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nish of politeness and mask of hypocrisy to complete | from a Trajan, an Abel from a Cain? But it is not

the likeness.

Little girls are my favourites. Boys, though sufficiently interesting and amusing are apt to be infected, as soon as they assume the manly garb, with a little of that masculine violence and obstinacy, which, when they grow up, they will call spirit and firmness; and they lose, earlier in life, that docility, tenderness and ignorance of evil, which are their sisters' peculiar charms. In all the range of visible creation, there is no object to me so attractive and delightful, as a lovely, intelligent, gentle little

in this spirit that it is either wise or happy to conAnother description of children, deservedly un- template any thing. Better is it--when we behold popular, is the over-educated and super-excellent, the energy and animation of young children, their who despise dolls and, drums, and, ready only for in-warm affections, their ready, unsuspicious confistruction, have no wish for a holiday, no fancy for a dence, their wild, unwearied glee, their mirth so eafairy tale. They appear to have a natural taste for sily excited, their love so easily won-to enjoy, unpedantry and precision; their wisdom never indul-restrained, the pleasantness of life's morning; that ges in a nap, at least before company; they have morning so bright and joyous, which seems to "juslearned the Pestalozzi system and weary you with tify the ways of God to men," and to teach us that questions; they require you to prove every thing Nature intended us to be happy, and usually gains you assert, and are always on the watch to detect you her end till we are old enough to discover how we in a verbal inaccuracy, or a slight mistake in a date. may defeat it. But, notwithstanding the infinite pains taken to spoil nature's lovely works, there is a principle of resistance, which allows of only partial success; and numbers of sweet children exist, to delight, and soothe, and divert us, when we are wearied or fretted by grown-up people, and to justify all that has been said or written of the charms of childhood. Perhaps only women, their natural nurses and faithful protectresses, can thoroughly appreciate the attractions of the first few months of human existence. The recumbent position, the fragile limbs, the leth-girl of eight or nine years old. This is the point argic tastes, and ungrateful indifference to notice, of a very young infant, render it uninteresting to most gentlemen, except its father; and he is generally afraid to touch it, for fear of breaking its neck. But even in this state, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and nurses assure you, that strong indications of sense and genius may be discerned in the little animal; and I have known a clatter of surprise and joy excited through a whole family, and matter afforded for twenty long letters and innumerable animated conversations, by some marvellous demonstration of intellect in a creature in long clothes, who could not hold its head straight.

But as soon as the baby has acquired firmness and liveliness; as soon as it smiles at a familiar face, and stares at a strange one; as soon as it employs its hands and eyes in constant expeditions of discovery, and crows and leaps, from the excess of animal contentment,-it becomes an object of indefinable and powerful interest, to which all the sympathies of our nature attach us—an object at once of curiosity and tenderness, interesting as it is in its helplessness and innocence, doubly interesting from its prospects and destiny; interesting to a philosopher, doubly interesting to a Christian.

Who has not occasionally, when fondling an infant, felt oppressed by the weight of mystery which hangs over its fate? Perhaps we hold in our arms an angel, kept but for a few months from the heaven in which it is to spend the rest of an immortal existence; perhaps we see the germ of all that is hideous and hateful in our nature. Thus looked and thus sported, thus calmly slumbered and sweetly smiled the monsters of our race in their days of infancy. Where are the marks to distinguish a Nero

at which may be witnessed the greatest improvement of intellect compatible with that lily-like purity of mind, to which taint is incomprehensible, danger unsuspected, and which wants not only the vocabularlary, but the very idea of sin.

Even the best and purest of women would shrink from displaying her heart to our gaze, while lovely childhood allows us to read its very thought and fancy. Its sincerity, indeed, is occasionally very inconvenient; and let that person be quite sure that he has nothing remarkably odd, ugly or disagreeable about his appearance, who ventures to ask a child what it thinks of him. Amidst the frowns and blushes of the family, amidst a thousand efforts to prevent or to drown the answer, truth, in all the horrors of nakedness, will generally appear in the surprised assembly; and he who has hitherto thought, in spite of his mirror, that his eyes had merely a slight and not unpleasing cast, will now learn for the first time, "that every body says he has a terrible squint."

I cannot approve of the modern practice of dressing little girls in exact accordance with the prevailing fashion, with scrupulous imitation of their elders. When I look at a child, I do not wish to feel doubtful whether it is not an unfortunate dwarf, who is standing before me, attired in a costume suited to its age. Extreme simplicity of attire, and a dress sacred to themselves only, are most fitted to these "fresh female buds ;" and it vexes me to see them disguised in the fashions of the day, or prac tising the graces and courtesies of maturer life. Will there not be years enough, from thirteen to seventy, for ornamenting or disfiguring the person at the fiat of French milliners; for checking laughter and forc

ing smiles; for reducing all varieties of intellect, all gradations of feeling, to one uniform tint? Is there not already a sufficient sameness in the aspect and tone of polished life? Oh, leave children as they are, to relieve, by their "wild freshness," our elegant insipidity; leave their hair loosely flowing, robes as free," to refresh the eye that loves simplicity; and leave their eagerness, their warmth, their unreflecting sincerity, their unschooled expressions of joy or regret, to amuse and delight us, when we are a little tired by the politeness, the caution, the wisdom and the coldness of the grown-up world.

Children may teach us one blessed, one enviable art, the art of being easily happy. Kind nature has given to them that useful power of accommodation to circumstances, which compensates for so many external disadvantages; and it is only by injudicious management that it is lost. Give him but a moderate portion of food and kindness, and the peasant's child is happier than the duke's; free from artificial wants, unsated by indulgence, all nature ministers to his pleasures; he can carve out felicity from a bit of hazel twig, or fish for it successfully in a puddle.

He must have been singularly unfortunate in childhood, or singularly the reverse in after-life, who does not look back upon its scenes, its sports and pleasures, with fond regret. The wisest and happiest of us, may occasionally detect this feeling in our bosoms. There is something unreasonably dear to the man in the recollection of the follies, the whims, the petty cares and exaggerated delights of his childhood. Perhaps he is engaged in schemes of soaring ambition; but he fancies, sometimes, that there was once a greater charm in flying a kite.— Perhaps, after many a hard lesson, he has acquired a power of discernment and spirit of caution, which defies deception; but he now and then wishes for the boyish confidence, which venerated every old beg. gar, and wept at every tale of wo.-N. M. Mag.

THE DEAD CHILD.

BY WILLIAM H. BURLEIGH.

One tiny hand amid his curls is lying

Over the blue veined temple-and his face,
Pale as the water-lily, shows no trace
Of passion or of tears. The pang of dying

Left not its record on the beautiful clay,
And-but the flush of life were stolen away-
Well might we deem he slept. His ruby lip,

Weareth its freshness yet-and see! a smile Lingers around his mouth, as all the while The spirit with the clay held fellowship! And this is death!-his terrors laid aside,

How like a guardian angel doth he come To bear the sinless spirit to his homeThe sheltering bosom of the CRUCIFIED!

SUMMER WOODS.

BY MARY HOWITT.

Come ye into the summer woods,
There entereth no annoy;
All greenly wave the chesnut leaves,
And the earth is full of joy.

I cannot tell you half the sights
Of beauty you may see,
The bursts of golden sunshine,
And many a shady tree.

There, lightly swung, in bowery glades,
The honey-suckles twine;

There blooms the rose-red campion,

And the dark blue columbine.

There grows the four-leaved plant «true-love,”
In some dusk woodland spot:
There grows the enchanter's night shade,
And the wood forget-me-not.

And many a merry bird is there,
Unscared by lawless men:

The blue-winged jay, the wood-pecker,
And the golden-crested wren.

Come down, and ye shall see them all,
The timid and the bold;

For their sweet life of pleasantness,
It is not to be told.

And far within that summer-wood,

Among the leaves so green, There flows a little gurgling brook, The brightest e'er was seen.

There come the little gentle birds,

Without a fear of ill;

Down to the murmuring water's edge,
And freely drink their fill!

And dash about and splash about,
The merry littie things;

And look askance with bright black eyes,
And flirt their dripping wings.

I've seen the freakish squirrels drop
Down from their leafy tree,
The little squirrels with the old,—
Great joy it was to me!

And down unto the running brook,

I've seen them nimbly go;
And the bright water seemed to speak
A welcome kind and low.

The nodding plants they bow their heads,
As if, in heartsome cheer,
They spake unto those little things,
"'Tis merry living here!"

Oh how my heart ran o'er with joy!

I saw that all was good, And how we might glean up delight All round us, if we would!

And many a wood mouse dwelleth there,
Beneath the old-wood shade,
And all day long has work to do,
Nor is of aught afraid.

The green shoots grow above their heads, And roots so fresh and fine

Beneath their feet, nor is there strife 'Mong them for mine and thine.

There is enough for every one,

And they lovingly agree;

We might learn a lesson, all of us, Beneath the green-wood tree!

THE POOR VOTER'S SONG.

They knew that I was poor,

And they thought that I was base; They thought that I'd endure

To be covered with disgrace;
They thought me of their tribe,
Who on filthy lucre doat,
So they offered me a bribe
For my vote, boys, my vote!
O shame upon my betters,

Who would my conscience buy!
But I'll not wear their fetters,
Not I indeed, not I!

My vote? It is not mine

To do with as I will; To cast, like pearls, to swine, To these wallowers in ill. It is my country's due,

And I'll give it, while I can, To the honest and the true,

Like a man, like a man!

No, no, I'll hold my vote

As a treasure and a trust, My dishonor none shall quote

When I'm mingled with the dust; And my children, when I'm gone, Shall be strengthened by the thought, That their father was not one To be bought, to be bought! O shame upon my betters, Who would my conscience buy! But I'll not wear their fetters, Not I indeed, not I!

FASHIONABLE FOLLIES.

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There are in the United States one hundred thousand-y 1.young ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of Scotland, the prettiest lassies in a' the world," who know neither to toil nor spin, who are clothed like the lilies of the valley,-who thrum the piano, and, a few of the more dainty, the harp,who walk, as the Bible says, softly,-who have read romances, and some of them seen the interior of theatres,-who have been admired at the examination of their high school,-who have wrought algebraic solutions on the blackboard,-who are, in short, the very roses of the garden, the attar of life, who yet, horresco referens,—can never expect to be married, or, if married, to live without-shall I speak, or forbear?-putting their own lily hands to domestic drudgery.

We go into the interior villages of our recent wooden country. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the piano. We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we are sure, never prepared a dinner, nor made a garment for her robustious brothers. We traverse the streets of our own city, and the wires of the piano are thrummed in our ears from every considerable house. In cities and villages, from one extremity of the Union to the other, wherever there is a good house, and the doors and windows betoken the presence of the mild months, the ringing of the piano wires is almost as universal a sound, as the domestic hum of life within.

We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair one, erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and reduced to a questionable class of entomology, dinging at the wires, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of them music, amusement and a husband. Look at her taper and creamcolored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the fair one when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, Pretty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as to beguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst write a good and straightforward letter of business? Thou art a chemist, I remember, at the examination; canst compound, prepare, and afterwards boil, or bake, a good pudding? Canst make one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of thy fair person? In short, tell us thy use in existence, except to be contemplated as a pretty picture? And how long will any one be amused with the view of a picture, after having surveyed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a heart; and, we may emphatically add, the perennial value of utility?"

It is a sad and lamentable truth, after all the incessant din we have heard of the march of mind, and the interminable theories, inculcations and eulogies of education, that the present is an age of unbounded desire of display and notoriety, of exhaustless and unquenchably burning ambition; and not an age of calm, contented, ripe and useful knowledge, for the

he has sacrificed so much, finds that a servant must be hired for the young ladies.

sacred privacy of the parlour. Display, notoriety, surface and splendor-these are the first aims of the Here is not the end of the mischief. Every one mothers; and can we expect that the daughters will drink into a better spirit? To play, sing, dress, knows that mothers and daughters give the tone, and glide down the dance, and get a husband, is the les-laws-more unalterable than those of the Medes and son; not to be qualified to render his home quiet, Persians-to society Here is the root of the matwell-ordered and happy.

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ter, the spring of bitter waters. Here is the origin of the complaint of hard times, bankruptcies, greediness, avarice and the horse-leech cry Give! give!' Here is the reason why every man lives up to his income, and so many beyond it. Here is the reason why the young trader, starting on credit and calling

It is notorious, that there will soon be no intermediate class between those who toil and spin, and those whose claim to be ladies is founded on their being incapable of any value of utility. At present, we know of none, except the little army of martyrs, himself a merchant, hires and furnishes such a house yclept school-mistresses, and the still smaller corps of editorial and active blue-stockings. If it should as if he really was one, fails, and gives to his credibe my lot to transmigrate back to earth, in the form tors a beggarly account of empty boxes and misapof a young man, my first homages in search of a wife plied sales. He has married a wife whose vanity and would be paid to the thoughtful and pale faced fair extravagance are fathomless, and his ruin is explainone, surrounded by her little, noisy refractory sub-ed. Hence, the general and prevalent evil of the jects, drilling her soul to patience, and learning to drink of the cup of earthly discipline, and more impressively than by a thousand sermons, tasting the bitterness of our probationary course, in teaching the young idea how to shoot. Except, as aforesaid, school-mistresses and blues, we believe that all other damsels, clearly within the purview of the term lady, estimate the clearness of their title precisely

in the ratio of their uselessness.

present times, extravagance-conscious shame of the thought of being industrious and useful. Hence the concealment by so many thousand young ladies, (who have not yet been touched by the extreme of modern degeneracy, and who still occasionally apply their hands to domestic employment,) of these, their good deeds, with as much care as if they were crimes. Every body is ashamed not to be expensive and fash• ionable; and every one seems equally ashamed of honest industry.

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Allow a young lady to have any hand in the adjustI cannot conceive, that mere idlers, male, or fement of all the components of her dress, each of male, can have respect enough for themselves to be which has a contour which only the fleeting fashion comfortable. I cannot imagine, that they should not of the moment can settle; allow her time to receive carry about them such a consciousness of being a morning visitants, and prepare for afternoon appoint-blank in existence, as would be written on their ments and evening parties, and what time has the forehead, in the shrinking humiliation of perceiving dear one to spare, to be useful and do good? To la- that the public eye had weighed them in the balance, bor! Heaven forfend the use of the horrid term! The and found them wanting. Novels and romances may simple state of the case is this. There is some- say this or that about their etherial beauties, their fine where, in all this, an enormous miscalculation, anladies tricked out to slaughter my lord A., and play infinite mischief-an evil, as we shall attempt to show, not of transitory or minor importance, but fraught with misery and ruin, not only to the fair ones themselves, but to society and the age.

Cupid's archery upon dandy B. and despatch Amarylis C. to his sonnets. I have no conception of a beau tiful woman, or a fine man, in whose eye, in whose port, in whose whole expression, this sentiment does not stand imbodied :-"I am called by my Creator to duties; I have employment on the earth; my sterner, but more enduring pleasures are in discharg

We have not, we admit, the elements on which to base the calculation; but we may assume as we have that there are in the United States a hundred thou. sand young ladies brought up to do nothing excepting my duties." Another hundred dress, and pursue amusement. Compare the sedate expression of this sentiment thousand learn music, dancing, and what are called in the countenance of man or woman, when it is the fashionable accomplishments. It has been said known to stand, as the index of character and the "that revolutions never move backwards." It is fact, with the superficial gaudiness of a simple, goodequally true of emulation of the fashion. The few for-nothing belle, who disdains usefulness and emopulent who can afford to be good for nothing, pre-ployment, whose empire is a ball-room, and whose cede. Another class presses as closely as they can subjects dandies, as silly and as useless as herself. upon their steps; and the contagious mischief spreads Who, of the two, has most attractions for a man of downward, till the fond father, who lays every thing sense? The one a helpmate, a fortune in herself, who under contribution, to furnish the means for pur- can aid to procure one, if the husband has it not; chasing a piano, and hiring a music-master for his who can soothe him under the loss of it, and what daughters, instead of being served, when he comes is more, aid him to regain it? and the other a paint. in from the plough, by the ruined favourites for whom | ed butterfly, for ornament only during the vernal and

sunny months of prosperity; and then not becoming a chrysalis, an inert moth in adversity, but a croaking. repining, ill-tempered termagant, who can only recur to the days of her short-lived triumph, to imbitter the misery, and poverty, and hopelessness of a husband, who, like herself, knows not to dig, and is ashamed to beg.

But our paths might all be smoother
And our hearts would aye be blest,
With Contentment for a motto,
And a Heart's-ease for a crest.

FAITH.

BY FRANCES ANN BUTLER.

Better trust all, and be deceived,

And weep that trust, and that deceiving;
Than doubt one heart, that if believed
Had blessed one's life with true believing.

Oh, in this mocking world, too fast
The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth!
Better be cheated to the last

We are obliged to avail ourselves of severe language in application to a deep-rooted malady. We want words of power. We need energetic and stern applications. No country ever verged more rapidly towards extravagance and expense. In a young republic, like ours, it is ominous of any thing but good. Men of thought, and virtue, and example, are called upon to look to this evil. Ye patrician families, that croak, and complain, and forbode the downfall of the republic, here is the origin of your evils. Instead of training your son to waste his time, as an idle young gentleman at large,—instead of inculcating on your daughter, that the incessant tinkling of a harpsichord, or a scornful and lady-like toss of the head, or dexterity in waltzing, are the chief requisites to make her way in life,—if you can find no better em- be buried in some sunny spot. This, some one has ployment for them, teach him the use of the grub-finely expressed as follows:

bing hoe, and her to make up garments for your servants. Train your son and daughter to an employment, to frugality, to hold the high front, and to walk the fearless step of independence, and suffi ciency to themselves in any fortunes, any country, or any state of things. By arts like these, the early Romans thrived. When your children have these possessions, you may go down to the grave in peace, as regards their temporal fortunes.-Flint's Western Review.

HEART'S-EASE.

I knew her in her brightness,
A creature full of glee,

As the dancing waves that sparkle
O'er a placid summer sea;
To her the world was sunshine,
And peace was in her breast,
For Contentment was her motto,
And a Heart's-ease was her crest.

Yet deem not for a moment

That her life was free from care;
She shared the storms and sorrows
That others sigh to bear;

But she met earth's tempests meekly,
In the hope of heaven's rest,
So she gave not up her motto,
Nor cast away her crest.

Alas! the many frowning brows,
And eyes that speak of wo,
And hearts that turn repiningly
From every chastening blow;

Than lose the blessed hope of truth.

THE LAST WISH.

Wilson, the ornithologist, requested that he might

In some wild forest shade,
Under some spreading oak, or waving pine,
Or old elm, festooned with the gadding vine,

Let me be laid.

In this dim lonely grot,
No foot intrusive will disturb my dust;
But o'er me songs of the wild birds shall burst,
Cheering the spot.

Not amid charnel stones,

Or coffins dark, and thick with ancient mould,
With tattered pall, and fringe of cankered gold,
May rest my bones;

But let the dewy rose,

The snow-drop and the violet, lend perfume
Above the spot where, in my grassy tomb,
I take repose.

Year after year,

Within the silver birch tree o'er me hung,
The chirping wren shall rear her callow young,
Shall build her dwelling near.

And ever at the purple dawn of day
The lark shall chant a pealing song above,
And the shrill quail shall pipe her hymn of love
When eve grows dim and gray.

The blackbird and the thrush,

The golden oriole, shall flit around,
And waken, with a mellow gust of sound,
The forest's solemn hush.

Birds from the distant sea

Shall sometimes hither flock on snowy wings,
And soar above my dust in airy rings,

Singing a dirge to me.

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