wont to say, 'is the dependance upon other people for existence, not on our own exertions; there is a moral pauperism in the man who is dependant on others for that support of moral life... self-respect.'" ambition which afford the rattle and the hobby-horse to our maturer manhood. Always asking for something too refined and too exalted for human life, every new proof of unworthiness in men and things, saddened or revolted a mind still too fastidious for that quiet contentment with the world as it is, which we must all learn before we can make our philosophy practical, and our "The world---are you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its genius as fertile of the harvest as it may be prodigal of the bloshollow cant--its methodical hypocrisy ?" som. Haughty, solitary, and unsocial, the ordinary resources of mortified and disappointed men were not for Ernest Maltra. """Heartily,' said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness; 'no vers. Rigidly secluded in his country retirement, he consumed man ever scorned more its false gods and its miserable creeds...its the days in moody wanderings; and in the evenings he turned to war upon the weak---its fawning upon the great---its ingratitude books with a spirit disdainful and fatigued. So much had he to benefactors---its sordid league with mediocrity against excel. already learned, that books taught him little that he did not al-lence. Yes, in proportion as I love mankind, I despise and deready know. And the biographers of authors, those ghost-like test that worse than Venetian oligarchy which mankind set over beings who seem to have had no life but in the shadow of their them and call the world." " The following remarks prompt to respect for tue: own haunting and imperishable thoughts, dimmed the inspiraration he might have caught from their pages. Those slaves of the lamp, those silkworms of the closet, how little had they en-sound sense, and a life of philanthrophy and virjoyed, how little had they lived! Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale destinies of the world, they seemed born but to toil and to spin thoughts for the common herd; and, their task performed in drudgery and in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their exhaustion. Names had they been in life, and as names they lived forever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial phantoms." "Good sense,' said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and fro at De Montaigne's villa, by the margin of the lake, is not a merely intellectual attribute; it is rather the result of a just equilibrium of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys of their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have good sense in the The moralizing of our author is often filled with conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but it is by a sad reflections. Take the following: "When we have commenced a career, what stop is there till the grave? Where is the definite barrier of that ambition, which, like the eastern bird, seems ever on the wing, and never rests upon the earth? Our names are not settled till our death; the ghosts of what we have done are made our haunting monitors... our scourging avengers-if ever we cease to do, or fall short of the younger past. Repose is oblivion; to pause is to unravel all the web that we have woven--until the tomb closes over us, and men, just when it is too late, strike the fair balance between our selves and our rivals; and we are measured, not by the least, but by the greatest triumphs we have achieved. Oh, what a crushing sense of impotence comes over us when we feel our frame cannot support our mind--when the hand can no longer execute what the soul, actively as ever, conceives and desires! The quick life tied to the dead form---the ideas fresh as immortality, gushing forth rich and golden, and the broken nerves, and the aching frame, and the weary eyes! The spirit athirst for liberty and heaven--and the damning, choking consciousness that we are walled up and prisoned in a dungeon that must be our burial-place! Talk not of freedom-there is no such thing as freedom to a man whose body is the jail, whose infirmities are the racks of his genius !" game of chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive walking an honorable and upright career---just to others, and also to himself (for we owe justice to ourselves---to the care of our fortunes, our character---to the management of our passions) is a more dignified representative of his Maker than the mere child of genius. Of such a man, we say he has good sense; yes, but he has also integrity, self-respect, and self-denial. A thousand trials which his sense braves and conquers are temptations also to his probity---his temper---in a word, to all the many sides of his complicated nature. Now, I do not think he will have this good sense any more than a drunkard will have strong nerves, unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind clear from the intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions that dupe and mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract quality or a solitary talent; but it is the natural result of the habit of thinking justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as different from the sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or attorney, as the philosophy of Socrates differed from the rhetoric of Gorgias." " * "Besides," added De Montaigne, with almost a religious solemnity in his voice, there is a conscience of the head as well as of the heart, and in old age we feel as much remorse, if we have wasted our natural talents, as if we have perverted our natural virtues. The profound and exultant satisfaction with His scorn of the momentary public is strongly which a man who feels that he has not lived in vain---that he expressed: the same severity as those drones of society who have no great services to show in the internal leger as a set-off to the indulgence of their small vices. These things rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every inducement that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken from the voluptuous has entailed on the world an heirloom of instruction or delight--looks back upon departed struggles, is one of the happiest emo"Every day he grew more attached to that only true philoso- tions of which the conscience can be capable. What, indeed, phy which makes a man, as far as the world will permit, a are the petty faults we commit as individuals, affecting but a world to himself; and from the height of a tranquil and serene narrow circle, ceasing with our own life, to the incalculable and self-esteem, he felt the sun shine above him when malignant everlasting good we may produce, as public men, by one book or clouds spread sullen and ungenial below. He did not despise by one law. Depend upon it, that the Almighty, who sums up or wilfully shock opinion, neither did he fawn upon and flatter all the good and all the evil done by his creatures in a just bait. Where he thought the world should be humored, he hu-lance, will not judge the august benefactors of the world with mored...where contemned, he contemned it. There are many cases in which an honest, well-educated, high-hearted individual is a much better judge than the multitude of what is right and what is wrong; and in these matters he is not worth three straws if he lets the multitude bully or coax him out of his judgment. The public, if you indulge it, is a most damnable gossip, thrust-indolence of the literary Sybarite," &c. ing its nose into people's concerns where it has no right to make or meddle; and in those things where the public is impertinent, Maltravers scorned and resisted its interference as haughtily as he would the interference of any insolent member of the insolent whole. It was this mixture of deep love and profound respect for the eternal people, and of calm, passionless disdain for that capricious charlatan, the momentary public, which made Ernest Maltravers an original and solitary thinker; and an actor, in reality modest and benevolent, in appearance arrogant and unsocial. 'Pauperism, in contradistinction to poverty,' he was Take the contrast "His fortune was now gone...gone in supplying the poorest food to a craving and imbecile vanity; gone, that its owner might seem what nature never meant him for the elegant Lothario---the graceful man of pleasure---the troubadour of modern life! gone in horses, and jewels, and fine clothes, and gaming, and printing unsaleable poems on gilt-edged vellum; gone that he might be, not a greater, but a more fashionable man than Ernest Maitravers! Such is the common destiny of those poor or rather, "hawked at" without a feather being adventurers who confine fame to boudoirs and saloons. No mat- ruffled. The public, indeed, must long since have ter whether they be poets or dandies, wealthy parvénus or aristocratic cadets, all equally prove the adage, that the wrong paths passed judgment upon his merits in this as in to reputation are strewed with the wrecks of peace, fortune, hap- other regards; yet I will hazard the remark, that piness, and, too often, honor !" his deservedly high reputation is sustained by the the beauty of his style. It cannot be said of his In the following passage, we have some refer-depth and vigor of his thinking, rather than by ence to politics. Maltravers, we must remember, worksis highminded and disinterested; "of upright intentions, unpurchaseable honor, and correct and well considered views." In a rapid sketch of the character of the Roman republic, he gives us some strongly marked opinions on the subject of Go vernment. ***In the last days of their republic, a coup-d'œil of their so cial date might convey to us a general notion of our own. Their system, like ours, a vast aristocracy rather than a monarchy; an aristocracy, heaved and agitated, but kept ambitious and intellectual by the great democratic ocean which roared below and around it. An immense distinction between rich and poor... a nobility sumptuous, wealthy, cultivated, yet scarcely elegant or refined; a people with mighty aspirations for more perfect liberty, but always liable, in a crisis, to be influenced and subdued by a deep-rooted and antique veneration for the very aristocracy against which they struggled; a ready opening through all the walls of custom and privilege for every description of talent and ambition; but so deep and universal a respect for rupt almost unconsciously; and the man who rose from the people did not scruple to enrich himself out of the abuses he affected to lament; and the man who would have died for his wealth, that the finest spirit grew avaricious, griping and cor country could not help thrusting his hands into her pockets. Materiem superabat opus. The finish of the workmanship bears no sort of comparison with the rich materials on which it has been bestowed. His thoughts are bullion. His style is clumsy and ungraceful. His language is sometimes careless and awkward; as in the following instance: "there is nearly always something of gentility," &c. Sometimes it is not English, as in these words-" noticeable," ""untranslatable," "" exultant," "soberize." Often it is deformed by forced conceits, and overstrained and mixed metaphors. Thus he speaks of "crushing bitterness"-of " an author's entailing on the world, an heir loom of instruction"—of "an aristocracy heaved and agitated, but kept ambitious and intellectual by the democratic ocean which rolled around it." Here aristocracy, I suppose, is a ship, and this ship is ambitious and intellectual!! Again, he speaks of one's "setting in the same Cassius, the stubborn and thoughtful patriot, with his heart of phrase the two jewels of his own courtliness of iron, had, you remember, an itching palm. Yet, what a blow flattery and profundity of erudition"! Again, to all the hopes and dreams of a world was the overthrow of we hear of "The eyes' deep wells of love, in which the free party after the death of Cæsar! What generations of freemen fell at Philippi! In Engiand, perhaps, we may ulti-truth lay hid, and which neither languor nor dismately have the same struggle; in France, too (perhaps a ease could exhaust"! And lastly, one of the larger stage, with far more inflammable actors), we already personages is made to ask, "Have I not girded myself with changes?" Such instances are innumerable. They are to be found in every didactic or moralizing passage. These very often require a second reading to be perfectly comprehended; a fault which arises partly from his taste for inversion, partly from the use of new coined words, or of common words in a strained signification, and partly from the exuberance of his thoughts and metaphors, which are poured out in such profusion and so heaped together in masses, as to be beyond the ready management of ordinary minds. Of these faults, the extracts already given furnish ample evidence. Take, however, the following from the Disowned :' perceive the same war of elements which shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the generous Julius with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed the colossal patricians to make way for the glittering dwarfs of a court, and cheated a people out of the substance with the shadow of liberty. How it may end in the modern world, who shall say! But while a nation has already a fair degree of constitutional freedom, I believe no struggle so perilous and awful as that between the aristocratic and the democratic principle. A people against a despot---that contest requires no prophet; but the change from an aristocratic to a democratic commonwealth, is indeed the wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest shadows, clouds, and darkness. If it fail, for centuries is the dial-hand of time put back; if it succeed- "Maltravers paused. "And if it succeed?' said Valerie. Why, then, man will have colonized Utopia!' exclaimed Maltravers, with sparkling eyes. "But at least, in modern Europe,' he continued, 'there will be fair room for the experiment. For we have not that curse of slavery which, more than all else, vitiated every system of the ancients, and kept the rich and the poor alternately at war; and we have a press, which is not only the safety-valve of the passions of every party, but the great note-book of the experiments of every hour---the homely, the invaluable leger of losses and of gains. No; the people who keep that tablet well, never can be bankrupt.” ” Of the style of Mr. Bulwer, it may be presumptuous in me to say anything. His admirers might be disposed to cry out A falcon towering in his pride of flight, "Thou for whom I have dipped into Lethe, the pen which once wrote thought in characters of fire, and wooed for these idle pages, the light themes which my heart disowneth, that I might keep forever inviolate to thy remembrance the fountain of passionate romance which I once dedicated to thee as to its spirit, oh why," &c. &c. Disowned, 1 Vol. 175. Speaking of our griefs in mature years, he says, the voices of nature or the mysteries of romance: they become "Alas, they have now neither commune nor consolation in the petty stings and the falling drops, the irritating and vexing littlenesses of life. One by one they cling around us like bonds of iron; they multiply their links, they grow over our hearts, and the feelings, once too wild for the very earth, fold their broken wings within the soul. Dull and heavy thoughts like dead walls, close around the laughing flowers and fields that so enchanted us of yore; the sins, the habits, the reasonings of the world, like rank and gloomy fogs, shut out the exulting heavens from our view," &c. &c. Disowned, Vol. 1, p. 41. class of readers is able to push 'Poems' into the fourteenth edi All this is in wretched taste, though in the rude ore we find rich materials, which well wrought would be striking and brilliant. The truth is, the first requisite of a good style is perspicuity. Language is designed to convey our thoughts, and that which conveys them most clearly is best. [We are not sure that our estimate of the following Good writers, therefore, reject as far as possible article is not unduly enhanced by the interest we take the use of uncommon words, or of common words, in the writer. We may rate her talents too highly; in a remote or radical signification. Compare the but we are satisfied that we do not give more than is simple yet beautiful diction of Goldsmith, the due, of respect for her virtues, or sympathy for her misgraceful ease of Addison, and the manly and vi- fortunes. But of these we knew nothing when we gorous, though plain and downright, style of Swift, published the " Curse," and we remember the unbiassed with the ambitious and artificial sentences I have judgment which we then formed of that work. For injust quoted. What a difference. We glide on development, and for truth to nature, we know no tale vention, for variety of character, for distinctness in its with the former without a pause. We drink in of the same length superior to it. We hope to see the the outpourings of their wit or of their wisdom same powers displayed in the novel from which this with ease and with delight. We converse with extract is taken. We give it to the public, not more those who speak our mother tongue. We are with a view to adorn our columns, than in the hope of puzzled with no French idioms, or foreign con- engaging the favor of our readers in its behalf. A nastructions. We have no Latin in disguise-no tive of Virginia, the authoress has strong claims on the Greek in English dress, to call for the aid of our sympathy of her countrymen. Descended from a prolexicons. All is English-downright English-scribed sect, whose virtues near two hundred years ago, not in words only, but in idiom-in construction found refuge from persecution in the "Ancient Doin forms of expression, and in the order of language. The natural order is indeed the genius of the English tongue. The requirements of rhyme and the stately march of blank verse, demand, it is true, occasional inversion. But our prose is rarely improved by a departure from the natural order. That departure always leads to obscurity, and the obscurity becomes "darkness visible," when every sentence is loaded with metaphors folJowing each other in rapid succession, when every line presents new images, and when thought is entangled with thought, in all the mazes of parenthetical confusion. I beg leave to conclude this protracted paper with the following extract from the Review of Mr. Bulwer's Athens, in the Edinburg Quarterly: "The accomplished author will pardon us for closing the present paper with a protest against certain peculiarities of idiom, which we are sorry to find countenanced by so popular a pen. A few of these may plead in their behalf the rare authority of old writers in our tongue. They belong, however, in actual usage, either to the North American dialect, or to such assas sins of her Majesty's English at home, as a master of composition must regret to have upon his side. We complain, for instance of expressions like these:- Irregulated---in stealth --reverent for reverend--to neighbor...to concentrate, as a verb active---to prodigalize---to border, for to border on. We think that impatient of conquest cannot mean impatient to conquer. We don't like arriving to the things we have been in the habit of arriving at. The adverbs both and only are now and then misplaced. False antithesis is too frequently admitted. Cause is once at least put for effect. A verb of one number is often forced to do duty with a nominative of another. Mr. Bulwer is not yet talented-a pseudo-participle which no one will use who is not ripe for any atrocity-but he progresses at a fearful rate. These are, it is true, slight matters in themselves; but at a time when purity of taste is not in the ascendant--at a time when a single minion," the calamitous destiny of her race has pursued blue-stocking; no vain belle whose admirers persuade her, and overtaken her in the cradle. No conceited her that her flippant nonsense is worthy of the public eye, she meekly tasks her powers to aid a widowed mother in the support of a family of helpless orphans. The promptings of genius have told her that this can better be done with the pen than with the needle. We are sure she does not deceive herself in the estimate of her own talents. We trust that her confidence in the justice of the public will prove to be equally well placed.] FROM THE CONSPIRATOR, A NOVEL, Oh dire ambition! what infernal power * Barbarossa. As soon as supper was over, Colonel Alwin withdrew, and conducted Zavala to his own apartment. He closed the door and carefully locked it-he then examined the deep recesses of the windows before he was satisfied that they were alone. Calmly drawing forward a table covered with loose papers, he placed the shaded lamp in such a position as to throw the light on the face of his companion, and seating himself opposite to him, he spoke in a quiet tone. “Now, sir, I am ready to receive your communications." Zavala could not refrain from admiring the selfcommand of the man; for in the situation in which he then stood, he was not certain that the tidings he was about to hear did not bring with them the destruction of all his views-nay, involve his life. Zavala drew a packet from his bosom, and presenting it to him, said: "Read those despatches, and then I will speak of my own private wishes." Colonel Alwin took the papers, and as he broke the seals a slight tremor was perceptible in his fingers-no other sign of impatience or agitation escaped him. He shaded his face with his hand, and carefully perused the documents, and as he read, his observant companion saw that the flush of triumph mounted even to his pale temples. More than an hour was thus spent, when slowly refolding them, and locking them in his desk, he arose and walked several times across the floor. Stopping suddenly before Zavala, he said quickly, almost sternly, "Do you know the contents of those papers ?" "I do," was the concise reply. As he thus spoke, the brow of Zavala darkened, and it was with difficulty his impatient spirit could brook the implied impossibility of inducing any fair lady to accept his offered love. "Allow me to try, sir: armed with your authority, she will listen differently. Let her see how much to your interest it is, to lend a favorable ear to my suit. I ask not for the rewards of ambition-I can gain them without your assistance. I seek for the hand of your ward; her heart I will win, if devoted love can win a woman." Colonel Alwin shook his head, as he replied: "She will not be won by you. I have reasoned with her-urged every motive that could influence or dazzle her mind, and she was still firm in her refusal. I cannot command her to marry you." "Listen to me, Colonel Alwin," said Zavala, firmly but respectfully. "I am acquainted with the scope and bearing of all your plans--I am possessed of their most secret details, and one word from me would precipitate you into a prison, from which death might be your only release. What you are now preparing to "And are you prepared to abide by me in life or execute, will brand your name as a traitor to your death ?" "Of that we will speak hereafter," said Alwin, waving his hand impatiently. "When heard you from the south? From thence I am most anxious to gain information." "I have private letters from my uncle, who, you are aware, is an officer high in command in the Spanish army. The troops dissatisfied with their present situation, are ready for any changes: he assures me that very little will be necessary to induce them to struggle for a change of masters. The soldiers are entirely devoted to him, and will follow wherever he leads. Your object, if I understand it correctly, is to revolutionize Mexico, and wrest from the present chief magistrate the rich territory of Louisiana, which adds another gem to this fair Union. At any hour Colonel Zavala is ready to cross the Sabine, and thus give you an excuse for placing yourself at the head of an armed body of troops devoted to your interests. Nothing then will be easier than to unite your forces, and defy the laws of your own country. Zavala has constant communication with some of the most influential men in the city of Mexico, and they are ready, when the first blow is struck, to range themselves on the side of those who will free them from the Spanish yoke. There is a theatre before you worthy of your abilities, and the power refused you in your own country, courts your acceptance in another as fair. For myself, if my aid is of any worth, you know it is yours to command at all times, on one condition." "I thank you : it is of inestimable importance to me, as no one knows better than yourself; but to gain that aid, Don Pedro, I am unwilling to force Miss De Bourg to accept you, for it seems the wayward girl will not consent to the proposal. You may think me cold, hard, and unfeeling, but I love this girl as if she were in reality my child. If you can gain her consent, as I have before told you, you have mine; but of that I am hopeless-so we will consult your ambition in offering you an adequate reward for your services, hoping your love may be more successful in another quarter." country and her best interests. Think of the consequences to yourself, if your enterprise is discovered before it is ripe for execution, and then think how trifling in comparison are a few tears shed by a romantic girl, because you consult her interest and happiness, by commanding her to accept a man who adores her. With the hope of obtaining Miss De Bourg, I am anything you choose to make me; but, on the contrary-you know the alternative: choose between them." A smile of bitter scorn writhed the livid lips of Alwin as he listened to the words of Zavala. For an instant, his rage at being thus braved by one so much his junior in years and inferior in standing, threatened to burst forth and overwhelm the presumptuous man who thus dared to offer terms to him. A moment's reflection however, convinced him, that in giving vent to his passion, his safety would be compromised. He felt that he was in the power of one who could make his own terms, and he resolved to speak him fair. "Certainly," said he slowly, and apparently with a slight effort; "certainly you speak truly. Julie should view you with different sentiments if she consults her own happiness, and though it gives me more pain than perhaps you think my stern nature is capable of feeling, I must wound her gentle heart by commanding her to accept one she has assured me she can never love: one who dares to tell the protector of the woman he professes to adore, that if she does not consent to marry him, he will denounce the friend of her orphan years, and in so doing destroy her happiness. 'Tis well, however, Don Pedro De Zavala, we understand each other. The only tie (and he laid a strong emphasis on the word only) that binds us together is interest. Julie shall be yours, if you pledge yourself to sustain my cause. I know the influence which your connexions possess-also, that which your talents give you; and you must bind yourself to devote it all to my interests." "Of course-but Miss De Bourg must be mine before we leave this island." "What, sir, do you doubt my word?" said Alwin, and his eye flashed fearfully bright over the person of the other. "Do you dare to doubt the word of a man of honor !" VOL. IV.-8 "Colonel Alwin, it is useless for us to use the lan-, tor was gay and witty in conversation, and of a temper guage of passion. You know the prize for which I contend: if you have ever loved, you can excuse my eagerness to secure her mine, before I leave her for an indefinite space of time." "Your haste is excusable, though it has not much delicacy to commend it either to my ward or myself; but since we are making a bargain, the conditions must be fulfilled." None but a spirit as haughty and overbearing could measure the bitterness that filled his heart as he turned from his companion. Deeply did he resolve to avenge the implied distrust of himself, when the power to do so with impunity was his. Who that had seen him return to the drawing-room with a smiling lip and smooth brow, could have imagined the dark tide of emotion which swelled beneath that calm exterior? His voice was as bland, his smile as frequent, as though no unpleasant occurrence had aroused his impetuous passions-as though he had not deeply implicated the happiness of one of that little circle, and that one dependant on his kindness and affection. Did not his heart shrink back as he met her deep eye fixed on him, and felt that he was then meditating the possibility of turning the benefits he had conferred on her, into the means of forcing her grateful heart to seal its own misery, in order to save him from the precipice on which he stood? Life! thou teachest many a strange lesson of duplicity to the heart of man! DOCTOR FAW. Dr. Faw was considered a complete gentleman. He came a few years ago into our village, and ever since his arrival had been continually progressing in the good opinion of all. At the time when the facts, of which this is the true narrative, occurred, the Doctor had secured to himself a fine practice. It may not be amiss to let the reader be very particularly acquainted with our hero. In person, or face, the Doctor was not very prepossessing; his blue eyes and sandy hair presented a contrast far more striking than handsome: as regards dress and manners, however, he was "the very thing itself." He always wore either black, or other dark colors. You never found showered over his body that rainbow profusion and variety of hues, so revolting to the eye of genuine taste; never was he guilty of the barbarism of a blazing vest, or pantaloons like Joseph's coat of many dies. His apparel was always of a make punctiliously nice, and usually he disported a light cane with a golden head. His white 'kerchief was barely perceptible in his pocket corner, as he tripped with lightness and activity along; and as he passed you by, how delightfully you felt the air perfumed by his presence! Then the Doctor was so accommodating, so polished, so polite, so popular among the ladies. Was there a ball announced-Dr. Faw was sure to be at the head of the list of managers. Did a party of misses want an attendant to the theatre, on a sleighing in winter, or in summer on a fishing excursion-the Doctor always could spare the time to serve them. If a married lady was fond of sunshine and the footpaths, and her husband was too busy earning his bread to be at her side, the Doctor would kindly supply his place. He would gallant the wife, and if need be, he would dine and drink with the husband. Among the young gentlemen he was the arbiter of dress and the judge of style. With all these pleasant qualifications, the Doc which might be defined as perpetually calm. The prac the circle of the Doctor's acquaintance, and as his chartice of his profession had naturally very much extended acter was thus amiable, the field for its exhibition was proportionately enlarged. His younger brethren in the healing art were the only individuals who were ever heard to whisper or insinuate anything against him. They would occasionally observe that public taste was very curious-that they could see nothing so very particularly deserving in the mind or manners of the Doctor, to justify the extravagant estimate put upon them, and they would ask, who is this Dr. Faw? what is he? where did he come from?-but as the profession, whether justly or not we will not stop to inquire, have been accused of habitual unkindness and envy towards successful merit, these queries were considered as originating in this cause, and no one cared to listen to them, or gave themselves the trouble to reply. Like some noble and gallant barque, with a freshening breeze filling every sail, the blue waters swelling gently under her, and the white foam curling up against her prow-the heavens all blue and joyous above-so sped our hero propitiously onwards upon the ocean of human life.-Alas! alas! but you shall hear it all. MISS LAVINIA LINT, &c. Miss Lavinia Lint was a very pleasant young lady. She had a handsome fortune left to her entire control and exclusive enjoyment, by a worthy and deceased parent, and resided in the house of her father's brother. She was a plain, sensible girl, and was rather corpulent than otherwise; and as is usual with most of the human race blessed with pinguidity, she was very sweetly tempered. There was but one thing she needed to complete the happiness of her situation, and that was(but the reader anticipates me)-a husband. She was quite pretty; none of your two-volume modern novel heroines-pale, pensive and melancholy-but rosy, with round plump features and a face perpetually in smiles. Having money, of course she had suitors; none however of whom had as yet suited her. On a fine sunny day in October, Miss Lavinia sat by a blazing fire, in company with her cousin, about the same age, and if ever on earth there were two beings innocent, comfortable and happy, they were they. "Law me," said her cousin to Lavinia, "why don't you get married?"—“How you do rattle on," responded Miss Lavinia. At this point in the conversation the bell answered loudly to a rapid pull, and in a few moments Dr. Faw was shown in, and made his bow to the ladies. The conversation was briskly carried on—all parties in the highest gleethey talked of the weather, of the marriages and deaths in the vicinity, of the love matches existing or likely about to be, of the latest novels, and all the various other matters and topics which are supposed to be acceptable to the better portion of our species. The Doctor began at length to be thoughtful. Miss Lavinia and her cousin monopolized the utterance of all that was said. Mr. Faw became rather uneasy, and sat restless: he relieved his unaccustomed taciturnity by deliberately taking up the tongs and stirring the firean act of supererogation, as the room was sufficiently warm and the wood as completely in a state of combustion as could well be desired. The fire, alas, which troubled the Doctor was, as his brethren would say, internal. Mr. Faw drew his chair to the centre-table, and from beside a glass vase filled with the richly colored flowers of the autumn, he picked up a bookand very much it is to Miss Lavinia's credit that such a book was there, and very suitable likewise it was to the Doctor's purpose-it was the Holy Bible-the Doctor opened it at random, and read aloud, "It is not well for man to be alone"-a text which the fair cousin of Miss Lavinia took the liberty of interpreting, as the vulgar do dreams-by contraries; and suddenly remembering that she had left in her room a favorite piece of work which must be immediately finished, she |