultivating so useless an art. The singing-school he tolerated, and there, in the long winter evenings, by the flickering light of tallow candles did Apollos luxuriate—also at all trainings, when “the spirit-stirring drum and ear-piercing fife” echoed through the streets, there was the tall, ungainly figure of Apollos to be seen, almost envying even the little fat drummer the powers of his rub-a-dub.

One day our musical hero purchased a cracked flute! How trilled his heart in joyful cadence as he held in his hand the precious bargain—with what ecstasy did he turn it over and over, and then, as soon as the cattle were foddered, and the shades of evening resting over the farm, he would nightly retire into the recesses of the forest, and there blow and puff, like Sam Weller’s “aggrawated glass-blower,” until his eyes almost started from their sockets—the rocks and trees to be sure kept their places in the firm earth, but the whip-po-wils and the owls peeped forth to listen, and more than once did he hear his notes re-echoed by some young, aspiring screech-owl.

The next musical adventure of Apollos was effected by exchanging a young and tender calf for a fiddle! Every muscle of his long arm, became as a separate fiddle-bow, giving forth such endless see-sawing and tweedle-dee-ing that every good wife in the neighborhood was tempted to complain of him as a nuisance, for waking up all the babies and disturbing them in their first sleep, for the strains of Apollos, like those of “sweet Philomela,” were only heard at night. But notwithstanding all this Apollos was a general favorite, for the spirit of harmony pervaded his bosom for all animate and inanimate objects—there was to him music in all created things. His heart was gentle—his hand ever ready to do a kindness, and therefore he was suffered to fiddle to his bent, little dreaming the anathemas which the deed, not the doer, nightly originated.

Side by side stood the cottages of Leonard Davis and Luther Howell, and side by side grew up the two lovely children Paul and Linda.

Neither Davis nor Howell were in good circumstances, although both owned the farms on which they lived; yet there was a great difference in the character of the two men, which in the end led to very different results. Leonard Davis was a thriftless, indolent man, who loved better to smoke his pipe under the tavern porch, and give forth his opinions upon the politics of the day, than to cultivate his land or keep his fences in order. Luther Howell, on the contrary, was a hard-working, industrious man. He loved money although he had but little of it—yet he resolved to have more; and upon the strength of that determination dug and delved away his days, almost begrudging even the Sabbath rest.

Linda was the youngest of his five children, all of which, to Mr. Howell’s great chagrin were daughters. Mr. Davis had but one child, little Paul, whose mother had died while he was but an infant, and Mrs. Howell feeling compassion for the motherless boy encouraged him to play with her children, so that by degrees the little fellow became nearly domesticated under the same roof with the five rosy-cheeked, happy little Howells. Paul was three years older than Linda, and was very proud of the confidence which Mrs. Howell reposed in his superior age and strength, by trusting to him the care of the little toddling girl, and repaid her confidence by deserving it. Linda soon became more fond of Paul than any one else, and Paul would at any time leave his play with the older girls, or throw down his bat and ball if he but heard the sweet voice of the little Linda calling his name. He would lead her into the woods, and with a natural love of the beautiful select a spot where the moss was the greenest and freshest, and where the golden sunlight quivering through the dense foliage danced in playful gambols around them—here he would carefully seat the little girl, and gather for her the pretty wild flowers which he found hid in the thick woods, or the bright scarlet berries peeping out from the dark, glossy leaves of the winter-green; and when the little Linda was old enough to go to school, Paul still enacted himself her champion and assistant.

Linda was ten years old when Mr. Howell received a letter from his brother, living in New York, offering to relieve him of a share of his burdens by adopting one of the five girls into his family. Imbued with the same money-getting spirit as his brother, Ansel Howell had left the village many years previous, to seek the fortune he was resolved upon amassing. He had been successful, and at the date of the letter which caused so much excitement in the humble residence of Luther, Ansel might be considered a rich man.

The offer was gladly accepted, and the question next arose which of the girls should go forth from the family hive. Prudence governed their decision. Bessie could spin her day’s work with any farmer’s daughter for miles around—Sophie was already capable of taking charge of the dairy, while Polly and Margaret not only could sew nearly as well as their mother, but could also make themselves useful in various ways about the house. Linda was of the least service in the domestic keep, and therefore the choice fell upon Linda, who was thus taken from her simple country pleasures, and from her dear friend Paul to a new home and new friends amid the ceaseless din of a city.

Luther Howell reaped the benefits of his industry. His farm throve—his stock increased—the old house was torn down, and a handsome, convenient two story dwelling erected on its site; and in the course of a few years Mr. Howell went as representative to the state legislature, and was reckoned one of the most substantial men in the village. But just in proportion as things had prospered with Howell had they gone adverse with his neighbor Davis, and about the time when the new tenement of the former was being raised amid the loud cheers of the workmen, the sheriff seized upon both house and land of the latter, and that being insufficient to meet his debts, for “the want thereof they took the body”—at that time imprisonment for debt was no uncommon thing. If Davis had not been so perfectly thriftless, in all humanity his townsmen would have bailed him out, but the fact is, it was pretty generally conceded that he might just as well smoke in jail as elsewhere—pipes and tobacco therefore were freely contributed, and in the course of a few months poor Leonard Davis evaporated—his soul taking flight in a whiff of tobacco smoke!

Before the affairs of his father became so desperate, Paul had worked his way to New York, and apprenticed himself in a large printing-office, trusting with all the confidence of youth that he should return ere many years to his native village, free his father from the shackles of debt, and perhaps set up an establishment of his own. Another and a brighter vision might have mingled with these day dreams, of which we may learn more hereafter.

Paul knew that his little friend Linda lived in the same city with him, and after a long search he was at length enabled to discover the dwelling which sheltered the pet flower of his boyhood. But there was such an atmosphere of grandeur around her now, that poor Paul had not courage to penetrate further, so for several weeks he contented himself with hovering around the house in the evening and on Sundays, hoping at least to obtain a glimpse of the little girl.

At length one day he met Linda with her governess. It was his own Linda—yet how changed! What a lovely young face! what grace—what innocence! and then how tall! Paul forgot that years mark their flight—he looked for the child, and he found a beautifully formed maiden of fifteen!

Ah, he dared not address her! he cast his eyes upon the ground and stood still for Linda to pass! and then as her little foot twinkled upon the pavement close to him, and her robe brushed his coarse garments, he involuntarily looked up. Linda turned her large hazel eye upon him. She started—a rosy blush mantled her sweet face! It seemed to the maiden that she was strangely transported back to the green grassy meadow and the play-grounds of her infancy! Again she looked at Paul:

“Linda!” he softly whispered.

“Paul!” responded the heart and the lips of Linda; and with all the innocence and gladness of a child she threw her arms around his neck, and pressed a kiss upon his sun-burned cheek!

Ah that kiss—happy, happy Paul!

But here Miss Lofty interposed. It was scandalous—kissing a young man in the street—good gracious, who ever heard of such a thing—a fellow, too, in a green jacket—monstrous!

“Why, dear Miss Lofty, it is Paul—only Paul!” cried Linda, earnestly; “how many times I have told you about my dear, dear Paul!” and then turning her back upon the horrified spinster, with her little hand clasped tightly in his, she begged of him again and again, to come and see her.

“Yes, you can call on Miss Howell, young man, if you please, but you must not stand here any longer, Miss Linda; I am really shocked at your want of delicacy. I can hardly answer to your aunt for such strange doings!” and so saying, Miss Lofty led off her young charge.

As Linda disappeared sunshine and daylight faded from the heart of poor Paul.

He felt there was now an immeasurable gulf between him and her; and, after all, why was it that he came to so sorrowful a conclusion? Was it because, as Miss Lofty had said, he wore a green jacket, and worked with his hands, while Linda sat in her delicate robes of muslin or silk, and with slender fingers wrought at her embroidery-frame, or airily swept the piano. Ah, Paul, be brave! Let not your heart fail you at mere external or worldly distinctions.

He called to see Linda. It was shortly after this first interview; she had become restrained, and her aunt sat stately in the room, and without being rude, yet was her manner so little removed from it, that Paul never went again. For two or three years Linda heard no more of the playmate and friend of her early childhood. But Paul saw her when she little dreamed what fond eyes were watching her! He saw her graceful, beautiful, and accomplished; and although he dared not whisper a hope that she might one day be his, he resolved to improve his mind by study and application, that he might at least raise himself above her contempt; and so, by the midnight lamp, the poor fellow went to work, and for two years every leisure moment was spent in study, and every penny he could save, employed in procuring books for his thirsting mind. His perseverance did not go unrewarded; his employer soon took note of his talents, and Paul became assistant editor of a popular weekly journal.

By some unforeseen calamity, Ansel Howell became a poor man, and Linda returned to her father’s roof.

Eight years previous her parents had gladly parted with her, and they now as gladly welcomed her back; her sisters were all married, and the old people quite alone, so that her presence was as the light of morning to their lonely fireside. Her city life had by no means spoiled Linda for the pleasures of the country; she felt like a bird who, after being caged a weary time, is suddenly permitted to flit at freedom amid its native bowers.

Linda retained a vivid impression of the early scenes of her childhood, and as she again revisited each nook and dell, the remembrance of her kind friend, Paul, also came back to her, and the present seemed incomplete without him whose tender care and ever ready invention to amuse her waywardness, had cast such brightness over the days of infancy. Where was he now? Had he forgotten her? She thought of him as she had seen him when he so suddenly appeared before her—those deep, tender eyes, regarding her with so much respect and affection; and then, when admitted into the stately dwelling of her uncle, he had come forward so modestly, yet with so much self-respect to greet her, and her heart reproached her, that, through fear of her aunt’s displeasure, she had, perhaps, treated him coldly.

“But, dear Paul, I am sure I did not mean to be unkind!” she mentally exclaimed.

Ah, if Paul, as he sat in his office in that narrow, confined street, bending so diligently over his desk, in the sultry breath of the city, could have known the thoughts of the fair girl, as she strolled through the summer woods, what rapture would have thrilled his bosom, and how would the dull atmosphere in which he toiled have become irradiate in the light of love and happiness.

Has the reader forgotten Apollos—the Apollo—the Paganini, whose witched fiddle-bow made both echoes and babies shriek in concert?

It chanced one evening that Apollos, out of resin, set forth for the village to supply that dire necessity. Whistling he went, when suddenly there were borne to his ear strains of most ravishing sweetness, now softly swelling on the evening breeze—now fainter and fainter dying away until even silence seemed musical, and then again bursting forth so free and joyous, that the very air around him vibrated with melody.

Spell bound stood Apollos. The doors of his great ears swung back to welcome in the harmony, and his mouth, too, opened as if to swallow it. Then, led on as it were by invisible spirits, his feet followed the bewitching sounds, and planted themselves under the large button-ball tree which stood near the window where Linda was thus unconsciously drawing both soul and body of Apollos magnetically unto her.

Conceive his perfect rapture as thus, so near the centre of attraction, the sweet strains encompassed him about. They ceased, and then to the window, still warbling, the young girl came, and leaning from the casement, stretched forth her little white hand, and began plucking the leaves from the very tree whose shadowing branches waved around the head of Apollos.

A sweet face becomes almost as the face of an angel, when seen in the calm moonlight; and as Linda stood there, her large, brown eyes, looking out into the holy night, her high, pure forehead clasped in the glossy braids of her dark hair, and her light, graceful figure folded in a snowy robe, no wonder she seemed to Apollos too pure, too beautiful, for a being of earth’s mould. But while he gazed and gazed, she turned away, and with her took the heart of Apollos. Again seating herself at the piano, Linda ran her fingers over the keys with the lightness of a bird upon the wing, and one of Beethoven’s exquisite sonatas awoke to life under her touch.

Poor Apollos! No volition had he of his own—he went whither the fates impelled him. Step by step did he approach the open casement, and as some poor bird is drawn, little by little, into the very mouth of its fascinating destroyer, even so was Apollos drawn head and shoulders into the window. The moon beams danced around him, as if enjoying the mischief they were about to disclose, and gleamed coldly but steadily upon him, his elbows resting on the sill, and his long legs, curved outward, like those of a grasshopper. At last, rising from the instrument, Linda closed it, and was about to approach the window, when the strange apparition of Apollos glared upon her. With a loud shriek she rushed from the room; as for Apollos, he bounded away like a madman—

That night Apollos Dalrymple was convicted of having seen a ghost.

And now, from that eventful evening, Cupid ensconced himself within the virgin heart of Apollos, and there the little rascal sat perched upon a hill of ancient ballads, delighted with the mischief he was doing, and every now and then beating up such a rub-a-dub as well-nigh drove poor Apollos distracted. For here were garnered up stores of the dainty food which the poets have appropriated exclusively to the little god—not, to be sure, the fastidious fare of a modern amateur, supping only on the tongues of Italian or Swedish nightingales, but the good, substantial fare our forefathers loved.

By the death of his father all those goodly acres had descended to Apollos; but this year the farm proved a losing concern, for the sheep died from starvation—the cattle from over-feeding—the hoe cut down both corn and weed—the grass luxuriated in freedom from the scythe, and the grain from the sickle, until both were over-ripe. The people all thought Apollos bewitched, and bewitched he certainly was. Even the fiddle was suffered to be mute, unless when seizing it with sudden furor he would strive to repeat some note which the voice of Linda had fastened upon his memory, but as sure as he did so, her image appeared at his working elbow, and Cupid, with a jog, jumped astride the fiddle-bow.

There was a beautiful simplicity in the heart of Apollos—an almost maidenly delicacy. He shrunk from intruding upon the fair object of his thoughts, never once did he speak with her, or seek to claim her acquaintance. She was to him something too divine to approach, and he worshiped her at a distance—a star whose beams blended with the music of his soul. There was no vanity hid away in his brain; he saw himself as others saw him—a rough, ungainly figure, without comeliness or proportion, and the more did he strive to cultivate those inward graces by which even his ugliness was made to be forgotten.

How little did Linda dream, as she sometimes passed him in her walks, what a great heart throbbed for her, and would have poured out its life-blood in her service.

The summer following Paul Davis revisited his birth-place, and for the first time for many years he and Linda met again. In form and feature both were changed—but in both the heart remained the same, and the same affinity which had in childhood bound them, now by a closer and dearer tie united them.

But Mr. Howell’s other four daughters had all married rich men; and as Linda was the fairest and most accomplished, he had planned for her a match which might be considered brilliant. When, therefore, Paul asked for her hand, it was refused with the contempt of one who feels that riches, not affection and kindness make up the summum bonum of life’s happiness, and with whom the weight of the purse out-balances the weight of both head and heart. And then Pride, too, put in her voice—what, his daughter marry the son of Leonard Davis, who died in a jail! To be sure, he understood that Paul was doing a very good business in the editorial line; but then a mere editor—a drudge for the public—bah!

And so Paul was scornfully dismissed, and returned to the city, yet bearing with him the sworn faith of her he loved.

Smiles faded from the cheek of Linda, and her voice now seldom sent its glad notes to cheer the heart of Apollos. He saw she was pale, and that her step was listless. He felt she was unhappy, and now, in addition to his own grief, he bore about with him the pain of knowing that she, too, had sorrows which he could not heal. He would have had her so happy. Around her path only thornless roses should have clustered, and how gladly would he have shielded her from all the storms of life.

Ah, poor Apollos! if it could have been; if, like the great branches of the oak which shelter the timid daisy from sun and rain, those great arms of thine would have enfolded this little flower—then, indeed, would thy big soul have leaped with gladness.

Months passed on.

Paul worked at his desk patiently, and hoping that by some favor of fortune he might yet claim the hand of Linda.

About this time the proprietor of the establishment in which he was employed, desirous of making a change in his business, offered to sell out at a price very advantageous for the purchaser. Paul would gladly have availed himself of this opportunity, but his means were insufficient, and he knew of no person of whom he could solicit the required sum. While the sale was pending Paul again visited the village, not with any idea of a second time subjecting himself to the rudeness of Mr. Howell by a further request for the hand of his daughter. He went, therefore, as on ardent lover may be supposed to go, impelled by a desire of seeing again the object of his affection, and of hearing from her dear lips a renewed assurance of her truth.

Now it chanced that the very afternoon of his arrival, Apollos strolled forth in somewhat melancholy mood, and took a path leading through a thick grove bordering upon his farm. It was one of those cold, gloomy days in March, when not a bud or a leaf has as yet betokened the grateful advent of spring. Little patches of ice and snow still clung around the decaying leaves, frozen into black heaps where the autumn winds had gathered in their many dead; the wind rattled the naked branches of the trees in the dull, chill atmosphere; flights of crows flew low with their dismal croak, and the squirrel now and then looked out timidly from the old brown trunks, as if to note the aspect of the weather, and feeling the biting wind upon his nose, turned nimbly back to his hole again. It was through these gloomy woods, therefore, that Apollos bent his way, and had nearly cleared the grove, when his reveries were suddenly interrupted by hearing the sound of voices from a thick cluster of young pines, whose green, spiral branches gave relief to the brown aspect of the surrounding trees. He recognized at once the accents of Linda; there was sadness in them, and he involuntarily paused, not with any intention of becoming a listener from curiosity, but only to drink in her beloved tones. His next impulse was to retreat softly; but the words which her companion spoke arrested his attention anew, and so he stood irresolute, anxious to learn more, and yet unwilling to steal thus into the secrets of the young pair.

“Well, dearest Linda, we must be patient and hopeful,” said Paul. “The assurance of your love will inspire me with fresh ardor in this struggle with fortune, and in the end, Linda, I am sure to come off conqueror. I wish not to reproach your father, but I flattered myself that wealth would not have been so great a consideration with him, and that as he has known me from my childhood, he would have preferred an honest, truthful heart, and the happiness of his child to the glitter of gold.”

“I hoped so, too, dear Paul; perhaps he will yet alter his determination; let us hope for the best,” answered Linda.

“A few thousand dollars would at this moment place me in a situation to demand your hand a second time, dear Linda,” continued Paul. “Mr. Neeland wishes to dispose of his establishment, and offers it at so reasonable an estimate that I would gladly become a purchaser if I had but the means—this, Linda, would remove the scruples of your father, and crown our happiness!”

“True, dear Paul. Ah! would that some kind friend might assist you. You have friends, I am sure—are there none of whom you can ask this favor?” said Linda.

“No—it is a kindness I do not feel authorised to ask from any one—it would involve me at once in obligations which I might not be able to fulfill—no, dearest Linda, I must toil on a few more years, and if my labors are followed with the same success which has heretofore crowned them, I shall have earned, even in your father’s estimation, the rich reward I would fain this moment call my own,” replied Paul.

Loving Linda as he did so faithfully, it was impossible that Apollos could listen to this conversation without a struggle between envy and the natural kindness of his heart. It is true, he knew before that his love was hopeless—that the young and fair object of his adoration could be no more to him than the distant planet shining so gloriously in the glittering dome of the heavens—but here stood one possessing that priceless gift, her heart, one on whom her first pure affections were bestowed—ah, poor Apollos—it was not in human nature to resist the workings of jealousy and envy—great drops of anguish stood on his pale brow, and he almost groaned aloud! Then better and nobler feelings stirred his bosom—he gave way to their healthful promptings, and a load seemed lifted from his breast.

Paul parted with Linda at her father’s gate and went home to his lodgings, where he had not been long seated, when an ill-written, almost illegible note was handed him. It was from Apollos Dalrymple, requesting earnestly to see him before he should leave the village.

“Some old debt, doubtless, of my poor father’s, which I am required to pay,” thought Paul. “Well, I will go and see him, and if in my power it shall be canceled.”

As he drew near the dwelling of Apollos, the strains of the fiddle seemed to welcome him on, and knocking at the door it was opened by the owner himself—his great chin holding firm to his breast the neck of the instrument, and his hand wielding the bow. Walking before him into a small back room, he made signs for him to be seated, and then taking up the air where the summons of Paul had interrupted it, he played it deliberately through!

Paul thought this proceeding very rude, to say the least of it—but if he could have read the heart of Apollos, he would have seen that he was only striving to lull into peace by the soothing powers of melody those rebellious and evil passions which the sight of his happier rival called forth.

At length, carefully hanging up the fiddle on a peg at his right hand, Apollos opened a small drawer, and taking out a pocket-book, put it into the hand of his astonished visiter.

“I reckon there is just two thousand dollars there—it is yours,” he said, bluntly. “I guess you’ll make a pretty straight bargain with that man that wants to sell out.”

Paul sat speechless with surprise at finding his affairs thus known to the strange man before him. Apollos arose, went to the window, and began to whistle, then added in a husky voice,

“I reckon old Howell wont object any longer; so you can—can marry—Linda!” and with another vociferous whistle, he again sat down.

By this time Paul, somewhat recovered from his first amazement, said, as he handed back the pocket-book,

“But, my dear sir, I cannot accept of your bounty I may never be able to repay you—”

“Put up the money, I say, put it up—it is yours,” interrupted Apollos; “I—I—overheard your talk with Linda, this afternoon—so you see I know all about you.”

“But why this interest for a stranger, Mr. Dalrymple—how can I ever repay—”

“Be kind to her—to Linda—that’s all the pay I want!” hastily interposed Apollos. “And you see, Paul, if you want any further help to get along, I conclude you are bound to come to me.”

Again Paul attempted to be heard.

“At least suffer me to explain my affairs to you, that you may know better the man upon whom your kindness has so liberally fallen.”

“I reckon I know you; you’re an honest, good lad—and—and Linda loves you—you need not say a word.”

And, indeed, had Paul been gifted with the eloquence of an Adams or a Webster, Apollos would not have listened to him, for no sooner did he see the money safe in the pocket of the young man, than he coolly arose, put on his hat, and taking his violin, walked out of the house; so Paul had no alternative than to do the same, yet leaving upon the table an acknowledgment of his gratitude, written with a pencil on the back of an old letter.

The next week three topics of interest were going the rounds of the village, and arousing the curiosity and wonder of its inhabitants.

The first was, that the son of Leonard Davis had become the sole proprietor of one of the largest printing offices in the city of New York—who would have thought it!

The second item was, that Apollos Dalrymple had offered his fine farm for sale—what could it mean?

The third and most wonderful was, that the said Apollos commenced building the identical narrow stone-house on the top of the hill—was the man bewitched, or going to be married!

In the course of the summer Paul again solicited the hand of Linda, which was no longer refused him—

But Apollos refused to be present at the happy event which his noble kindness had so materially assisted to bring about; and little did either of them surmise the generous devotion which had called it forth.

As soon as his solitary dwelling was completed, Apollos, taking with him a few goods and chattels, removed thereto. And there he still abides with peace in his heart, and “good-will to all men.”

He admits no visiters—yet is his bounty never the less; for, like some forest rill, which has its source hidden among the rocks, yet whose presence revivifies and fertilizes all around it, so do the streams of his bounty, flowing silently and unobtrusively, gladden and refresh the hearts of the weary and destitute. He never goes out, except on the Sabbath, upon whose sacred services he is a constant attendant, and may always be seen in his suit of homespun gray, standing erect near the choir, and beating time with his long, bony hand, to the music of the psalms.

Upon the calm summer evenings, the notes of his violin are borne on the gentle breeze to the ears of the villagers, and as the plough-boy hies him to his task, with the early up-rising of the lark, he hears the morning hymn of the forest choristers, accompanied in their notes of praise by the music of Apollos’ violin.

The death of this eminent poet, after an honorable and useful life, prolonged to eighty years, will doubtless provoke a new conflict of opinions regarding the nature and influence of his great and peculiar mind. The universal feeling among all lovers of what is deep, and delicate, and genuine in poetry, must be—

and not until literature receives an original impulse from a nature equally profound and powerful, will it be called upon to mourn such a departure “from the sunshine into the Silent Land.” His death was worthy of an earthly career consecrated by devout and beautiful meditations to a life beyond life—his soul, so long the serene guest of his mortal frame, meekly withdrawing itself at the end to a world not unfamiliar to his raised vision here.

We confess, at the outset, to an admiration for Wordsworth’s genius bordering on veneration, but we trust that we can speak of it without substituting hyperbole for analysis, without burying the essential facts of his mental constitution under a load of panegyric. It appears to us that these facts alone convict his depreciating critics of malice or ignorance; that the kind of criticism to which he was originally subjected, and which even now occasionally reappears with something of the sting of its old flippancy, is essentially superficial and untenable, failing to cover the ground it pretends to occupy, and disguising nonsense under a garb of shrewdness and discrimination. The opinion of a man of ability on subjects which he understands, and on objects he really discerns, is entitled to respect, and we do not deny that Jeffrey’s opinions on many important matters are sound and valuable; but, in relation to Wordsworth, whom he perversely misunderstood, he appears presumptuously incompetent and undiscerning throughout his much vaunted criticisms; in every case missing the peculiarities which constituted Wordsworth’s originality, and satirizing himself in almost every sarcasm he launched at the poet. The usual defense set up for such a critic is, that he judges by the rules of common sense; but every poet who deserves the name is to be judged by the common sense of the creative imagination, not by the common sense of the practical understanding; and thus judged, thus removed from the jurisdiction of the mere police of letters, we imagine that Wordsworth will readily assume his place as the greatest of English poets since Milton.

In claiming for him a position in that line of English poets which contains no other names than those of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, we imply that he is not only great as an individual writer, but that he is the head and founder of a new school of poets; that he is the point from which the future historian of English letters will consider the poetry of the age; that he introduced into English literature new elements, whose inspiration has not yet spent itself, but continues to influence almost every poet of the day; that

This fact can be chronologically proved. In the “Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey,” written as far back as 1798, and in which we have the key-note of Wordsworth’s whole system of viewing nature and man, we perceive not only a new element of thought added to English poetry, but an element which appears afterward in Shelley and Byron—modified, of course, by their individuality—and still appears, with decreasing force, in Tennyson and Browning. Plato and Lord Bacon are not more decidedly originators of new scientific methods than Wordsworth is the originator of a new poetical method. Even if we dislike him, and neglect his poetry, we cannot emancipate ourselves from his influence, as long as we are thrilled by the most magnificent and etherial passages in Shelley and Byron. We may be offended at the man, but we cannot escape from his method, unless our reading of the poets stops with Goldsmith and Cowper.

The vital poems of Wordsworth—those which are really inspired with his spirit and life, and not mere accretions attached to his works—form a complete whole, pervaded by one living soul, and, amid all their variety of subject, related to one leading idea—the marriage of the soul of man to the external universe, whose “spousal hymn” the poet chants. They constitute together the spiritual body of his mind, exhibiting it as it grew into beautiful and melodious form through thirty years of intense contemplation. To a person who has studied his works with sufficient care to obtain a conception of the author’s personality, every little lyric is alive with his spirit, and is organically connected with the long narrative and didactive poems. This body of verse is, we think, a new creation in literature, differing from others not only in degree but in kind—an organism, having its own interior laws, growing from one central principle, and differing from Spenser and Milton as a swan does from an eagle, or a rose from a lily.

We need hardly say that the central power and principle of this organic body of verse is Wordsworth himself. He is at its heart and circumference, and through all its veins and arteries, as the vivifying and organizing force—coloring every thing with his peculiar individuality, representing man and nature through the medium of his own original and originating genius, and creating, as it were, a new world of forms and beings, idealized from hints given by the actual appearances of things. This world is not so various as that of Shakspeare or Scott, nor so supernatural as that of Milton, but it is still Wordsworth’s world, a world conceived by himself, and in which he lived and moved and had his being. A true criticism of his works, therefore, would be a biography of his mind, exhibiting the vital processes of its growth, and indicating the necessary connection between its gradual interior development and the imaginative forms in which it was expressed. This we cannot pretend to do, having neither the insight nor the materials for such a task, and we shall be content with attempting a faint outline of his mental character, with especial reference to those qualities which dwelt near the heart of his being, and which seem to have been woven into the texture of his mind at birth.

Wordsworth was born in April, 1770, of parents sufficiently rich to give him the advantages of the usual school and collegiate education of English youth. He early manifested a love for study, but it may be inferred that his studies were such as mostly ministered to the imagination, from the fact that he displayed, from his earliest years, a passion for poetry, and never seems to have had a thought of choosing a profession. At the university of Cambridge he appears to have studied the classics with the divining eye and assimilating mind of a poet, and if he did not attain the first position as a classical scholar, he certainly drank in beyond all his fellows the spirit of the great writers of Greece and Rome. In a mind so observing, studious, thoughtful, imaginative and steadfast as his, whose power consisted more in concentration of view than rapidity of movement, the images of classical poetry must have been firmly held and lovingly contemplated; and to his collegiate culture we doubtless owe the exquisite poems of Dion and Laodamia, the grand interpretative, uplifting mythological passage in The Excursion, and the general felicity of his classical allusions and images throughout his works. He probably wrote much as well as meditated deeply at college, but very few of his juvenile pieces have been preserved, and those which are seem little more than exercises in expression. On leaving college he appears to have formed the determination of educating his poetical faculty by a communion with the forms of nature, as others study law and theology. He resided for some time in the west of England, and at about the age of twenty, made the tour of France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, traveling, like our friend Bayard Taylor, mostly on foot, diving into forests, lingering by lakes, penetrating into the cottages of Italian peasants and rude German boors, and alternating the whole by a residence in the great European cities. This seems to have occupied nearly two years of his life; its immediate, but not its only result, was the publication of his “Descriptive Sketches in Verse,” indicating accurate observation rather than shaping imagination, and undistinguished by any marked peculiarities of thought or diction. We next hear of him at Bristol, the companion of Coleridge and Southey, and discussing with those eager and daring spirits the essential falsehood of current poetry as a representation of nature. The sensible conclusion of all three was this—that the worn-out epithets and images then in vogue among the rhymers, were meaningless; that poetry was to be sought in nature and man; and that the language of poetry was not a tinsel rhetoric, but an impassioned utterance of thoughts and emotions awakened by a direct contact of the mind with the objects it described. Of these propositions, the last was one of primary importance, and in a mind so grave, deep and contemplative as Wordsworth’s, with an instinctive ambition to be one of “Nature’s Privy Council,” and dive into the secrets of those visible forms which had ever thrilled his soul with a vague and aching rapture, the mere critical opinion passed into a motive and an inspiration.

“The Lyrical Ballads,” published in 1798, and to which Southey and Coleridge contributed, were the first poems which indicated Wordsworth’s peculiar powers and passions, and gave the first hints of his poetical philosophy, and the first startling shock to the tastes of the day. They were mostly written at Allfoxden, near the Bristol Channel, in one of the deepest solitudes in England, amid woods, glens, streams, and hills. Here Wordsworth had retired with his sister; and Coleridge was only five miles distant at Stowey. Cottle relates some amusing anecdotes of the ignorance of the country people, in regard to them, and to poets and lovers of the picturesque generally. Southey, Coleridge and his wife, Lamb, and the two Wedgewoods, visited Wordsworth in his retirement, and the whole company used to wander about the woods, and by the sea, to the great wonder of all the honest people they met. As they were often out at night, it was supposed they led a dissolute life; and it is said that there are respectable people in Bristol who believe now that Mrs. Coleridge and Miss Wordsworth were disreputable women, from a remembrance of the scandalous tattle circulating then. Cottle asserts that Wordsworth was driven from the place by the suspicions which his habits provoked, being refused a continuance of his lease of the Allfoxden house by the ignoramus who had the letting of it, on the ground that he was a criminal in the disguise of an idler. One of the villagers said, “that he had seen him wander about at night and look rather strangely at the moon! And then he roamed over the hills like a partridge.” Another testified “he had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue, that nobody could understand.” This last, we suppose, is the rustic version of the poet’s own statement—

“He murmurs near the running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.”