Time, O well beloved, floweth by like a river; sweepeth on by turreted castles and dainty boat-houses, great old forests and ruined cities. Tender, cool-eyed lilies fringe its rippling shores, straggling arms of longing seaweeds are unceasingly wooing and losing its flying waves; and on its purple bosom by night, linger merrily hosts of dancing stars. Bright under its limpid waters gleam the towers of many a 'sunken city.' Strong and clear through the night-silence of eager listening, ring the chimes of their far-off bells, the echoes of joyous laughter: and to waiting, yearning ones come, ever and anon, deep glances from gleaming eyes, warm graspings from outstretched hands. And well windeth the river into grim old caves, and even the merriest boat that King Cole ever launched flitteth by the dark doors, intent only on the brilliant chateaux, that shimmer above in the gorgeous sunlight of a brave Espagne. But laughing imps, with flying feet, venture singly into these realms of the Unknown. Bright streameth the light there from carbuncles and glowing rubies; but of the melodies that there bewilder them, no returning voice ever speaketh, for are they not Eleusinian mysteries? But when thou meetest, O brother, sailing down the stream under gay flags and rounding sails, some Hogarth or some Sterne, who playeth rouge et noir with keen old Pharaohs, and battledore with Charlie Buff; who singeth brave Libiamos, and despiseth not the Christmas plums of Johnny Horner; who payeth graceful court to the great and learned, and warmeth the pale hearts of the shivering poor with his kind cheer and gentle words; who sitteth with Socrates and Pericles at the feet of an ever-lovely Aspasia, and whispereth capricios to Anna Maria at the opera; know then, O beloved, if thou hast ever trodden the mystic halls, that this man is the brother of thy soul! Selah!

But the bravest stream that ever was born on a mountain side has its shoals and quicksands, and far out in the sounding sea rise slowly coral reefs. Now, if on every green, growing isle newly rising to the sunlight, the glorious jealousy of some Jove should toss a Vulcan, how would our Venuses be suddenly charmed by the beauties of a South Sea Scheme! how would their tiny shallops dot the curling waves, and what new flowers would spring upon the smiling shores to greet their rosy feet!

'And why a Vulcan?' says the elegant Narcissus Hare, with a shiver; 'a great, grim, solemn, limping monster, that Brummel would have spurned in disgust! And he to win our ladies with their delicate loveliness! Faugh, sir! are you a Cyclops yourself?'

Alas! my Tinkler, do you remember that Salmasius began his vituperations of Milton with gratuitous speculations upon his supposed ugliness, and that great was his grief when he was assured that he contended with an ideal of beauty. Have you forgotten that the AntinÖus won the distinguished favor of his merry, courteous queen Christina, and that the satirist and man of 'taste' died of obscurity in a year? Beware, my little Narcissus, lest the next autumn flowers bloom above your grave in Greenwood, and your fair Luline be accepting bouquets and bonbons from me.

You, Roland, are pale from the very contemplation of such a catastrophe, such an unprecedented hÆgira of dames! It is as if from every gay watering place, some softly tinkling bell should summon the fair mermaids. Beplaided and betrowsered, with their little gypsy hats, would they float out beyond the breakers, waving aside with farewell, airy kisses, the patent life boats and the magical preservers, and pressing on, like Gebers, with their rosy faces and great, hopeful eyes ever laughingly, merrily turned to the golden east—their Morgen Land!

Ah! but—have we no Vulcans among us? 'Fair Bertha, Beatrice, Alys,' come out of the Christmas ecstatics of the dear old year that has just streamed out like a meteor among the stars;—you know, fair ones, that the stars are only years, and the planets grave old centuries; lock away the jewels and the lace sets—charming, I know—the glove boxes and the statuettes, the cream-leaved books, and the fragile, graceful babioles; pull up the cushions, and group your bright selves around the register—it's very cold to-day, you roses—and let us settle the question—have we a Vulcan among us?

Magnificent essayists, O dearly beloved, have handled 'Our Husbands,' 'Our Wives,' 'Our Sons' and 'Our Daughters' in a masterly style. Very praiseworthy, no doubt, but so unromantic! Why, there's not a green leaf in the whole collection! The style is decidedly Egyptian, solid and expressive, but dreadfully compact. No arabesques, those offshoots of lazy, dreamy hours and pleasantly disconnected thoughts, disgrace the solemnly even tenor of these fathers of 'Ephemeral Literature,' as some 'rude Iconoclast' has irreverently styled the butterfly journeyings of our magazine age. But we, O merry souls and brave, are still young and frivolous: we still look at pictures with as much zest as before our dimly remembered teens; and we belong to that happy branch of the Scribbleri family, that prefer the sympathy of bright eyes and gay laughter, to the approving shake of any D'Orsay's 'ambrosial curls,' or the most unqualified smile from the grimmest old champion who even now votes in his secret heart against the New Tariff, or charges with unparalleled bravery imaginary or windmill giants on the floor of a Platform or of a Legislature.

But this, our paper, purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it. Retournons À nos moutons, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the mazes of Jack Shepherd cases that they lost sight of their original designs. And lest I should grow wearisomely prosaic, and see the yawn behind your white hand, belle Beatrice, let me make my disquisition a half story, and point my moral, not as fairies do, with a pinch, but with the shadow of a tale.

And here, signorina, though in courage I am a CÆsar, here I shrink. The birdseye view I would take of a few leaves of beau-dom, should be from the standing point of your own unquiet, peering eyes; and if even Cupid is blindfold, how may I, to whom you are all tormentingly delicious enigmas, hope in my own unaided strength to enter the charmed citadel of your experiences? Oh, no! But happy is the man, who, with an inquiring mind, has also a sister! Thrice happy he whose sisters have just now flitted down the staircase, from their own inner sanctuaries, into the little library, bearing with them in noisy triumph the Harry of all Goodfellows, the truant Henrietta Ruyter! Ah! she is the key that will unlock for me those treasures of thought and observation that I will shortly lay before you, O readers!

And now to you, O much-traduced star, that presided at my dÉbut into this vale of tears, may the most glorious rocket ascend that Jackson ever said or sung, one that shall break out in pÆans of brilliant stars!—for, when I entered the charmed presence, the very ball that I had been wishing to roll was upon the carpet. But of this I was unconscious as I admired Fanny's new dress, the mysterious earrings of our stately Bertha, and ventured upon a slight compliment to Henrietta, who lounged upon the divan. With admirable dexterity, the young lady caught the fleurette upon her crochet needle, reviewed it carelessly, and finally decided to accept it; an event that I had undoubtedly foreseen, for the compliment was a graceful and artistic one. But brothers, as you, Gustav, my boy, have long since discovered, are not events, and I was presently consigned to the 'elephant chair' in the corner, with a portfolio of sketches that Henrietta had brought from over the sea—and the dames continued, in charming obliviousness of my presence.

'Girls,' said Henrietta, having deposited my compliment snugly in her little workbasket, whence it may issue to the delectation of some future young lady group, 'how are you going to entertain me? Such a Wandering Jew as I am! A perfect Ahasuerus! What a novelty it will be that will interest me!' and with a most laughingly wearied air, the pretty eyebrows were raised, and waves of weariness floated over the golden hair in its scarlet net.

Fanny looked concerned. 'We may have a week of opera.'

'I've been—in—Milan,' returned Henrietta, with a well-counterfeited air of the disdain with which Mrs. De Lancy Stevens views all republican institutions since her year in Europe. Bertha laughed.

'You have grown literary, astronomical perhaps, with your star gazing, and Len has become such a Mitchellite of late, that two shelves of his bookcase are filled with works on the heavenly bodies. What a rapture you will be in at the sight!'

'Quite an Aquinas,' said Henrietta, with gravity.

'How so, Harry,' asked Fanny, after a pause, during which she had been deciding that her friend meant—Galileo!

'Oh, he wrote about angels, you know; said these heavenly bodies were made of thick clouds, and some other nonsense, of which I remember nothing.'

I, in my corner, was devoutly thankful that angels now assume more tangible shapes, which chivalric sentiment, finding expression only in my eyes, was recognized but by Henrietta, who rewarded me with a lightning smile.

'Bertha, my queen,' continued she, as that lady's serene countenance beamed upon her in apparently immovable calmness, 'does anything ever arouse you? Have you forgotten, my impenetrable spirit, the sad days of yore, when we sobbed out grand arias to the wretched accompaniment of Professor Tirili, blistered our young fingers on guitar strings, waded unprofitably in oceans of Locke and Bacon, and were oftener at the apex of a triangle than its comfortable base? And you always as calm as though 'sailing over summer seas!' Come—I am absolutely blue;' and the half-fretful belle, who had really exhausted her strength and amiability by a grand pedestrian tour in the Central Park that morning, stretched out demurely her gaiter boots, and drew with an invisible pencil on imaginary paper, the outline of her boldly arched instep.

'If Landon would only come,' sighed Fanny, musingly, counting the beads for the eye of the Polyphemus she was embroidering on a cushion for that gentleman's sofa meditations, 'he would entertain you, as well as the—one—two—three—witches in Macbeth.'

'No doubt of it,' said Henrietta.

'Five blues and two blacks,' said Fanny, not heeding the reply. 'See, girls,' and she held up the glittering orb, 'what a lovely eye!'

The enthusiasm of her audience was delirious but subdued. I caught an occasional 'Such a love!' 'How sweet—how fierce!'

'Now,' said Henrietta, decidedly, 'if Medusa had but one eye, and this dear creature two, I should die as miserably as the lady who loved the Apollo Belvidere. I have had oceans of knights errant—but such! I think of writing a natural history like—Cuvier.'

'Yes,' said Bertha, quietly, 'or Peter Parley.'

'Suppose I read you the advance sheets some morning?'

'Charming,' said Fanny, with a little shrug of approaching delight.

'Mr. Landon Snowe, Miss Fanny,' said a crusty voice, and from under a tower of white turban, Sibyl's face looked out—at the door.

'We will see him here, Sibyl,' said Fanny, brightly; 'and oh, Sibyl, ask Mott to make a macaroon custard for dinner, for Miss Ruyter.'

'Excellent,' said that lady, again with the De Lancy Stevens air, 'I ate—those—in—Paris. They actually flavor them there with Haut Brion! and they are delicious!' and Henrietta's lips fairly quivered at the remembrance, that was by no means a recollection of the long-ago enjoyed dainties.

'Such extravagance!' said Fanny, opening her eyes, and arranging sundry little points in her attitude that were intended to be very piercing indeed to the gentleman, whose step was now heard in the hall. 'Such extravagance, Harry! Your father, I suppose. You'll get nothing better than Port here. Good morning, Mr. Snowe.'

'Talking of ports, ladies,' said that gentleman, airily, after he had prostrated himself, figuratively as well as disfiguratively, before Miss Henrietta, bowed over Bertha's hand, and drew his chair to Fanny's sewing stand, for the triple purpose of confusing her zephyrs, flirting at a side table, and ascertaining whether Henrietta had fulfilled the luxuriant promise of her earlier youth. Snowe was, womanly speaking, as you will see, 'a perfect love of a man.' 'Newport, for example, and charming drives? Williamsport and the Susquehanna, Miss Fanny?'

Very statesmanly, O Landon G. Snowe, Esq., both the glance beneath which my poor little sister's eyes fell, and the allusions twain to the scenes of many a pleasure past. But Fanny, though not mistress of her blushes, can, at least, control her words.

'You are not a very good Œdipus, Mr. Snowe; we were discussing imports.'

'Such as laces and silks?'—

'And punch,' suggested Henrietta.

Mr. Snowe's eyeglass was here freshly adjusted, and his attention bestowed upon the young lady who talked of punch, a thing unheard of in society! The prospect was refreshing. Henrietta was stylish, piquant, and pretty. Fanny was uncertain, indifferent, but, for the moment, divine. He magnanimously sacrificed himself to the impulse of the moment, and the courtesies of hospitality, and walked courageously over to Henrietta, under cover of a huge book.

'They were views from the White Mountains, he believed. Had Miss Ruyter seen them? Allow him;' and he wheeled her sofa nearer the table, and unfurled the book. Henrietta was charmed.

'The Schwartz Mountains? She had not understood. These are glaciers? How they glisten! And these little flowers below are violets? Such pretty, modest, ladylike flowers. Had Mr. Snowe a favorite among flowers?'

Mr. Snowe was prepared. He had answered the question exactly five hundred and ten times. To Cecilia Lanner, who was almost a religieuse, and who wore her diamond cross from principle, he was the very poet of a passion flower, such holy mysteries as its opening petals disclosed to him! To Lucy Grey, who wore pensive curls, and had a sweet voice, he presented constantly fragrant little sprays of mignonette, cunning moss baskets with a suspicion of heliotrope peeping out, and crushed myrtle blossoms between the leaves of her most exquisitely bound books. To Katy Lessing, who rowed a small green boat somewhere up the Hudson in the summer, he confided the fact that water lilies were his admiration: he loved the limpid water; its restless waves were like heart throbbings (this nearly overwhelmed poor Katy). All great and noble souls loved the water;—he forgot the sacred fakirs, and the noble lord who preferred Malmsey wine! He had repeatedly assured Regina Ward that the camelia was his flower, so proudly beautiful! His soul was 'permeated with loveliness,' and asked no fragrance. Regina is a great white creature, lovely to behold, and, perfectly conscious of her perfection, no more actively charming than the Ino of Foley. He won Milly White's favor by applauding her love for wild flowers, declaring that a field of buttercups reminded him of the 'spangled heavens,' and that on summer days he was constantly envying the cool little Jacks in their green pulpits.

A pretended Lavater—and there have been such—would have convicted Snowe at once of the most artful penetration, could he have seen the lowering curve of his brows as he watched the nervous fluttering of Henrietta's hands over the pictures, and the decided but softly pleasant rounding of her white chin. But it was the general unconsciously powerful indifference of manner, that advised him to prefer, in reply to her question:

'The snapdragon, yes, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I have an odd fashion (very odd, Gustav!), Miss Ruyter, of associating ladies with flowers, and that gorgeous three-bird snapdragon always looks to me like some brilliant belle, who holds her glittering sceptre and wields it, capriciously perhaps, but always charmingly.'

'A sort of Helen,' observed Henrietta, calmly.

'A witching, arbitrary, lovely Helen,' promptly returned Snowe, who had a vague idea of Greek helmets and golden apples, wooden horses, a great war, and 'all for love.'

Henrietta heard the magnificent vagueness, and became so intently interested in a view, that Snowe came softly over to my window, and looked into the garden. Lilly Brennan coming in just then, the conversation became general, and presently Snowe accompanied her down the street.

'Fanny,' said Henrietta, with an inquisitorial air, after the girls had decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all, 'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular star' of that man?'

'I believe so,' said Fanny, with a stare.

'Do you intend to beam on him for any length of time?' persisted Henrietta.

'I haven't decided,' said Fan, honestly. 'I love beauty, and Landon Snowe is magnificent.'

'So is the Venus de Medicis,' said Henrietta, fiercely; 'but look at her spine! What sort of a brain do you think could flourish at the top of such a spine? Not that I suppose that man to have the least fragment of one; don't suspect such a thing! Don't you observe his weak, disjointed way of carrying his head, and the Pisan appearance of his sentences? I should dread an earthquake for such a man as Mr. Snowe—you'd have nothing but remnants to remember him by, Fanny.'

'But earthquakes are phenomena,' said Fanny, stoutly, 'and I'm not in the least like one. As long as Landon never fails except spiritually, I am contented—and even in that light I never knew him to trip,' and the child was as indignant as her indolent nature would permit.

'Trip! of course not,' echoed Henrietta, 'when he's buried like a delicate Sphinx up to his shoulders in the sands of your good opinion, and the mummy cloths of his own conceit; but just remove these, and you'll see a downfall. My dear Francesca, this man is your Cecco, and he'd far better retire into a monastery than hope to win you. Why, I'd rather marry you myself, Francesca! Such charms!' and Henrietta, with her own delicate perception and enjoyment of the beautiful, kissed my sister's deprecatingly extended hand, and, as the dinner bell rang, waltzed her out of the room.

'It's perfectly bewildering the interest some people take in music,' she resumed later, building a little tent on the side of her plate with the dÉbris of fish. 'There's Bartlett Browning, telling me the other evening a melancholy story of some melodious fishes, off the coast of—Weiss nicht wo; oysters, I suppose; conceive of it! the most phlegmatic of creatures. I suppose some poor fisherman heard a merlady singing in her green halls, and fancied it the death song of some of his shells. But that's nothing to some of Bartlett Browning's musical tales. The man's a perfect B flat himself!'

'Well,' said Nelly, Phil's little girl, who had come around to show her new velvet basque, 'but shells do sing, for I've often listened to mamma's, and Bessy gives it to me at night to put me to sleep. You know, Aunt Bertie, for you once made me learn what it said:

'Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!'

'Fish-land, my beauty,' said Henrietta, playfully; 'let us hear your song, fishlet,' and she held a little gleaming shrimp by his tail, and looked expectantly at his silent mouth. And here I remember, with a smile of amusement and some astonishment, that Herman Melville, in nervous fear of ridicule, apologized, most gracefully, of course, for his beauteous Fayaway's primitive mode of carving a fish; but I fancy I hear myself, or you either, sir, begging the community to shut its dear eyes, while Harry's little victim, all unconscious of his fate, disappeared behind the walls, coral and white, of her lips and teeth.

Oh, isn't it perfectly delicious to meet a real, frank, merry, wise sort of a girl, who doesn't wear spectacles or blue stockings, nor disdain the Lancers or a new frock with nineteen flounces? Just fancy it, Gustav, my dear fellow, chatting with the Venus of Milo, in a New York dining room, and she all done up in blue poplin, with cords and tassels and all that, with that lovely hair tumbling about in a scarlet net, and such a splendid enjoyment of her own great grace, and royal claiming of homage! Eating mashed potatoes too, and celery, and roast beef, to keep up that magnificent physique of hers! Oh, it's rare!

But Henrietta couldn't forget Snowe, any more than Snowe could forget himself; so, after she had gazed with delight at the red veins of wine that threaded the jelly-like custard, with its imprisoned macaroons, looking like gold fish asleep in a globe of sun-dyed water, she went on, as if the conversation had not been interrupted:

'Do you know, Fan, that he reminds me constantly of champagne. If there's anything on earth or in a cellar that I do detest, its champagne; such smiling, brilliant-looking impudence, that comes out fizz—bang! and that's the end of it; there's not so much as the quaver of an echo. You drink it, and instead of seeing cool vineyards and purple waters and cataracts of icicles in your glass, you find a pale, gaunt spectre, or a poor, half-drowned Bacchus, staring at you. It's just so with your Landon Snowe. You, and other people, too, have a habit of admiring him, a great creature with eyes of milky blue, who goes about disbursing his small coin like some old Aladdin! Why, my dear children, the man, I don't doubt, is this moment congratulating himself, in his solitude at Delmonico's, upon his great penetration. Didn't you see him studying me with a great flourish of deference, and throwing his old, three-birded snapdragons into my White Mountains? If he had been as ugly as a Scarron, now, and had known what he said, I could have loved him for that, for, of all things, I do delight in dragons! Such sieges as I have had at zoological gardens and menageries, from Dan to Beersheba, just to see one; and ugly old lizards have been pointed out to me, and scorpions, and every imaginable object but a dragon. But one day I dug a splendid old manuscript—a perfect fossil—out of some old library in Spezia, and opening it, by the merest chance came upon a most lovely, illuminated, full-grown dragon, the very one, I suppose, that Confucius couldn't find! I gazed in raptures, my dearest; he perfectly sparkled with emeralds; his eyes were the most luminous opals. Dear, happy old Indians, who had their dragons at the four corners of the earth, and could go and look over at the lordly creatures whenever they felt melancholy. And besides, I have a little private system of dragonology of my own, that approaches the equator more nearly. I've always worn opals since that day on every possible occasion; I mean to be married in them.'

Hurra! belle Henriette! thou hast a weakness. At the end of a long aisle, shrouded in sumptuously colored perfumed light, stands an altar, and white surplices gleam through the effulgence.—Thou queen! and that thy crowning!

'Len,' said Fanny the next morning, as I sat, after breakfast, over the paper, 'don't you think Harry is a little, just a little, satirical, and—well—not perfectly ladylike and kind, to talk so dreadfully of one's friends?'

'Satirical!? Bless your little, tender heart, not the least mite in the world; she's quite too straightforward for that. Unladylike! Why, my dear Fanny, don't you know 'the wounds of a friend'? Did you never think, little sister, that some girls are sent into the world to perform the office of crumb-scrapers for your serene highnesses, and themselves as well?'

'Like a lady, who gives a dinner party, jumping up and brushing off her own table,' said Fanny with an amused laugh.

'Just so, dear; and as they go wandering about, not a fragment can be omitted. Now, a little dwarf of a thing like you couldn't do that with any grace; but Harry could, you know, and make everybody think it was charming. So, if fragments of poor Snowe fall under her unsparing hand, and she brushes them off carelessly, don't let anybody's tears go rolling after, don't let anybody's heart ache, for such a trifle; think of the dessert, Fanny, that is sure to follow.'

'Then you too, Len, you want me to give up Landon?'

'Yes, my dear, let Landon—slide.'

Fanny here boxed my ears with emphasis, and retreated, with an expression of great disgust on her pretty face.

'Come back here, my child,' I said, pulling her down on my knee, 'and let me reason with you.'

Such an oracle as I am with the girls! There's nothing like it, Gustav; for every fan or bracelet you give your sisters, you'll be amply rewarded by revelations and love; and it's something to have a dear, white, undulating wreath of a girl in your arms, and rosy lips on yours, even if it is your sister. Bless the sweet creatures!

'What do you want to marry Snowe for?'

'Well, you see, Len, it's so grand to have such a great beauty always at one's hand, and the girls are all dying for him; and, you know, Len, the truth is,' (very low,) 'he loves me, as you see, and—we girls are such silly creatures—and I suppose the compliment pleases me,' and the frank, darling face crimsoned, and tears stood in the blue eyes. I kissed them both, and laid her hands on my shoulders.

'Pet,' I said, earnestly, 'you are worth a gross of Landon Snowes. He loves you, of course—he'd have been an icicle to have failed in so obvious a duty; but it's only a matter of pure admiration, scarcely of any complicated feelings. Besides, dear, these whitewashed, sinewless, variable fellows fade like the winter sun, without any twilight; their features go wandering off in search of becoming expressions, and they would want a wife like a chameleon to satiate their variety-loving natures. No, dear; give Landon to Henrietta, and when Napoleon comes back, I will enter no protest, even Harry will be silent, and'—

'Oh, Len, what nonsense! couldn't you recommend me to the man in the moon, through a telescope?'

Fanny laughed, and we went again into the library, where Harry, as usual, was tapping her rings with the carved handle of the crotchet needle, that was as ornamental, and about as useful, as Cleopatra's.

'I am going to live in a new country,' said she, gravely, as we entered the room; 'I would go sailing off like a squirrel on a piece of bark. I begin to have intense yearnings after my double. Where do you suppose I'm to find him, the gorgeous, tropical anomaly?'

'In Pompeii, or the Cities of the Plain?' I suggested.

'Fanny,' she continued, laughingly, 'is very grave about her vanishing Snowe-flakes; but for poor me, who have been persecuted by the most distressing men, she has no pity. Girls, I promised you an inventory of these treasures.'

'Oh yes,' said Fan, gleefully; 'go out, Len, or you will never be able to endure Harry afterward, for your counterpart will be peeping out, and then woe to your pride!'

'No danger,' said Henrietta, 'that's perfectly invulnerable. Lenox may remain; it will be a wholesome discipline for him—a warning, you know, my hero; although, girls, Lenox is tolerably faultless,

'Little he loves but a Frau or a feast,
Little he fears but a protest or priest.'

Praed altered. Sit down, disciple, at my feet if you will; I am in the oratorical mood to-day. Hypatia, if you please, not Grace the Less.'

There was a pretty picture of the ImmaculÉe Conception over the sofa, one of those lithographs that you see in every bookstore, that Bertha fancied because it was 'sweet.' The Virgin, a woman with a child-angel's face, and the mezzo-luna beneath her feet. That artist knew what he was about, sir. I'd give more for a picture with a good, deep idea, boldly launched forth, than for a thousand of your smiling, proper, natural 'studies,' and Bridal Scenes, and Dramatic or Historical Snatches. If artists, now, were all poets and scholars, as they should be, it would be the work and delirious rapture of a life to go through a gallery as large as our Dusseldorf. Men would go there to write novels and histories, and women to learn to be good and beautiful—that is, to learn to think. Oh, what a school for great and small! But when is this new era of the real and the true in art to begin? You boy artists, who are just opening glad eyes to the glorious light, the great world looks to you to inaugurate the new, to pour ancient lore and mystic symbols and grand old art into the waiting crucible, and melt the whole, with your burning, creative genius, into forms and conceptions before which, hearts shall be silent in very rapture. But the time is not yet. One here and there cannot change the Iron to a Golden Age, and it is to thoughts rather than their great embodiments that earnest art-worshippers now bow. And yet men fancy they are artists, dream of a fame glorious as that of Phidias! Why there's young Acajou, who chiselled a very respectable hound out of a stray lump of marble, stealthily, by a candle, or more probably a spirit lamp, in his father's cellar—was discovered and straightway heroized. I don't say the boy hasn't talent, genius if you will; but it isn't the genius that will overflow his soul and etherealize his whole nature. Yet already he 'progresses like a giantess,' has attracted some attention in the Academy, and will directly be sent to Rome. But the idea! I know him too well! The other night I heard him criticizing Michael Angelo! and when I gave him an engraving of that delicious Psyche of Theed's to admire, the creature talked as if she were a manikin or a robed skeleton! Is there nothing due to the idea, Acajou? 'The idea!' dear me, why he didn't exactly know what the idea was! So he'll go trolling about the Louvre and the Luxembourg gallery, the Pitti palace and all Rome, and his mind will be as full of elbows and collar bones as the catacombs; he'll talk to you of the Grecian line of beauty and of 'pose,' and sketch you such a glorious arm or ankle that you, fair lady, wouldn't know it from your own! But do you see a single softened line in his own face? Has he ever drunk deep draughts from old fountains of poesy? Has he ever thought of the Vatican library—even though to long is all he may do? Oh no! He says mythology is a wornout dream, and insulting to a Christian age; that it's all well enough to know Jupiter and Bacchus (Silenus too?) and Venus and the head men back there, but this century wants originality, progress! Oh, pshaw!

Oh, but I was saying that Our Lady stood over the half moon, and Henrietta sat below it, with that soft cashmere morning dress, fighting all around her to see which fold should cling most lovingly to her graceful form. It was all a delicious poem to me, and if I were Horace, you would have had a splendid ode. Oh, well!

'Why, what a Joseph he is!' said Henrietta, waking me out of this reverie.

'Oh,' said I, starting, 'how did you know that?'

'Only conjecture, my dear friend; but when we see a man with his eyes fixed in that ghostly way, and his mustaches and all in perfect repose, we reasonably imagine that he's seeing visions; and I suppose you'll come flaming out presently with some dreams that shall have, for remote consequences, a throne in some Eastern paradise, and a princess, perhaps—who knows?'

'Who knows?' echoed I; 'but go on, Hypatia.'

'Oh yes! where shall I begin? Oh! there is Penhurst Lane, girls, you remember?'

'The raven?' said Bertha.

'No,' said Fanny, 'that is Mr. Rawdon. Penhurst Lane is an idealist.'

'A very idealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes, like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he have bonnes fortunes as well as Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst had bonnes fortunes, or ever dreamed of such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just inter nos (the only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,' and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he was a poor, weak creature, all gone to imagination! Then I would assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caught him looking with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once, when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody, and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he had once said to himself, Ich bin ein Ich (I am a ME), and the noble consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these. A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,' that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on 'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit, who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generally tÊte-À-tÊtes, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to him, without doing this; so'—

'But, Harry, he is married now.'

'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this man, who said:

——'The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.'

'Are you done, Harry?'

'Yes, Lenox.'

'Then sing us BÉranger's Grace À la fÊve, je suis roi.'

She has such a delicious voice.

'And while I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas À Kempis, La Nouvelle HÉloise, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night Side of Nature.' Talk of having a skeleton in the house! the most distressing ones that ever preceded Douglas and Sherwood's were nothing to him! he reminded one constantly of an Egyptian feast. He looked sadly at children, and gave little Henry Parsons, his godchild, a miniature dagger with a jewelled handle, with which the child nearly destroyed his right hand. When poor Mary was married, he walked mournfully up to the altar, and stared during the ceremony unmistakably at an imaginary coffin, hanging, like Mohammed's, midway between the ceiling and the floor. Poor man, it's really curious, but he contrives to be always in mourning, and everybody knows that he goes only to see tragedies, and has the dyspepsia, like Regina and her diamond cross, from principle. He composes epitaphs for all the ladies of his acquaintance, and presents them, like newspaper-carrier addresses, on New Year's days. I have one in my writing desk in a very secret drawer; a soul-cheering effusion, but not particularly agreeable to the physical humanity. This I intend to bequeath to the British museum, where it will be in future ages as great a treat to the antiquary as the Elgin marbles. What a doleful subject—pass him by!'

'Don't forget Leon Channing,' suggested Fanny, who was listening with great interest, and from a natural dread of ghosts and vampires was glad to see that Mr. Rawdon had come to a crisis.

'Dear me, no!' said Henrietta, cheerily, 'it's quite refreshing to come to an individual who creates a smile. I never was born for tears and lamentations, Bertha, any more than a lily was made to be merry; and if it were not for Len Channing, I don't suppose I should ever have been sharpened to such a dangerous degree; it's this constant friction, you know; well, as some darling of a cosmopolite has said, 'We must allow for friction in the most perfect machinery—yes, be glad to find it—for a certain degree of resistance is essential to strength. I like Leon very well. No one is more safe in a parlor engagement, always in the right place at the right tune, never embarrassed, never de trop; but then the queer consciousness, when he's giving you a meringuÉ or an ice, that if you were a 'real pretty,' graceful, conversible fawn or dove he would be doing it with the same interest! Why? Oh, because he says women belong to a lower order in the animal creation! Yes, veil your face, Mr. Lenox Raleigh, and be mournful that you are a man! 'A lower order of humanity!' Well, of course, I'm always quarrelling with him. To be sure he's a shallow kind of a philosopher, one of your rationalists; thinks Boston is the linchpin of the whole universe; has autograph letters from Emerson and Longfellow, and all that sort of thing. Now, I dare say it's very fine for a Schelling or a Hegel once in a while to beam over the earth, but it always seems inharmonious to me to see little jets of philosophers popping up in your face and then down again, all the time, thinking themselves great things. That's the way with Leon. Let me tell you what happened when I saw him last; and that was in Cologne, more than a year ago. I was sitting in our room with a great folio of Retzsch's engravings before me, and father writing horrible notes in his journal at the table, and wishing the eleven thousand virgins and all Cologne in the bottom of the Rhine, when I looked up, and somehow there was Leon. Of course we were rejoiced to see him, it's always so pleasant to meet friends abroad. After some talk, father went out to take another look at the cathedral, and indulge in speculations and legends, and left Leon and me in the window. It's as queer and horrible an old town, girls, as you ever dreamed of, and, as there was nothing external very fascinating, Leon soon turned his gaze inward, and, after twanging several minor strings, began to harp on his endless 'inferiority of woman.' I plied him, you may know; I gave him Zenobias and Didos and de Staels and de Medicis—in an emergency Pope Joan, and finally the Boston Margaret Fuller. Leon only stroked his beard and smiled.

''Miss Henrietta,' said he, at last, when I stopped in exultation, 'do you grant the Africans the vigor or variety of intellect of the Europeans?'

''No,' said I.

''Yet you concede that there may be instances among them, where education and culture have developed great results.'

''Yes,' I thought, 'there might be.'

''Just as I, bewildered by Miss Henrietta's keen shafts and graceful manoeuvres, yield that a woman is, once in a century, gifted with a man's depth of thought and her sex's loveliness.' The comparison was odious. What did I do? Oh, I (the swarthy Ethiop) only rose from my faded arm chair, saluted Mr. Channing (the lordly European) as if I were his partner in a quadrille, and brought out my cameos and mosaics to show him. In about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and comparison reached his brain, but mine was impenetrable to his most honeyed apologies; as I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a woman sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a woman wore the helmet and carried the shield of wisdom.'

'What's the matter, Harry?' asked Fanny, compassionately, as her small fingers were stretched like infant grid-irons before her eyes, and a silence ensued.

'My new bonnet, Fanny dear, I am wondering what it shall be; we must go down this very morning and decide.'

Did you ever think, Narcissus, and you, Gustav, and all of you boys, when you are engaged in your small diplomacies and coups de main, and feeling like giants in intellect beside the dear little girls who play polkas for you of evenings and sing sweet ballads, that pour bien juger les grands, il faut les approcher? I thought so that morning, as I heard the animated discussion that succeeded Henrietta's monologue; a discussion into which all sorts of delicate conceits of lace and flowers entered largely, and which savored about as much of the preceding elements as last night's Charlotte Russe of this morning's coffee.

Since Henrietta's oration, I am more than ever afraid of a Vulcan. It is very plain that our most fashionably cut suits and most delicately perfumed billets are not all powerful,—that the dear creatures are either waking or we have been asleep. Reveillons!

'Aux armes, citoyens!'

Now, while I was writing that last word, a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and looking up, I saw—Nap. I love Nap. I have a girlish weakness (let some lady arraign me for this hereafter) for him; so I shouted out and grasped his hands.

'How are the boys?'

'Flourishing. Come to stay?

'Yes, old fellow.'

'Stocks up?'

'To the sky.'

'The governor?'

'All right.'

I haven't any governor. Nap has; and one that saw fit to persecute him from twenty to thirty, because he declined to take 'orders.' Per Bacco! Never mind, a fit of paralysis has shaken the opposition out of the old gentleman at last, and Nap is in sunshine in consequence, and rushes around Wall street like a veteran.

But I didn't promise to tell you about Nap, or the girls either; it was only a few rays of light I had to dash over 'our beaux;' so where is your mother, belle Beatrice? I must make my adieux.

What say you, little one? You like Henrietta; you want to see her again? You pull me back with your wee white hands; I will talk to you for an hour longer, if I may hold the little kittens in my own. I may? And kiss each finger afterward? Ah! you dear child! Well, then—

'Are you going to Van Wyck's to-night, Lenox?' asked Bertha of me, as we rose from dinner, a month afterward.

'Yes, after the opera. And you? I fancy—yes—from your eyes.'

Bertha did not answer, and I strolled up stairs into the little back drawing room. From the library above I could hear Fanny's merry voice and the ring of Nap's cheery replies. Such a comfort as it was to me to see those two so fond of each other. You see I am, in a way, Fanny's father, and took no very great credit to myself when she half laid her hand in the extended one of Snowe. How curiously that witch Harry managed the thing, though! Dear little Fan; she stood in more than one twilight by the garden window, and whispered over: 'Addio, Francesca! addio, Cecco!' and Snowe faded in the returning spring of her heart, and into the blooming vista of their separation, hopefully walked Nap, and was welcomed with many smiles.

This afternoon, I walked over to the garden window, and there was Harry, scrawling an old, bearded hermit on the glass with her diamond ring. We both looked out—nothing much to see—a New York garden, thirty feet square, with the usual gorgeousness of our winter flowers!

'You are thinking of Shiraz, Harry.'

'Yes,' said she, dreamily, 'I am thinking of Shiraz!'

She didn't say it, but don't you suppose I knew just as well that she was wishing for her Vulcan and a great rose garden? I began to sing the 'Last Man,' but didn't succeed admirably; then I lighted my pipe—Harry didn't mind, you know, indeed she only looked at it wishfully.

'In my rose garden,' said she, with a laugh, 'I shall smoke to kill the rosebugs.'

'Don't wait,' said I, taking down a dainty Écume de mer (the back drawing room was my peculiar 'study,' and the repository of several gentlemanly 'improprieties'), and I adjusted the amber mouth piece to the cherry stem, 'Don't wait for Persia, make your rose garden here.'

Harry shook her head: 'You know, Len,' she said, 'that my roses would grow like so many witches in a Puritan soil. I always thought that story of the Norwegians' taking rosebuds for bulbs of fire, and being terrified, was a very delicate and poetical satire upon all superstition.'

'Are you going to wash away all superstition?' I asked hastily.

'No,' said she, with a smile at my fierceness; 'no, I like to see the sun shine on the dew drops that the webs catch and swing between the tops of the grasses.'

I looked at her as she laid her head back against the curtains. My nonchalance was as striking as hers, and—as genuine! We were no children to be awkward in any event. I took her hand; it was a glowing pulse—and mine? She wore one of those curious little cabal rings; there were the Hebrew characters for Faith, traced as with a gold pen dipped in melted pearls on black enamel. My seal was an emerald, Faith also, impaled. I snatched it up and laid it by the ring on her hand. She smiled—such a smile! intensest sympathy, deepest! Could it be? to love the same old symbols, the same weird music? I caught her close, and bent over her lips. The gold hair waved over my shoulder; the great, glittering eyes foamed into mine, then melted and swam into deep, quivering seas of dreams. I whispered, 'Zoe mou!' Oh, the quick, golden whisper, the flash of genial heartiness, the daring—oh, how tender! 'Sas agapo.' I held her off, radiant, glowing, fragrant, and Bertha's dress rustled up the stairs.

Henrietta stooped to pick up the seal, which had fallen; she balanced it on the tip of her finger—the nervy Titan queen! and drew Bertha down by her side on the sofa. It was growing dark.

'I must be off, girls, and get your camelias. What will you have, Bertha? a red or a white, you've a moment to decide?'

'Neither, Len; I do not go.'

'Why, Bertha? Oh! I remember, it is your anniversary,' and I kissed her.

'And you, princess!' I turned to Henrietta.

'Only roses, good my liege.'

What was the opera that night? Pshaw! what a rhetorical affectation this question! as if I could ever forget! Die ZauberflÖte, and it rang pure and clear through my thrilled heart. It followed me around to Van Wyck's, where I found Henrietta and Fanny. A compliment to madame, a German with mademoiselle, and home again. A great light streamed out of the drawing room. I pushed the door open. With a cry of joy, Fan rushed into the arms of the grave, fair man who put Bertha off his knee to welcome her. Nap, who had followed us in, for a moment stood transfixed, and Henrietta, more quiet, stood by their side, saying: 'Here is Harry, Fred, when you choose to see her.' And he did choose, her own brother, whom she had not seen for three years!

'Come in, Nap,' I said. 'Fred Ruyter.'

'Nap and Fanny,' I whispered; Fred smiled invisibly.

And Bertha? Oh, you know, of course, that she's Bertha Ruyter, and that Fred is her husband, just home from six months in Rio, and exactly a year from his wedding night! Oh, Lionardo! what mellow, transparent, flowing shades drowned us all that night!

'Harry,' I said, the next morning, before I went down town, as I lounged over her sofa, 'you have my emerald?'

'Yes!' and her bright face turned up to mine.

'You will keep it, and take me also, dear?'

'Ma foi! oui,' was the sweet, smiling reply.

'I'm not quite ugly enough for a Vulcan, I know; but after a while, if you are patient, who knows? What sayest thou, Venus?'

'I will try you, bon camarade.'

'Your hand upon it, Harry.'

She gave it; I kissed the gold hair that waved against my lips. Fanny rushed impetuously upon us, with half-opened eyes, and stifled us with caresses.

'Such a proposal,' said she musingly, after she had returned to her wools and beads, '14° above zero!'

'And the Polyphemus, Fanny?'

'Is for Nap,' and Fanny blushed and laughed. She was wondering if that great event, an 'engagement,' always came about in so prosaic a way. But looking at Bertha, I caught the bright, long, gravely humorous gleam from her dark eyes, and walked upon it all the way down to Exchange Place.

Adieu, little Beatrice; my story hath at last an ending. Keep the little hands and little heart warm for somebody brave by and by. Go shining about and dancing, and smiling, Hummingbird; may sweetest flowers always bloom around you; may you dwell in a fragrant rose garden of your own, mignonne! Adieu.