Almost the entire industry and commerce of the United States have been diverted into new and unaccustomed channels. The most active and enterprising people in the world, in the midst of their varied occupations, suddenly find all the accustomed channels of business blocked up and the stream of their productions flowing back upon them in a disastrous flood, and stagnating in their workshops and storehouses. They are compelled to find new issues for their enterprise and to make a complete change in their habits and works. It is not merely in the cessation of all intercourse between the two vast sections, North and South, that this mighty transformation has taken place; but an equal alteration has been suddenly effected in the character of the business and the nature of the occupations which the people have heretofore pursued in the loyal States of the Union. Great branches of business, employing millions of capital, have been utterly annihilated or indefinitely suspended. Vast amounts of capital have been sunk and utterly lost in the deep gulf of separation which temporarily divides the States; or if they are ever to be recovered, it will be only after the storm shall have completely subsided, when some portions of the wrecks, which have been scattered in the fearful commotion, may be thrown safely on to the shores of reunion. It was anticipated, especially by the rebels themselves, that these incalculable losses, these tremendous shocks and sudden changes, would utterly overwhelm the North with ruin and tear her to pieces with faction and disorder. But this anticipation of accumulated disasters, in which the wish was father to the thought, has not been realized to any appreciable extent. The pecuniary losses have been in a great measure compensated by the immense demands of the war; and when faction has attempted to raise its head, it has been compelled to retire before the patriotic rebuke of the people. And although the vast expenditures of the war give present relief; by drawing largely on the resources of the future, yet the strength we acquire is none the less real or less effectual in overthrowing the rebellion.

But this sudden and grand emergency, with all its appalling concomitants of lives sacrificed, property destroyed, commercial disaster, and social derangement, has given a rare opportunity for the testing of our national character, and of our ability to meet and overcome the most tremendous difficulties and dangers. Perhaps the versatility of American genius and its ready adaptation to the new circumstances, are even more wonderful than any other exhibition made by our people in this great national crisis. There has never been any good reason to doubt the capacity of any portion of American citizens for warlike occupations, nor their possession of the moral qualities necessary to make them good soldiers. The long period of peace which has blessed our country, with the industrial, educational, and moral improvement produced by it, has rendered war justly distasteful to the Free States of the Union. They were slow to recognize the necessity for it; and nothing but the most solemn convictions of duty would have aroused them to the stern and unanimous determination with which they have entered on the present struggle. Swift would have been our degeneration, if the spirit of our fathers had already died out among us. But our history of less than a century since the Revolutionary war has fully maintained the self-reliant character of Americans and demonstrated their military abilities; and if the commercial and manufacturing populations of particular sections were supposed to have become somewhat enervated by long exemption from the labors and perils of war, it was certain that our large agricultural regions and especially our frontier settlements were peopled with men inured to toil and familiar with danger, constituting the best material for armies to be found in any country. Nor was it in fact true that any considerable portion of our people, even those drawn from the stores and workshops of the cities, had become so far deteriorated in vigor of body, or demoralized in spirit, as to be unfit for military service. The Southern leaders looked with scorn upon our volunteer army only until they encountered it in battle. They were then compelled to alter their preconceived opinions of the Yankee character, and to change their contempt, real or pretended, into respect, if not admiration. Even when superior numbers or better strategy enabled them to beat us, they have seldom failed to bear honorable testimony to the unflinching courage and endurance of our troops. Nor do we need the admissions of the enemy to establish this character for us; our own triumphs, on many glorious fields, are the best evidences of our ability in war, and of themselves sufficiently attest the valor and energy of our noble volunteers. In this aspect of the matter, we must not forget the peculiar character and constitution of our vast army. It is indeed worthy to be called the wonder of the world. It is virtually a voluntary association of the people for the purpose of putting down a gigantic rebellion and saving their own government from destruction. This is a social phenomenon never before known in history on a scale approaching the magnitude of our combinations—a phenomenon which could only take place in a popular government, where the unrestricted freedom of individual action promotes the virtues of personal independence, self-respect, and manly courage. Even the Southern people, fighting on their own soil, in a war which, though actually commenced by them, they now affect to consider wholly defensive—even they, with all their boasted unanimity, and with the fierce passions engendered by slavery, have been compelled to maintain their armies by a conscription of the most unexampled severity; while the loyal States, fighting solely for union and nationality—interests of the most general nature, and offering little of mere personal inducement—have so far escaped that necessity, and are now just preparing to resort to it. After all, it must be acknowledged by every just and generous mind, whether that of friend or foe, that there is a substratum of noble sentiment and manly impulses at the foundation of the Yankee character. The vast movements of the Northern people plainly show it. Their contributions for the support of soldiers' families and for the relief of the wounded and disabled, are upon a gigantic scale. They raise immense sums for the payment of bounties to volunteers, and thus, in every way, the burdens of the war are voluntarily assumed by the people, and to some extent distributed among them, so that every one may participate in the patriotic work. Nor is this large-hearted liberality confined solely to our own country. The sufferers in other lands, who have felt the disastrous effects of our great civil war, have not been forgotten. In the midst of a life-and-death struggle among ourselves, we have found time and means to assist in relieving their wants—an exhibition of liberality peculiar, and truly American in character.

Nor are these the only interesting features in the bearing of the American people at the present crisis. Perhaps a still more remarkable one is the entire devotion of the national energies—of intellect not less than of heart, of skill, not less than of capital—to the great purposes of the war. This was the necessary result of our free institutions; of our untrammelled pursuits; the mobility of our means and agencies of production; and the plastic character of all our creations. The amount of thought expended on this subject has been prodigious and incalculable. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to enumerate the ten thousand inventions and devices of all kinds which have been presented for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of weapons and of all the appliances of war, as well as for adding to the comfort and securing the health of the soldier. Every imaginable instrument of usefulness in any of the operations of the camp, or the march, or the field of battle, has been the subject of tentative ingenuity, such as none but Yankees could display. The musket, the carbine, the pistol, have been constructed upon numberless plans, apparently with every possible modification. The cartridge has been covered with copper, impervious to water, instead of paper, and has its own fulminate attached in various modes. Cannon shot and shells have been made in many new forms; and cannons themselves have been increased in calibre to an extraordinary size with proportionate efficiency, and have been constructed in various modes and forms never before conceived. The tent, the cot, the chest, the chair, the knife and fork, the stove and bakeoven, each and every one of them, have been touched by the transforming hand of homely genius, and have assumed a thousand unimaginable forms of usefulness and convenience. India rubber and every other available material have been made to perform new and appropriate parts in the general work. The result of all this unexampled activity and ingenuity has not yet been fully eliminated. It would require years of experience in war in order to bring American genius, as at present developed, to bear with all its extraordinary force on the mechanical details of the military art. Beyond doubt, numberless devices, among those presented, will prove to be utterly worthless; but many of them will certainly stand the test of experience, will be ultimately approved and adopted, and will remain as monuments of the enterprise and ingenuity aroused by the necessities of the country in this hour of its sad calamity.

It would be a curious and interesting employment to estimate the number and character of these inventions, due wholly to the existing civil strife. Only then should we be able to form some adequate conception of the immense stimulus which has been applied to the national intellect, and which has caused it to embrace within the boundless range of its investigations, the highest moral and political problems, alike with the minutest questions of mechanical and economical convenience. But we should be greatly disappointed in not finding this phenomenon even partially comprehended by the powers that be. It is truly a melancholy thing to meet in the highest quarters so little sympathy with the noblest efforts of the popular mind, and to witness the cold neglect and even disdainful suspicion with which the most useful and valuable devices are often received, or rather, we should say, haughtily disregarded and rejected. Seldom or never do we find these inventions appreciated according to their merits. The Government is proverbially slow to adopt improvements of any kind; and the army and navy, like all similar professional bodies, are averse to every important change, and wedded to the instruments and processes in the use of which they have been educated and trained. This peculiar indisposition to progressive movements, in all the established institutions and organizations of society, has frequently been the subject of remark and of regret. It is, however, only an exaggeration of the conservative principle, which, when confined within proper limits, is wise and beneficial. Indeed, the actual progress of society in any period, is neither more nor less than the result of the conflict between the opposite tendencies, of retrogradation and advancement—a disposition to adhere to the old, which has been tried and approved, and a tendency toward the new, which, however promising and alluring, may yet disappoint and mislead. In the long run, however, the latter prevails, and the progressive movement, more or less rapid, goes on continually. Improvements gradually force themselves upon the attention of the most prejudiced minds, and eventually conquer opposition in spite of professional immobility and aversion to change. Observation has shown that the most important steps of progress usually originate outside of the professions, and are only adopted when they can no longer be resisted with safety to the conservative body. To the volunteer officer and soldier, or to those educated soldiers who have long been in civil life, will probably be due the greater part of that accessibility to new ideas which will result in important advances in the art of war. This assertion may seem to be paradoxical; but all experience proves that ignorance of old processes is most favorable to the introduction of new ones. And though in a thousand instances such ignorance may be disastrous, occasionally it finds the unprejudiced intellect illuminated by flashes of original genius, and open to the entrance of valuable ideas which would have been utterly excluded by all the old and established rules.

But the actual work of the unexampled mental activity of the present day, will not be fully known and estimated until after the close of the war. Until then there will be neither time nor opportunity to weigh and test the creations of the national ingenuity. In the midst of campaigns and battles, with the absorbing interest of the great struggle, the instruments of warfare cannot be easily changed, however important may be the improvement presented. The emergency which arouses genius and brings forth valuable inventions, is by no means favorable to their adoption and general use. On the contrary, by a sort of fatality which seems to be a law of their existence, they are doomed to struggle with adversity and fierce opposition, and they are left by the occasion which gave them birth as its repudiated offspring—a legacy to the future emergency which will cherish and perfect them, make them available, and enjoy the full benefit to be derived from them.

The navy has always justly been the pride of our country; and it was to be expected that it would first feel the impulse of inventive genius. Confident in our strength and resources, we had long remained comparatively sluggish, and regardless of those interesting experiments which other great maritime powers had been carefully making with a view to render ships invulnerable. We looked on quietly, observed the results, and waited for the occasion when we should be required to put forth our strength in this direction. When the war commenced, we had not a single iron-clad vessel of any description. It became necessary that the immense Southern coast of our country should be subjected to the strictest blockade. This was a work of vast magnitude, and a very large and sudden increase of the navy was demanded by the extraordinary emergency. Cities were to be taken, and strong fortresses to be attacked. The rebels had managed to save some of the vessels intended to be destroyed at Norfolk, and had converted the Merrimack into a formidable monster, which in due time displayed her destructive powers upon our unfortunate fleet in Hampton Roads, in that ever-memorable contest in which the Monitor first made her timely appearance. The chief result of the vast effort demanded by the perilous situation of our country, was the class of vessels of which the partially successful but ill-fated Monitor was the type. These structures are certainly very far from being perfect as ships of war; nevertheless, they constitute an interesting and valuable experiment, and mark an advance in naval warfare of the very first importance. They establish the form in which defensive armor may perhaps be most effectively disposed for the protection of men on board ships; but at the same time, it must be conceded that they utterly fail in all the other requisites for men-of-war and sea-going vessels. They are deficient in buoyancy and speed. In truth they are nothing more than floating batteries, useful in the defence of harbors or the attack of forts. The melancholy end of the Monitor shows too plainly that vessels of her character cannot be safely trusted to the fury of the open sea. They may do well in favorable weather, or may escape on a single expedition; but a repetition of long voyages will be almost certain to result in their loss.

We want lighter and swifter vessels to be equally formidable in ordnance, and alike invulnerable to the attacks of any adversary. To combine all these requisites is not beyond the ingenuity of American constructors. Most assuredly such vessels will soon make their appearance on the ocean. Some new arrangement of the propelling apparatus, and lighter and more powerful machinery, will accomplish this important end. And then, too, with greatly increased speed, and with a construction suitable to the new function, the principle of the ram will be perfected; so that the projectile thrown by the most powerful ordnance now existing or even conceived will be insignificant compared with the momentum of a large steamer, going at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, and herself becoming the direct instrument of destruction to her adversary. Ordnance may possibly be devised which will throw shot or shell weighing each a thousand pounds; but by the new principle, which is evidently growing in practicability and favor, the weight of thousands of tons will be precipitated against vessels of war, and naval combats will become a conflict of gigantic forces, in comparison with which the discharge of guns and the momentum of cannon balls will be little more than the bursting of bubbles.

The exploits of the rebel steamer Alabama, so destructive to our commerce and so humiliating to our pride as a great naval power, sufficiently attest the vital importance of the element of speed in ships of war. Her capacity under steam is beyond that of our best vessels, and she therefore becomes, at her pleasure, utterly inaccessible to anything we may send to pursue her. We have built our steamers strong and heavy; but proportionately slow and clumsy. The Alabama could not safely encounter any one of them entitled to the name of a regular cruiser; but she does not intend to risk such a contest, and, most unfortunately for us, she cannot be compelled to meet it. Of what real use are all the costly structures of our navy with the tremendous ordnance which they carry, if this comparatively insignificant craft can go and come when and where she will, and sail through and around our fleets without the possibility of being interrupted? They are perfectly well suited to remain stationary and aid us in blockading the Southern ports; but the frequent escape of fast steamers running the blockade, serves still further to demonstrate the great and palpable deficiency in the speed of our ships of war. We may start a hundred of our best steamers on the track of the Alabama, and, without an accident, they can never overtake her. The only alternative is to accept the lesson which her example teaches, and to surpass her in those qualities which constitute her efficiency and make her formidable as a foe. This we must do, or we must quietly surrender our commerce to her infamous depredations, and acknowledge ourselves beaten on the seas by the rebel confederacy without an open port, and without anything worthy to be called a navy. The ability of our naval heroes, and their skill and valor, so nobly illustrated on several occasions during the present war, will be utterly unavailing against superior celerity of motion. Their just pride must be humbled, and their patriotic hearts must chafe with vexation, so long as the terrible rebel rover continues to command the seas, as she will not fail to do so long as we are unable to cope with her in activity and speed. Nor is it certain we have yet known the worst. Ominous appearances abroad, and thick-coming rumors brought by every arrival, indicate the construction in England of numerous other ships like the Alabama, destined to run the blockade and afterward to join that renowned cruiser in her work of destruction. Stores of cotton held in Southern ports offer a temptation to the cupidity of foreign adventurers which will command capital to any amount, and the best skill of English engineers and builders will be enlisted to make the enterprise successful—a skill not embarrassed by bureaucratic inertia and stolidity.

Let the genius of American constructors and engineers be brought to bear on the subject, and the important problem will be solved in sixty days. Indeed, there are plans in existence, at this very hour, by which the desired end could be at once accomplished. But the inertia of official authority, and especially of the bureaus in the Navy Department, is such that any novel idea, however demonstrably good and valuable, is usually doomed to battle for years against opposition of all kinds before it can hope to secure an introduction. In all probability, the war will have been ended before anything of great importance ever can be accomplished through those channels. The adoption of the Monitor principle was not due to the skill and intelligence found in official quarters; it was forced upon the Navy Department from the outside. And like the boa constrictor, after having swallowed its prey, the Department must sluggishly repose until that meal is digested before another can be taken. One idea, of the magnitude of this, is enough for the present crisis. We shall not have another, if the stubborn resistance and fixity of ideas in the bureaus can prevent it. The invulnerability of the Monitors, and the peculiar arrangement by which this important end is obtained, are but one of the items necessary to make up the complete efficiency of war steamers. They are only one half what is required. They accomplish one of the great desiderata in armaments afloat; but they leave another equally important demand utterly unsatisfied. There is a counterpart to this achievement—its complement, equally indispensable to the efficiency of the navy, and waiting to be placed by the side of the recent improvement. It must and will be brought forth, whether the naval authorities assist or oppose. American genius, only give it fair play, is equal to all emergencies.

The immense activity of thought and ingenuity elicited by the war, and extending to all the departments of enterprise appropriate to the great crisis, is a phenomenon peculiar to the American people. It could be exhibited nowhere else, to the same extent, among civilized nations, because nowhere else is the same stimulus applied with equal directness to the popular masses. The operation of this peculiar cause is conspicuously plain. The Government of the United States is the people's Government; the war is emphatically the people's war. Every man feels that he has a personal interest in it. He understands, more or less clearly, the whole question involved, and has fixed opinions, and perhaps strong feelings, in regard to it. His friends and neighbors and brothers are in the army, and they have gone thither voluntarily, perhaps impelled by enlightened and conscientious convictions of duty. His sympathies follow them; he ardently prays for their success; and he is stimulated to provide, as well as he can, for their comfort. All other business being greatly interrupted, if not wholly suspended, he thinks continuously of the mighty operations of the war. He dwells on them night and day, and in the laboratory of his active mind, excited by the mighty stimulus of personal and patriotic feeling natural to the occasion, he produces those extraordinary combinations which distinguish the present era.

In addition to these impulses which operate so generally, there is the still more universal and all-pervading love of gain which stimulates his inventive faculties, and causes them to operate in the direction in which his hopes and sympathies are turned. Aroused by motives of all kinds, the whole mind and heart of the country is absorbed in the great contest, and all its energies are applied in every conceivable way to the work of war. The man who carries the gun and uses it on the battle field is not more earnestly engaged in this work than he who racks his brain and sifts his teeming ideas for the purpose of making the instrument more destructive. Even the victims who fall in the deadly strife and give their mangled bodies to their country, are not more truly martyrs to a glorious cause than the inventors who sometimes sacrifice themselves in the course of their perilous experiments, or by the slower process of mental and physical exhaustion during the long years of 'hope deferred,' while vainly seeking to make known the value of their devices. A great power is at work, operating on the character and capacity of each individual, and affecting each according to the infinite diversity which prevails among men. A common enthusiasm, or, at least, a common excitement pervades the whole community to its profoundest depths, and arouses all its energy and all its intellect, whatever that energy and intellect may be capable of doing. It carries multitudes into the army full of patriotic ardor; it inspires others with grand ideas, which they seek to embody in combinations of power, useful and effective in the great work which is the task of the nation, and for the accomplishment of which all noble hearts are laboring earnestly and incessantly.

But in this tempestuous hour, as in more peaceful times, good and bad ideas, valuable and worthless devices, noble and generous as well as sinister and mercenary purposes are mingled in the vast multitude of projects which are presented for acceptance and adoption. The power of the nation is magnified by the impulse which arouses it; but in its exaltation it still retains its errors and defects. It is the same people, with all their characteristic faults and virtues, stimulated to mighty exertions in a sacred cause, who have been so often engaged in petty partisan contests, swayed by dishonest leaders, and carried astray by the base intrigues of ambition and selfishness. Yet, as the masses, at all times, have had no interest but that of the nation which they chiefly constitute, and have sought nothing but what they at least considered to be the public good, so even now, in these mad and perilous times, the predominating sentiment and purpose of the people, in whatever sphere they move, are, on the whole, good and worthy of approval. Every one must at least pretend to be controlled by honest and patriotic motives; and in such an emergency hypocrisy cannot possibly be universal or even predominant. Although men may seek chiefly their own interest and profit, they must do so through some effort of public usefulness. They must commend themselves, their works, and ideas, as of superior importance to the cause of the country; and in this universal struggle and competition—this mighty effervescence of popular thought and action, it would be strange and unexampled, if some great, new conceptions should not dawn upon us. The very condition, physical, social, and moral, of our twenty millions of people in the loyal States is unlike all that has ever preceded it. Their general intelligence, the result of universal education, makes available their unlimited freedom, and establishes their capacity for great achievements. The present momentous occasion makes an imperative demand upon all their highest faculties, and they cannot fail to respond in a manner which will satisfy every just expectation.

What the Government has undertaken in this crisis is worthy of a great people and springs from the large ideas habitual to Americans. The blockade of the whole Southern coast, with its vast shore line, and its intricate network of inlets, harbors, and rivers; the controlling of the mighty Mississippi from Cairo to the gulf; the campaigns in Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas; and the pending attacks on Charleston and Savannah—these gigantic and tremendous operations have something of that grandeur which is familiar to our thoughts—which, indeed, constitutes the staple of the ordinary American speech, apparently having all the characteristics of exaggerated jesting and idle boast. We frequently hear our enthusiastic countrymen talk of anchoring Great Britain in one of our northern lakes. They speak contemptuously of the petty jurisdictions of European powers contrasted with the magnificent domain of our States, and they sneer at the rivers of the old continent as mere rills by the side of the mighty 'father of waters.' The men whose very jests are on a scale of such magnitude, do not seem to find the extensive military operations too large for their serious thoughts. No American considers them beyond our power, or for one moment hesitates to admit their ultimate success. No difficulties discourage us, no disasters appal. We move on with indomitable will and determination, looking through all the obstacles to the grand result as already accomplished. Does slavery stand in the way, and cotton seek to usurp the throne of universal empire, dictating terms to twenty millions of freemen, and demanding the acquiescence of the world? The first is annihilated by a word proclaiming universal liberation; the second is blockaded in his ports, surrounded by a wall of fire, suffocated and strangled, and dragged helpless and insensible from his imaginary throne. A proud and desperate aristocracy, rich and powerful, and correspondingly confident, undertake to measure strength with the democratic millions whom they despise. These Northern people, scorned and detested, have ideas—grand and magnificent as well as practical ideas, nurtured by universal education and unlimited freedom of thought and act. The fierce and relentless aristocracy rave in their very madness, and defy the people whom they seek to destroy; but these bear down upon the haughty enemy, slowly and deliberately—awkwardly and blunderingly, it may be, at first, but learning by experience, and moving on, through all vicissitudes, with the certainty and solemnity of destiny to the hour of final and complete success. The confidence in this grand result dominates every other thought. All ideas and all purposes revolve around it as a centre. It is the internal fire which warms the patriotism, strengthens the purpose, stimulates the invention, sustains the courage, and feeds the undying confidence of the nation, in this, the hour of its desperate struggle for existence.



PROMOTED!

'You will not bid me stay!' he said, 'She calls for me—my native land! And stay? ah, better to be dead! A coward dare not ask your hand!

'My crimson sash you'll tie for me, My belted sword you'll fasten, love! I swear to both I'll faithful be, To these below! to God above!

'And if, perchance, my sword shall win A laurel wreath to crown your name, He will not count it as my sin, That I for you have prayed for fame!'

* * * * *

His name rings thro' his native land, His sword has won the hero's prize; Why comes he not to ask her hand? Dead on the battle field he lies.



HENRIETTA AND VULCAN.

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 Antinoeus 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 haegira 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 a 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 Caesar, 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 debut into this vale of tears, may the most glorious rocket ascend that Jackson ever said or sung, one that shall break out in paeans 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 Oedipus, 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 debris 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 Immaculee 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 tete-a-tetes, 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 Beranger's Grace a la feve, 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 a Kempis, La Nouvelle Heloise, 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 meringue 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 ecume 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 Zauberfloete, 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 deg. 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.



ETHEL.

FITZ FASHION'S WIFE.

Take the diamonds from my forehead—their chill weight but frets my brow! How they glitter! radiant, faultless—but they give no pleasure now.

Once they might have saved a Poet, o'er whose bed the violet waves: Now their lustre chills my spirit, like the light from new-made graves.

Quick! unbind the braided tresses of my coroneted hair! Let it fall in single ringlets such as I was wont to wear.

Take that wreath of dewy violets, twine it round their golden flow; Let the perfumed purple blossoms fall upon my brow of snow!

Simple flowers, ye gently lead me back into the sunny years, Ere I wore proud chains of diamonds, forged of bitter, frozen tears!

Bring the silver mirror to me! I am changed since those bright days, When I lived with my sweet mother, and a Poet sang my praise.

My blue eyes are larger, dimmer; thicker lashes veil their light; Upon my cheek the crimson rose fast is fading to the white.

I am taller, statelier, slighter, than I was in days of yore:— If his eyes in heaven behold me, does he praise me as before?

Proudly swells the silken rustle—all around is wealth and state,— Dearer far the early roses twining round the wicker gate,

Where my mother came at evening with the saint-like forehead pale, And the Poet sat beside her, conning o'er his rhythmed tale.

As he read the linked lines over, she would sanction, disapprove: Soft and musical the pages, but he never sang of love.

I had lived through sixteen summers, he was only twenty-one, And we three still sat together at the hour of setting sun.

Lowly was the forest cottage, but the sweetbrier wreathed it well; 'Mid its violets and roses, bees and robins loved to dwell.

Wilder forms of larch and hemlock climbed the mountain at its side; Fairy-like a rill came leaping where the quivering harebells sighed.

Glittering, bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track; Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack.

Soon there came a stately lover,—praised my beauty, softly smiled: 'He would make my mother happy,'—I was but a silly child!

Came a dream of sudden power—fairest visions o'er me glide— Wider spheres would open for me;—dazzled, I became a bride:

Fondly deemed my lonely mother would be freed from sordid care; Splendor I might pour around her, every joy with her might share.

Then the Poet, who had never breathed one word of love to me,— We might shape his life-course for him, give him culture wide and free.

How I longed to turn the pages, with a husband's hand as guide, Of the long-past golden ages, art and science at my side!

To my simple fancy seemed it almost everything he knew— Ah! he might have won affection, faithful, fervent, trusting, true!

I was happy, never dreaming wealth congeals the human soul, Freezing all its generous impulse—I but saw its wide control.

Years have passed—a larger culture poured strange knowledge through my mind— I have learned to read man's nature: better I were ever blind!

How can I take upon me what I look upon with scorn, Or learn to brook my own contempt, or trample the forlorn?

I cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slave To narrow fancies; I must feel, although a husband rave!

I cannot choose my friends because I know them rich, or great; My heart elects the noble,—what cares love for wealth or state?

Very lovely are my pictures, saints and angels throng my hall— But with shame my cheek is flushing, and my quivering lashes fall:

Can I gaze on pictured actions, daring deeds, and emprise high, And not feel my degradation while these fetters round me lie?

Once the Poet came to see me, but it gave me nought but pain; I was glad to see the Gifted go, ne'er to return again.

For my husband scorning told me: 'True, his lines were very sweet, But his clothes, so worn and seedy—scarce for me acquaintance meet!

Artists, poets, men of genius, truly should be better paid, But not holding our position, cannot be our friends,' he said.

'As gentlemen to meet them were a very curious thing; They were happier in their garrets—there let them sigh or sing.

There were Travers and De Courcy—could he ask them home to dine, At the risk of meeting truly such strange fellows o'er their wine?'

Then he said, 'My cheeks were peachy, lips were coral, curls were gold, But he liked them braided crown-like, and with pearls and diamonds rolled.

I was once a little peasant; now I stood a jewelled queen— Fitter that a calmer presence in his stately wife were seen!'

Then he gave a gorgeous card-case; set with rubies, Roman gold, Handed me a paper with it, strands of pearls around it rolled;