greater part of the students attend. * * * one to another down the line. The pall Nothing can surpass the strange and wild effect of this scene. The procession, which had gone towards the church slowly, now returned at a quick pace; the music, which had been dolorons and complaining, was now gay and triumphant. The band was playing a martial and resounding air; the students in a wild troop, three abreast, came rushing on, whirling round and round their torches, and shaking them above their heads, like so many wild Bacchanalians, and crowds of boys and young men ran on each side, * * BY CHRISTOPHER NORTH. AGE is the season of Imagination, youth of Passion: and having been long young, shall we repine that we are now old? They alone are rich who are full of years-the lords of Time's treasury are all on the staff of wisdom: their commissions are enclosed in furrows on their foreheads, and secured to them for life. Fearless of fate, and far above fortune, they hold their heritage by the great charter of Nature, for behoof of all her children, who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for their decease; for every hour dispenses their wealth; and their bounty is not a late bequest, but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sanctifies their gifts to gratitude; and their worth is more clearly seen and profoundly felt within the solemn gloom of the grave. And said we truly that age is the season of Imagination? That youth is the season of passion, your own beating and bounding hearts now tell you-your own boiling blood. Intensity is its characteristic ; and it burns like a flame of fire, too often but to consume. Expansion of the soul is ours, with all its feelings, and all its " thoughts, that wander through eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have wings, for power is given her beyond the dove's or the eagle's, and no weariness can touch her on that heavenward flight. amid the mingled flare and smoke and gloom, THE SEASON OF IMAGINATION. some of them having snatched up fallen and nearly burnt-out torches, and whirling them fiercely about as they ran. The band halted before the door of the Museum, and continued playing, while the students formed themselves into a large circle in the square. The first, as he took his place, flung his blazing torch to some distance on the ground, and every one as he arrived did the same. This became the centre of the ring, round which the whole train arranged itself; and as the young men came near its bounds, they tossed up their torches into the air, which came whirling and flaming down from a hundred places into the area of the circle. The scene was most wild and strange. The gathering ring of densely standing figures, all in the Burschen costume; the lights tossing, and spinning, and falling through the air; the hundreds of them lying and blazing on the ground; while others, flying errant, dropped into the thickest masses of the spectators, and were again snatched up, and again sent aloft, and through all this, the band playing in a consonant thunder and rending strain of exulting music. * When the circle was complete, and all the torches had been flung down, the marschals and the police were seen walking about in it. The scattered torches were thrown together till they formed one blazing heap, which illuminated with its red light the whole walls and windows of the square, and sent up a rolling column of pitchy smoke, that hung like a sable canopy above the crowds. At once, the band ceased playing; there was a pause of deep silence, and then the whole circle of students, as they stood round the flames, burst forth into a funeral song, which, unexpected as it was, and sudden and solemn as was the strain, startled and thrilled beyond description. The deep red light flung upon the circle; the dark groups behind; the marschals and seniors standing with drawn swords; the blazing pile in the centre, and the sound of the funeral hymn, sung by hundreds of deep and manly voices, like the sound as of the sea itself,-was altogether so wild, so novel, and strange, that it is not to be conceived by those who have not witnessed the like, nor forgotten by those who have. The song was that sung on all such occasions, the hymn for the maintenance of their academical liberty. As it closed, one of the seniors stood forward, and wielded his sword as in defiance. The rest rushed together, and with wild cries, clashing their swords above their heads, there was a shout Quench the fire!' and the whole of the students at once dispersed. The crowds then closed round it, water was thrown on the flames, the dense black column of smoke changed into a white one, and the whole was over.-Howitt's Germany. Yet we are all of the "earth, earthy," and, young and old alike, must we love and honour our home. Your eyes are bright— ours are dim; but "it is the soul that sees," and this "diurnal sphere" is visible through the mist of tears. In that light, how more than beautiful, how holy, appears even this world! All sadness save of sin is then most sacred; and sin itself loses its terrors in repentance, which, alas! is seldom perfect but in the near prospect of dissolution. For temptation may intercept her within a few feet of her expected rest, may dash the dust from her hand that she has gathered from the burial place to strew on her head; but youth sees flowery fields and shining rivers far-stretching before her path, and cannot imagine for a moment that among life's golden mountains there is many a Place of Tombs. But let us speak only of this earth—this world-this life; and is not age the season of Imagination? Imagination is Memory, imbued by joy or sorrow with creative power over the past, till it becomes the present; and then on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of Muses; and how divinely, indeed, they sang around her, as she lay in the pensive shade! 66 You know the words of Milton"Till old experience doth attain To something like prophetic strain ;" and you know, while reading them, that Experience is consummate Memory; Imagination, wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with Genius, and in its prophetic strain”—Inspiration. We would fain lower our tone, and on this theme, speak like what we are one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap, now, twenty-three feet on level ground (our utmost might be twentythree inches), nevertheless, we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty minutes"ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first, worms though we be, we cannot even crawl; disdainful, next, of that acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig; pretty lambs, we then totter, to the terror of our deep-bosomed dames, till the welkin rings with admiration to behold, sans leading-strings, the weanlings walk; like wildfire then we run, for we have found the use of our feet; like wild geese, then we fly, for we may not doubt we have wings; in car, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and sky, and universal nature. The car runs on a post-the ship on a rock -the "air hath bubbles as the water hath" -the balloon is one of them, and bursts like a bladder-and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons. Where, pray, in all this, is there a single symptom or particle of Imagination? It is of Passion, "all compact." True, this is not a finished picture 'tis but a slight sketch of the season of Youth; but paint it as you will, and if faithful to nature, you will find Passion in plenty and a dearth of Imagination. Nor is the season of Youth therefore to be pitied; for Passion respires and expires in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent, as the unwise lecture, it is mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth we are the creatures, the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly, in spite of its severity; for, ere long, we come to discern, through the dust of our own raising, the pinnacles of towers and temples serenely ascending into the skies-high and holy places for rule, for rest, or for religion, where, as kings, we may reign as priests, minister-as saints, adore. We do not deny, excellent youth, that, to your eyes and ears, sublime and beautiful are sights and sounds of Nature, and of Art, her her angel. Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed ours, and deliver thyself up without dread, or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, where night for ever dwells-to the glory of skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. Coming and going a thousand and a thousand times, yet, in its familiar beauty, ever new as a dream, let thy soul span the heavens with the rainbow. Ask thy heart in the wilderness if that "thunder, heard remote," be from cloud or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shudder at the shuddering moor, and your flesh creep upon your bones, as the heather seems to creep on the bent, with the awe of a passing earthquake. Let the sea-mew be thy guide up the glen, if thy delight be in peace profounder than ever sat with her on the lull of summer waves! For the inland loch seems but a vale overflowing with wondrous light—and realities they all look - these trees and pastures and rocks and hills and cloudsnot softened images, as they are, of realities that are almost stern, even in their beauty, and in their sublimity, overawing: look at yon precipice, that dwindles into pebbles the granite blocks that choke up the shore! Now all this, and a million times more than all this, have we too done in our Youth; and yet 'tis all nothing to what we do, whenever we will it, in our Age. For almost all that is Passion-spiritual passion, indeed; and as all emotions are akin, they all work with and into one another's hands, and, however remotely related, recognise and welcome one another like Highland cousins, whenever they meet. Imagination is not the faculty to stand aloof from the rest, but gives the one hand to Fancy and the other to Feeling, and sets to Passion, who is often so swallowed up in himself as to seem blind to their vis-a-vis, till all at once he hugs all the three, as if he were demented, and as suddenly sporting dos-ados, is off on a galopade by himself right slick away over the mountain-tops. To the senses of a schoolboy a green sour crab is as a golden pippin, more delicious than any pine-apple; the tree which he climbs to pluck, it seems to grow in the garden of Eden; and the parish-moorland though it be-over which he is let loose to play, Paradise. It is barely possible there may be such a substance as matter, but all its qualities worth having are given it by mind. By a necessity of nature, then, we are all poets. We all make the food we feed on; nor is Jealousy, the green-eyed monster, the only wretch who discolours and deforms. Every evil thought does so ; every good thought gives fresh lustre to the grass-to the flowers-to the stars. And as the faculties of sense, after becoming finer and more fine, do then, because that they are earthly, gradually lose their power, the faculties of the soul, because that they are heavenly, become then more and more and more independent of such ministrations, and continue to deal with images, and with ideas which are diviner than images, nor care for either partial or total eclipse of the daylight, conversant as they are and familiar with a more resplendent-a spiritual universe. The Gatherer. Save me from my Friends.-The day before yesterday a person dropped down in an apoplectic fit, immediately in front of the post of the Municipal Guard, and was immediately carried into the guard-house, In a minute after, a woman forced her way in through the crowd gathered round the door, exclaiming, "My husband!-my poor husband! Clear the way, and let in the air." She then busied herself by taking off the man's cravat, and performing other little offices about his person till a surgeon, arrived and bled the patient, who gradually recovered his senses. On this the officer of the guard observed that it was a happy relief for his distressed wife as well as himself. "My wife!" exclaimed the man, "why, I am a bachelor." "She may be your mistress, then, for she wept bitterly." On seeking for her, however, it was found that she had disappeared, and with her the watch and purse of the patient, which she had adroitly abstracted, under the very eyes of the guard."-Galignani's Messenger. Marriage, The married man is like the bee that fixes his hive, augments the world, benefits the republic, and by a daily diligence, without wronging any, benefits all; but he who contemns wedlock (for the most part) is like a wasp wandering an offence to the world, lives upon spoil and rapine, disturbs peace, steals sweets that are not his own, and by robbing the hives of others, meets misery as his due reward.Feltham. Automaton.- A mechanician of a little town in Bohemia, says the Constitutionnel, has constructed an automaton which imitates perfectly the human voice, particularly the soprano notes. It sings several difficult airs with the greatest accuracy. Shakes, runs, and chromatic scales are all executed with surprising precision. This automaton, in singing, even pronounces certain words, so as to be easily understood. Science.-Forbear to sport an opinion on a subject of which you are ignorant, especially in the presence of those to whom it is familiar. If it be not always in your power to speak to the purpose, it certainly is to hold your tongue; and though thousands have remembered with pain their garrulity, few (as an ancient remarked) have had reason to repent their silence. Wafers. The oldest letter yet found with a red wafer, was written in 1624, from D. Krap, at Spires, to the government at Bayreuth. Wafers are ascribed by Labat to Genoese economy. In the whole of the 17th century, they were only used by private individuals; on public seals they commenced only in the 18th century.-Fosbrooke. A Candid Confession.-Among the traditions of Westminster Hall is one of a certain Sergeant Davy, who flourished some centuries back, in a darker age than the present. He was accused, once upon a time, by his brethren of the coif, of having degraded their order by taking from a client a fee in copper; and on being solemnly arraigned for his offence in their common hall, it appears, from the unwritten reports of the Court of Common Pleas, that he defended himself by the following plea of confession and avoidance:-" I fully admit that I took a fee from him in copper, and not only one, but several, and not only fees in copper, but fees in silver; but I pledge my honour as a sergeant that I never took a single fee from him in silver until I had got all his gold, and that I never took a single fee from him in copper until I got all his silver-and you don't call that a degradation of our order?" Frenchmen, Dutch, and Americans. Again, An American's Opinion of Englishmen, let us consider that we Americans are an anxious people. Our minds are always on the stretch. Such is the nature of those pursuits in which we are most devoutly engaged, that we can seldom or never be satisfied. Give an Englishman his mug of porter and his chunk of beef, and he is contented;-Poor wretch ! he has no idea of any felicity more exalted. Give a Frenchman "his fiddle and his frisk," and he is happy. Give a Dutchman his kraut and his pipe, and he sets himself down without one aspiration. But an American is always "on the alert"-his mind is in constant activity— his hopes and fears are always excited. He hopes to make a good speculation-to invent some wonder-working machine-or, perhaps, to get into a good office; and he fears some of those untoward events which often frustrate the wisest plans laid for the good of our temporalities. We Americans are an anxious people; and anxiety of mind is often prejudicial to the health of the body. Buckingham's America. A sage was asked "Which is the best time to dine?" He replied, "For the rich man-when he is hungry; for the poorwhen he can get it." Let the philosophers say what they will, the main thing at which we all aim, even in virtue itself, is pleasure. It pleases me to rattle in their ears this word, which they so nauseate to hear; and if it signify some supreme pleasure and excessive delight, it is more due to the assistance of virtue than to any other assistance whatsoever.-Montaigne. LONDON: Published by CUNNINGHAM and MORTIMER, Adelaide Street, Trafalgar Square; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsmen. T. C. Savill, Printer, 107, St. Martin's Lane. COUNT VON DER RECBIE'S ESTABLISHMENT FOR DESTITUTE CHILDREN, AT DUSSELTHAL, NEAR DUSSELDORF, ON THE RHINE. COUNT ADELBERT VON DER RECBIE is descended of a noble family, which, prior to the wars of Napoleon, possessed many large estates. Soon after the peace, many destitute orphans were found begging upon the roads: these poor outcasts excited the compassion of this generous young man, and for some of them he made his own house an asylum, and boarded and educated them himself. Deriving much pleasure from these VOL. XL. D D acts of generosity, he was induced to found a little establishment for their education near his castle, about the year 1817, which was among the first asylums erected on the Continent for destitute children. Some years after, he adopted the resolution of making the relief of the distressed and the instruction of the ignorant the chief object of his life, and the whole of his family encouraged him in it. [No. 1143. |