Mrs. Hopkins threw out gentle hints that the Deacon might relent, and that if he did the wish that was ever in Hannah's heart might be realized. But the poor child paid little heed to her suggestions, a foreshadowing of some direful calamity constantly enfolding and saddening her. Still she kept bravely and quietly about her duties, and it was only when she was alone in her chamber at night that she gave way to the terrible wofulness that oppressed her, and prayed, and wept, and wrestled with her sorrow.

And this sweet and lovely creature was the same pious and patient soul who was afterwards taunted by rude village boys, and pointed at as one who had sold herself to Satan.

One night she had cried herself asleep, and lay in an unquiet and fitful slumber. As she thought of him alway by day, so now in her dreams the image of Jason Fletcher was fantastically and singularly busy. It seemed to her that she stood upon an eminence overlooking a peaceful valley of that charming sort only to be seen in dreams. Afar off, and still, in some strange way, very near, she beheld the youth of her love, who reclined upon a bank beside a quiet stream. Everything was at rest. The soft moonbeams—for, in her dream, evening rested on the valley—bathed all the prospect in a cool effulgence. There was no sound, save only that sweet music of never-sleeping nature which is forever heard within all her broad domain. Still the dreamer felt that there was something direful and most to be dreaded that threatened to invade and mar the heavenly peacefulness. She felt it coming, and fearfully awaited its approach. And she had not long to wait. For presently there appeared, flying between the calm moonlight and the figure, and casting a doleful shadow over his form, a scaly and dreadful dragon, like those we read of that devastated whole countries in the old, old times. This hideous beast breathed fire and smoke from its horrid nostrils as it flew, and it flapped its fearful way downwards to scorch and destroy the figure recumbent by the stream.

Just when it was stooping upon its unconscious victim, a heavy scale, beaten from its side by the bat-like wings, fell upon the night-mare stricken sleeper's breast, and she awoke.

The moon was shining peacefully into the room, and she found upon the bed a black cat that had leaped in through the low window. It was a gentle and loving animal, that had made friends with her upon her first arrival, and it had already coiled itself up on the bed with a gentle purring.

Everything was most quiet and calm as she lay gazing out through the window; still the dreadful memory of her dream weighed upon and oppressed her. She arose and leaned out into the cool night air. So leaning, she could see Deacon Fletcher's house, standing bare and brown in the moonlight only a few rods distant. She could gaze, with what pleasure or sorrow she might, at the windows of the room where poor Jason lay tossing with the fever.

She gazes earnestly thitherward, and her breath comes thick and short, while her heart seems rising into her throat. For she sees, gathered thick and dun above the house, a dense, undulating and ever-increasing shadow, that threatens to obscure the low-floating moon! There is no wind, and it rises slowly but steadily! Deacon Fletcher's house is on fire!

Her shrill cries, uttered in wild and rapid succession, aroused the household of Peter Hopkins to the fact that there was fire somewhere—fire, that most terrible fiend to awake before in the dead of night. As for Hannah, it was but an instant's work for her to throw on a little clothing and spring from the low window into the yard. Then she ran, with what trembling speed she might, towards the burning house.

The smoke still rose sombre and heavy from the roof, and about one of the chimneys little tongues of flame leaped up as she approached. She could hear a fierce crackling, too, of that spiteful sort made by the burning of dry wood. The house was all of wood, and old, and it was evidently thoroughly afire within.

She realized this as she hurried up to it. In the brief seconds of her crossing the field and leaping a small stream that ran near the house, she thought of Jason, so noble, so self-denying, so persecuted, so beautiful, lying there in his little upper room, powerless from the fever, and doomed to die a dreadful death. She thought of him, weak and helpless, with no strength even to shrink from the flames that should lap over him and lick him to death with their fiery tongues. All this as she sped across the field and leaped the stream.

Reaching the house, she glanced upward, and could perceive the light of the flames already showing itself through the upper front windows, next the room where slept the Deacon and his wife. Fortunately Jason's room was in the rear. Then she remembered that an old nurse from the village watched with him, and she called fiercely on her name, but with no response.

As she had approached the house, the nearest outer door was that facing the road, immediately over which the fire was evidently about to break out, and this door she tried, finding it fast. Then she remembered a side entrance, through an old wood-shed, that was seldom locked, and she immediately made her way to it.

Meanwhile the fire was busy with the dry wood-work of the house, and though there was no wind, it spread with fearful rapidity. Already the flames had burst out through the roof in two or three places, and in the front of the house they were cruelly curling and creeping about the eaves. They seemed confined, however, to the upper portion of the building, and therein she had hope.

As she had anticipated, she found the side door unfastened, and she made her way rapidly to the foot of the back stairway. When she opened the door to ascend, a thick, black smoke rushed down, almost overpowering her. The opening of the door seemed to aid the fire, too, and there was a sort of explosive eagerness in the new start it took as it now crackled and roared above her. Then she recognized in the sickening smoke a smell of burning feathers, and she felt faint and weak as she thought that it might be his bed that was on fire.

This was only for an instant. Staggering backward before the cloud of smoke, with outstretched, groping hands, like one suddenly struck blind, an 'instinct,' or what you please to call it, struck her, and she tore off her flannel petticoat, wrapping it about her head and shoulders. Then, holding her hands over mouth and nose, she rushed desperately up the stairs.

No one, unless he has been through such a smoke, can conceive of the trials she had to undergo in mounting those stairs. No one can fancy, except from the recollection of such an experience, how the fierce heat beat her back when she reached the upper hall. The walls were not yet fully on fire, but great tongues of flame curled along the ceiling, and hot blasts swept across her path.

She knew his room. It was but a step to it, and the door opened easily. The nurse was fast asleep, so fast that poor Hannah's warning cry, as she stumbled in, hardly aroused her. On the bed lay Jason, so thin, so white, so corpse-like, she would hardly have known him. In the fierce strength of her despair it was no task to lift that emaciated body, but, ah! how to get out of the house with it? For when she turned she saw that the hall was now wholly on fire.

But she did not hesitate. Wrapping him quickly and tenderly in a blanket taken from the bed, she rushed out into the flames.

Meanwhile Peter Hopkins and his 'hired man' had been aroused by Hannah's first screams, and had hurriedly scrambled on a portion of their clothing and rushed out. They had been in time—running quickly across the field—to see Hannah disappear behind the house. Neither of them supposed for an instant that she had entered it.

Trying the front door, and finding it fast, Peter uplifted his stout foot and kicked it crashing in, but he found it impossible to enter by the breach he had made. The front stairway was all in flames, and the fierce heat drove him hopelessly back. Then they ran around to the rear. By this time the entire upper portion of the building seemed to be one mass of fire and smote, and now they could hear shrill and terrible shrieks, evidently proceeding from the suddenly awakened inmates. They ran to the kitchen door and burst it in.

As they did so there rushed towards them from the foot of the kitchen stairs some horrible, blazing, and unnatural shape, that came stumbling but swiftly forward. With it came smoke and flame and a horrible sound of stifled moans.

At the approach of this strange and unsightly object they sprang back amazed, and it passed them headlong into the open air; passed them and dropped apart, as it were, into the stream before the door.

For many years thereafter the slumbers of Farmer Hopkins were disturbed by visions of what he saw when the two two parts of that terrible apparition were taken from the water.

There lay Hannah Lee, no longer beautiful and fresh as the morning, but blackened, crisped, scorched and shrunken, with all her wealth of silken hair burned to ashes, with all her clear loveliness of complexion gone forever. And there lay Jason Fletcher, unburned,—so carefully had she covered him as she fled,—but senseless, and to all appearance a corpse.

Thus Hannah Lee went through fire and water, even unto worse than death, for the sake of him she loved. And verily she had her reward.

When the sun rose, there only remained a black and ugly pit to mark the place where Deacon Fletcher's house had stood.

And of all its inmates, only Jason—carefully watched and tended at the house of Peter Hopkins—was left to tell the tale of that night's tragedy. And he, poor fellow, had no tale to tell, the delirium of fever having been upon him all the night. It was very doubtful if he would recover,—more than doubtful. Not one in a thousand could do so, with such an exposure at the critical period of his sickness.

Even more tenderly, with even more anxiety, did all in the country round minister to poor Hannah Lee. The story of her love, of her bravery, of her heroic self-abnegation, spread throughout all those parts, and there was no end to what was done for her by neighbors and friends. So widely did her fame spread, that people from thirty, forty, and even fifty miles away came to see her, or sent messages, or money, or delicacies to comfort her.

What could be done for them was done, and they both lived.

When Jason Fletcher arose from his sick bed, he arose another man than the Jason Fletcher who was thrown down in the arbor by Farmer Hopkins. He went sick, a dependent, simple, good-hearted, though impatient boy, worn out by the constraints of twenty years, but capable of future cultivation and improvement; he arose from his sickness a moody, cross-grained, dogged and impatient man, whose only memories were tinged red with wrong, and made bitter by thought of what he had endured. It was little matter to him that all his father's broad acres were now his own—the thought of the horrible death his parents had died only suggested a question in his mind, whether it were not a 'judgment' on them: they having lived to persecute him too long already. Through all the vista of his past life he saw only gloom and shadows, and no ray of brightness cheered the retrospective glance.

No ray? Yes, there was one. He saw a fair young girl, loving and innocent, whose sweet face scarce ever left his thoughts. She reigned where father and mother held no sway; and she made, with the sunshine of her love, a clear heaven for him even in the purgatory of the past. So he lay, slowly gathering strength, dreaming about her. And presently they told him—gently as might be—how she had saved him. And they nearly killed him in the telling.

When he was well enough to be about, it was strange that they would not allow him to see her. She was still very ill, they said, and the doctor, a reasonable man enough usually, utterly refused him admission to her chamber. He fretted at this, and as he gained strength he 'went wrong.'

Mingled with the memory of his old privations was a full assurance of his present liberty. He was of age, and he owned, by right, all the extensive property the Deacon, his father, had so laboriously amassed. During all his boyhood he had never had a shilling, at any one time, that he could call his own; now hundreds of pounds stood ready at his bidding, and he proceeded very speedily to spend them. During all his boyhood he had been cut off from the amusements common to the youth of that day; now he launched out into the most extravagant pleasures his money could procure. Money was nothing, for he had it in plenty; character was nothing, for he had none to lose; only love remained to him of all the good things he might have held, and love lay bleeding while he was denied access to Hannah. Love lay bleeding, and he turned for comfort to the wine-cup, and raised Bacchus to the place Cupid should have occupied. Alas for Jason Fletcher!

Weeks rolled on and passed into months, and still he was refused speech with, or right of, Hannah. And he chafed at the denial. Had she not risked everything to save his life? And he could not even thank her!

At length, being unable to find further excuse wherewith to put him off, they one day told him he could see his love. They endeavored to prepare him by hints and suggestions as to the probable consequences of the trial she had passed through, but all that they could say or he imagine had not prepared him for the fearful sight.

Poor Hannah Lee! This scarred, deformed and helpless body, without proper hands—oh! white hands, how well he remembered them!—without comeliness of form or feature, was all that was left of the once glorious creature, whose heaven-given beauty had ensnared his fresh and untutored heart! Poor Hannah Lee!

The rough youth, loving her yet, but repelled by the horrible aspect she presented, fell sobbing upon his knees and buried his face in the bed-clothing. He spoke no word, but the tumultuous throes of his agony shook the room as he knelt beside her. And from the bed arose a wail more terrible in its utter, eternal sorrowfulness than had ever fallen upon the ears of those present. It was the wail of a soul recognizing for the first time that the loveliness of life had passed away forever.

They mingled their cries thus for a little time, and then Jason arose and staggered from the room. He would have spoken, but the dreadful sorrow rose up and choked him. All the memories of the past were linked with youth and beauty. He could not speak to the blight before him, as to his love and his life, and so, with blind and lumbering footsteps, he toiled heavily from the house.

The fires of the Revolution had broken forth and swept over New England, burning out like stubble the little loyalty to the crown left in men's hearts.

At the battle of Bunker Hill Jason Fletcher fought like a tiger. Last among the latest, he clubbed his musket, and was driven slowly backward from the slight redoubt.

He was heard of at White Plains, at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and always with marvelous mention of courage and prowess. Then he was promoted from the ranks, and was mentioned as 'Lieutenant Fletcher.' Then there were rumors of some dishonor that had sullied the brightness of his fame; and then it came to be hinted about that in all the rank and file of the patriot army there was no one so utterly dissolute and drunken as he. And then came news of his ignominiously quitting the service, and a cloud dropped down about him, and no word, good or bad, came home from the castaway any more.

Meanwhile poor Hannah Lee languished upon her bed of suffering, but did not die. And finally, when spring after spring had spread new verdure over the rough hills among which she dwelt, she got, by little and little, to venturing out into the village streets. And when they saw her bowed form and her ugly, misshapen hands, the village children, knowing her history, forbore to sneer at or taunt her. All the village loved the unfortunate creature, and all the village strove together to do her kindness.

One man in the town—a cousin of Jason the wanderer—was supposed to hold communication with him. This man notified Hannah one day that a safe life annuity had been purchased for her, and thereafter she lived at the house of Farmer Hopkins, not as a loved dependent, but as a cherished and faithful friend. Thus freed from the bitter sting of helpless poverty, Hannah sank resignedly into a quiet and honorable life.

At length, one warm summer day, when Jason Fletcher should have been about forty years of age, there strayed into the village a blind mendicant, with a dog for guide, and a wooden leg rudely fastened to one stiff stump. This stranger, white-headed and with the care-lines of many years on his sadly furrowed face, sought out poor Hannah Lee, and told her that he had, by the grace of God, come back, at last, to die. Leading him with gentle counsels to that Mercy Seat where none ever seek in vain, poor Hannah saw him bend with contrite and humble spirit, and seek the forgiveness needed to atone for many years of sin. Patient and penitent he passed a few quiet years, and then she followed to the tomb the earthly remains of him for whom she had sacrificed a life.

And this being done, she removed to a distant town, where Martha Hopkins, now kind Mrs. Marjoram, dwelt.

And many years afterwards Mrs. Marjoram told her story, as a lesson that men should never judge a living soul by its outward habiliments.

* * * * *

FREEDOM'S STARS.

From Everglades to Dismal Swamp Rose on the hot and trembling air Cloud after cloud, in dark array, Enfolding from their serpent lair The starry flag that guards the free:— One after one its stars grew dun, Heaven given to shine on Liberty.

But swifter than the lightning's gleam Flashed out the spears of Northern-light, And with the north wind's saving wings, The cloud-host, vanquished, took to flight. Then in her white-winged radiance there The angel Freedom conquering came, Relit once more her brilliant stars, To burn with an eternal flame.

* * * * *

ON THE PLAINS.

The plains is the current designation of the region stretching westward from Missouri—or rather from the western settlements of Kansas and Nebraska—to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. Part of it is included under the vague designation of 'the Great American Desert;' but that title is applicable to a far larger area westward than eastward of the Rocky Mountains. The Great Basin, whereof Salt Lake is the lowest point, and the Valley of the Colorado, which skirts it on the east, are mainly sterile from drouth or other causes—not one acre in each hundred of their surface being arable without irrigation, and not one in ten capable of being made productive by irrigation. Arid, naked, or thinly shrub-covered mountains traverse and chequer those deep yet elevated valleys, wherein few savages or even wild animals of any size or value were ever able to find subsistence. Probably that of the Colorado is, as a whole, the most sterile and forbidding of any valley of equal size on earth, unless it be that of one of the usually frozen rivers in or near the Arctic circle. Even Mormon energy, industry, frugality and subservience to sacerdotal despotism, barely suffice to wrench a rude, coarse living from those narrow belts and patches of less niggard soil which skirt those infrequent lakes and scanty streams of the Great Basin which are susceptible of irrigation; mines alone (and they must be rich ones) can ever render populous the extensive country which is interposed between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.

The Plains differ radically from their western counterpoise. They have no mountains, and very few considerable hills; they are not rocky: in fact, they are rendered all but worthless by their destitution of rock. In Kansas, a few ridges, mainly (I believe) of lime, rise to the surface; beyond these, and near the west line of the new State, stretches a thin-soiled, rolling sandstone district, perhaps forty miles wide; then comes the Buffalo range, formerly covering the entire valley of the Mississippi, and even stretching fitfully beyond the Rocky Mountains, but now shrunk to a strip hardly more than one hundred and fifty miles in width, but extending north and south from Texas into the British territory which embosoms the Red River of the North. Better soil than that of the Buffalo region west of Kansas is rarely found, though the scarcity of wood, and the unfitness of the little that skirts the longer and more abiding streams for any use but that of fuel, must be a great drawback to settlement and cultivation. The coarse, short, hearty grass that carpets most of this region, and which is allowed to attain its full growth only in the valleys of the Chugwater and a few other streams which have their course mainly within or very near the Rocky Mountains, and which the Buffalo no longer visit, seems worthy at least of trial by the farmers and shepherds of our older States. Its ability to resist drouth and overcropping and hard usage generally must be great, and I judge that many lawns and pastures would be improved by it. That it has merely held its ground for ages, in defiance of the crushing tread and close feeding of the enormous herds of the Plains, proves it a plant of signal hardihood and tenacity of life; while the favor with which it is regarded by passing teams and herds combines with its evident abundance of nutriment to render its intrinsic value unquestionable.

The green traveler or emigrant in early summer has traversed, since he crossed the Missouri, five hundred miles of almost uniformly arable soil, most of it richly grassed, with belts of timber skirting its moderately copious and not unfrequent water-courses, and he very naturally concludes 'the American Desert' a misnomer, or at best a gross exaggeration. But, from the moment of leaving the Buffaloes behind him, the country begins to shoal, as a sailor might say, growing rapidly sterile, treeless, and all but grassless. The scanty forage that is still visible is confined to the immediate banks or often submerged intervales of streams, though a little sometimes lingers in hollows or ravines where the drifted snows of winter evidently lay melting slowly till late in the spring. By-and-by the streams disappear, or are plainly on the point of vanishing; of living wood there is none, and only experienced plainsmen know where to look for the fragments of dead trees which still linger on the banks of a few slender or dried-up brooks, whence sweeping fires or other destructive agencies long since eradicated all growing timber. The last living, or, indeed, standing tree you passed was a stunted, shabby specimen of the unlovely Cotton-wood, rooted in naked sand beside a water-course, and shielded from prairie-fires by the high, precipitous bank; for, scanty as is the herbage of the desert, the fierce winds which sweep over it will yet, especially in late spring or early summer, drive a fire (which has obtained a start in some fairly grassed vale or nook) through its dead, tinder-like remains. How far human improvidence and recklessness—especially that of our own destructive Caucasian race—has contributed to denude the Plains of the little wood that thinly dotted their surface at a period not very remote, I can not pretend to decide; but it is very evident that there are far fewer trees now standing than there were even one century ago.

Of rocks rising above or nearing the surface, the Plains are all but destitute; hence their eminent lack first of wood, then of moisture. Your foot will scarcely strike a pebble from Lawrence to Denver; and the very few rocky terraces or perpendicular ridges you encounter appear to be a concrete of sand and clay, hardened to stone by the persistent, petrifying action of wind and rain. Of other rock, save the sandstone ridges already noticed, there is none: hence the rivers, though running swiftly, are never broken by falls; hence the prairie-fires are nowhere arrested by swamps or marshes; hence the forests, if this region was ever generally wooded, have been gradually swept away and devoured, until none remain. In fact, from the river bottoms of the lower Kansas to those of the San Joaquin and Sacramento, there is no swamp, though two or three miry meadows of inconsiderable size, near the South Pass, known as 'Ice Springs' and 'Pacific Springs,' are of a somewhat swampy character. Beside these, there is nothing approximating the natural meadows of New England, the fenny, oozy flats of nearly all inhabited countries. Bilious fevers find no aliment in the dry, pure breezes of this elevated region; but this exemption is dearly bought by the absence of lakes, of woods, of summer rains, and unfailing streams.

Vast, rarely-trodden forests are wild and lonely: the cit who plunges into one, a stranger to its ways, is awed by its gloom, its silence, its restricted range of vision, its stifled winds, and its generally forbidding aspect. He may talk bravely and even blithely to his companions, but his ease and gayety are unnatural: Leatherstocking is at home in the forest, but Pelham is not, and can not be. On the better portion of the Plains—say in the heart of the Buffalo region—it is otherwise: though you are hundreds of miles from a human habitation other than a rude mail-station tent or ruder Indian lodge, the country wears a subdued, placid aspect; you rise a gentle slope of two or three miles, and look down the opposite incline or 'divide,' and up the counterpart of that you have just traversed, seeing nothing but these gentle, wave-like undulations of the surface to limit your gaze, which contemplates at once some fifty to eighty square miles of unfenced, treeless, but green and close-cropped pasturage; and it is hard to realize that you are out of the pale of civilization, hundreds of miles from a decent dwelling-house, and that the innumerable cattle moving and grazing before you—so countless that they seem thickly to cover half the district swept by your vision—are not domestic and heritable—the collected herds of some great grazing county, impelled from Texas or New Mexico to help subdue some distant Oregon. It seems a sad waste to see so much good live-stock ranging to no purpose and dying to no profit: for the roving, migrating whites who cross the Plains slaughter the buffalo in mere wantonness, leaving scores of carcasses to rot where they fell, perhaps taking the tongue and the hump for food, but oftener content with mere wanton destruction. The Indian, to whom the buffalo is food, clothing, and lodging (for his tent, as well as his few if not scanty habiliments, is formed of buffalo-skins stretched over lodge-poles), justly complains of this shameful improvidence and cruelty. Were he to deal thus with an emigrant's herd, he would be shot without mercy; why, then, should whites decimate his without excuse?

Beyond the Buffalo region the Plains are bleak, monotonous, and solitary. The Antelope, who would be a deer if his legs were shorter and his body not so stout, is the redeeming feature of the well-grassed plains next to Kansas, and which recur under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains; but he is an animal of too much sense to remain in the scantily grassed desert which separates the buffalo range from the latter. There the lean Wolf strolls and hunts and starves; there the petty Prairie-Wolf, a thoroughly contemptible beast, picks up such a dirty living as he may; while the sprightly, amusing little Prairie-Dog, who is a rather short-legged gray squirrel, with a funny little yelp and a troglodyte habitation, lives in villages or cities of from five hundred to five thousand dens, each (or most of them) tenanted in common with him by a harmless little Owl and a Rattlesnake of questionable amiability. The Owl sits by the mouth of the hole till driven away by your approach, when he follows his confrere's example by diving; the Rattlesnake stays usually below, to give any prowling, thieving prairie-wolf, or other carnivorous intruder, the worst of the bargain, should he attempt to dig out the architect of this subterranean abode. But for this nice little family arrangement, the last prairie-dog would long since have been unearthed and eaten. As it is, the rattlesnake gets a den for nothing, while the prairie-dog sleeps securely under the guardianship of his poison-tongued confederate. The owl, I presume, either pays his scot by hunting mice and insects for the general account, or by keeping watch against all felonious approaches. Even man does not care to dig out such a nest, and prefers to drown out the inmates by pouring in pail after pail of water till they have to put in an appearance above ground. The only defense against this is to construct a prairie-dog town as far as possible from water, and this is carefully attended to. I heard on the Plains of one being drowned out by a sudden and overwhelming flood; but of the hundreds I passed, not one was located where this seemed possible.

Absence of rock in place—that is, of ridges or strata of rock rising through the soil above or nearly to the surface—has determined the character not only of the Plains but of much of the roll of the great rivers east and south of them. Even at the very base of the Rocky Mountains, the Chugwater shows a milky though rapid current, while the North Platte brings a considerable amount of earthy sediment from the heart of that Alpine region. After fairly entering upon the Plains, every stream begins to burrow and to wash, growing more and more turbid, until it is lost in 'Big Muddy,' the most opaque and sedimentary of all great rivers. I suspect that all the other rivers of this continent convey in the aggregate less earthy matter to the ocean than the Missouri pours into the previously transparent Mississippi, thenceforth an unfailing testimony that evil company corrupts and defiles. Louisiana is the spoil of the Plains, which have in process of time been denuded to an average depth of not less than fifty and perhaps to that of two or three hundred feet. I passed hills along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains where this process is less complete and more active than is usual,—hills which are the remaining vestiges of a former average level of the plain adjacent, and which have happened to wear away so steeply and sharply that very little vegetation ever finds support on their sides, which every rain is still abrading. At a single point only do I remember a phenomenon presented by some other mountain bases,—that of a water-course (dry perhaps half the year, but evidently a heady torrent at times), which had gradually built up a bed and banks of boulders, pebbles and gravel, washed down from a higher portion of its headlong course, so that its current, when it had a current, was considerably above the general surface on either side of it. Away from the mountains, however, boulders or loose stones of any size are rarely seen in the beds of even the largest and deepest channeled streams, which are usually swift, but never broken by a fall, because never down to the subjacent rock in place, assuming that such rock must be.

In the rare instances of rocky banks skirting the immediate valley of a stream, the seeming rock is evidently a modern concrete of clay and the usual sand or gravel composing the soil,—a concrete slowly formed by the action of sun and rain and wind, on a bank left nearly or quite perpendicular by the wearing action of the stream. In the neighborhood of Cheyenne Pass,—say for a distance of fifty to a hundred miles S.S.W. of Laramie,—this effect is exhibited on the grandest scale in repeated instances, and in two or three cases for an extent of miles. Along either bank of the Chugwater, at distances of twenty to forty miles, above its junction with the Laramie affluent of the North Platte, stretch perpendicular rocky terraces, thirty to forty feet high, looking, from a moderate distance, as regular and as artificial as the facade of any row of city edifices. I did not see 'Chimney Rock,' farther down the Platte; but I presume that this, too, is a relic of what was once the average level of the adjacent country, from which all around has been gradually washed away, while this 'spared monument' has been hardened by exposure and the action of the elements from earth to enduring rock—a gigantic natural adobe.

The Plains attest God's wisdom in usually providing surface-rock in generous abundance as the only reliable conservative force against the insidious waste and wear of earth by water. Storms, rills, and rivers are constantly at work to carry off the soil of every island and continent, and lose it in the depths of seas and oceans. Rock in place impedes this tendency, by arresting the headlong course of streams, and depositing in their stiller depths the spoils that the current was hastening away; still more by the formation of swamps and marshes, which arrest the sweep of fires, and so protect the youth and growth of trees and forests. An uninhabited, moderately-rolling or nearly flat country, wherein no ridges of stubborn rock gave protection to fire-repelling marshes, would gradually be swept of trees by fires, and converted into prairie or desert.

Life on the Plains—the life of white men, by courtesy termed civilized—is a rough and rugged matter. I can not concur with J.B. Ficklin, long a mail-agent ranging from St. Joseph to Salt Lake (now, I regret to say, a quarter-master in the rebel army), who holds that a man going on the Plains should never wash his face till he comes off again; but water is used there for purposes of ablution with a frugality not fully justified by its scarcity. A 'biled shirt' lasts a good while. I noted some in use which the dry, fine dust of that region must have been weeks in bringing to the rigidity and clayey yellow or tobacco-stain hue which they unchangeably wore during the days that I enjoyed the society of the wearers. Pilot-bread, a year or so baked, and ever since subjected to the indurating influences of an atmosphere intensely dry, is not particularly succulent or savory food, and I did not find it improved by some minutes' immersion in the frying-pan of hot lard from which our rations of pork had just been turned out; but others of more experience liked it much. The pork of the Plains is generally poor, composed of the lightly-salted and half-smoked sides of shotes who had evidently little personal knowledge of corn. The coffee I did not drink; but, in the absence of milk, and often of sugar also, and in view of its manufacture by the rudest and rawest of masculine cooks, I judge that the temptation to excessive indulgence in this beverage was not irresistible. Most of the water of the Plains, unlike that of the Great Basin, is pretty good; but as you near the Rocky Mountains, 'alkali' becomes a terror to man and beast.

The present Buffalo range will, doubtless, in time, be covered with civilized herdsmen and their stock; but beyond that to the fairly watered and timbered vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, settlers will be few and far between for many generations. What the Plains universally need is a plant that defies intense protracted drouth, and will propagate itself rapidly and widely by the aid of winds and streams alone. I do not know that the Canada thistle could be made to serve a good purpose here, but I suspect it might. Let the plains be well covered by some such deep-rooting, drouth-defying plant, and the most of their soil would be gradually arrested, the quality of that which remains, meliorated, and other plants encouraged and enabled to attain maturity under its protection. Shrubs would follow, then trees; until the region would become once more, as I doubt not it already has been, hospitable and inviting to man. At present, I can only commend it as very healthful, with a cooling, non-putrefying atmosphere; and, while I advise no man to take lodgings under the open sky, still, I say that if one must sleep with the blue arch for his counterpane and the stars for its embellishments, I know no other region where an out-door roll in a Mackinaw blanket for a night's rest is less perilous or more comfortable.

* * * * *

SEVEN DEVILS:

A REMEMBRANCE OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.

Once upon a time—see the Arabian Nights Entertainments—as the Caliph Haroun Alraschid—blessed be his memory!—walked, disguised, as was his wont, through the streets of Bagdad, he observed a young man lashing furiously a beautiful, snow-white mare to the very verge of cruelty. Coming every day to the same place, and finding the spectacle repeated, the curiosity of the humane Caliph, was excited to learn the cause of such treatment. Mr. Rarey had not yet been born; but the Arab knows, and always has known, how to subdue and to control his steed with equal skill, without resort to severity. The explanation of this afterwards appears in that wonderful book.

One Sidi Norman having married, as the custom was, without ever having seen his bride, was agreeably surprised, when the veil was removed, at finding her dazzlingly beautiful. He enfolded her in his arms with joy unspeakable, and so the honeymoon began. Short dream of bliss; she became capricious at once, and seven devils at least seemed to have nestled in her lovely bosom. Sid was touchy himself, and not the man to bear with such humors. Every day she sat at his bountiful board, and, instead of partaking the food which he set before her, she would daintily and mincingly pick out a few grains of rice with the point of a bodkin. Sid asked her what she meant by such conduct, and whether his table was not well supplied. To this she deigned no reply. When she ate no rice, she would choke down a few crumbs of bread, not enough for a sparrow. His indignation was aroused, but his curiosity also. He looked daggers; but he was a still man, kept his counsel to himself, and set himself to study out the solution of this problem.

One night, when his wife stole away from his side,—she thought he was asleep, did she?—he followed her with the stealthiness of a cat; and, oh horrible! tracked her steps to a graveyard, where she began to cut and carve; and he then discovered, to his great loathing, that he had been married to a ghoul!

Amina came home after a good feast. Sid was snoring away, apparently in the profound depths of sleep, hiding away from any Caudle lectures. He was about as sound asleep as a weasel. Breakfast passed off most charmingly without a word said by any one; and he walked round to the khan to scrutinize some figs.

'How does the lady?' said Ben Hadad, sarcastically.

'Very well indeed, I thank you,' replied Sid.

The dinner-bell rang, down they sat, and out came the bodkin. It did not, however, 'his quietus make.'

'My dear,' he said, smothering up his Arabian fury, 'do you not like this bill of fare, or does the sight of me take away your taste for food? Could you obtain a better meal even at the Bagdad St. Nicholas?'

No answer.

'All well,' said he; 'I suppose that this food is not so toothsome to you as dead men's flesh!'

Thunder and furies! A more dreadful domestic scene was never beheld. The lovely Amina turned black in the face, her eyes bulged out of her head, she foamed at the mouth, and, seizing a goblet of water, dashed it into the face of the unfortunate man.

'Take that,' said she, 'and learn to mind your own business.' Whereupon he became a dog, and a miserable dog at that.

Many adventures he then had. For full particulars, see the Arabian Nights. He used to fight for a bone, or lick up a mouthful from a gutter. He had not the spirit to prick up his ears, or to wag or curl up his tail, if he had one—for, shortly after his transformation, the end of it was wedged into a door by his wife, and he was cur-tailed.

Happy is he who gets into trouble by necromancy, who can get out of it by the same. The devil rarely bolts and unbolts his door for his own guests. He is not wont to say, 'Walk in, my friend,' and afterward, 'Good-by.' But it so turned out in the case of Sid Norman, because he had not been knowingly bewitched; and Mrs. Amina Ghoul Sid Norman learned to respect the motto, Cave canem!

While his canine sufferings lasted, he fell in with various masters, and nosed about to see if he could substitute reason for instinct, and get established on two legs again. He looked up wistfully into the faces of passers-by, as if to say, 'I am not a dog, but the man for whom a large reward has been offered.' On one occasion, seeing Amina come from a shop where she had just purchased a Cashmere shawl of great size and value, he set his teeth like a steel trap, and made a grab at her ankles. But she recognized him on all fours, with a diabolical grin, and fetching him a kick with her little foot, caused him to yelp most pitifully. Running under a little cart which stood in the way, he skinned his teeth, and growled to himself, 'By the prophet, but I can almost love her again; she distinguished herself by that kick, which was aimed with infinite tact; it went right to the spot, and struck me like a discharge from a catapult, drove all the wind out of me, and left an absolute vacuum, as if a stomach-pump had sucked me out. Yap—yow—eaow—yeaow—yap—snif—xquiz;' and, after a good deal of panting and distress, he at last yawned so wide as nearly to dislocate his jaws, sneezed once or twice, and then trotted off on three legs, with his half a tail tucked up underneath, and lay down disconsolate in an ash-hole.

'Oh, how distressing it is,' said he, 'to be bewitched by a bad woman! It metamorphoses one entirely. He loses all semblance to his former self, parts with all his reason, no more walks upright, and bids philosophy adieu. One drop from the cup of her incantations, and the gossamer net-work which she threw about him is changed into prisonbars, her silken chain into links of forged iron; strong will is dwindled, and he who on some 'heaven-kissing hill' stood up to gaze upon the stars, is fit to grovel in a sty.—Miserable dog! Bow-wow, bow-wow!'

One day, as the story proceeds, Sid's master was offered a base coin in his shop, when this 'learned dog' at once put his foot upon it, and in fact put his foot in the bargain.

'Ah, indeed!' said a Bagdad lady, who stood by; 'that's no dog, or, if he is, the Caliph ought to have him.' So, snapping her fingers slyly as she went out, he followed her.

'Daughter,' said she to the fair Xarifa, who was working embroidery, 'I have brought the baker's famous dog that can distinguish money. There is some sorcery about it.—You have once walked on two legs,' said she, looking down upon the fawning animal, 'have you not? If so, wag your tail.'

Sid thumped the floor most furiously with the stump of it, whereupon she poured liquid into a phial, threw it into his face, and he stood up once more a man,—Sid Norman, lost and saved by a woman, his eyes beaming one moment with the tenderest gratitude, but on the next flashing with the most deadly revenge. Heaven and hell, the one with its joyous sunshine, the other with its lurid lights, appeared to struggle and mix up their flashes on Sid Norman's countenance, till gratitude, that rarest grace, was quenched, and hell triumphed.

'Than all the nectar ever served in golden cups and brewed by houries in Mahomet's paradise, revenge is sweeter,' he murmured to himself.

'Stay,' said Xarifa, who divined his thoughts; 'you will transform yourself back again. There will be no transmigration of soul for you, if you are lost by your own sorcery. Let dogs delight to bark and bite.'

'Hold your tongue, Xarifa,' said the mother, who was not so amiable. 'The man shall have revenge. Since he has trotted about so long on all fours, he must be paid for it. It is not revenge, it is sheer justice.'

'True as the Koran,' exclaimed Sid Norman, who was becoming infatuate again, and would have fallen down at the knees of this new charmer and worshiped her. The fact is, that he was too easily transformed, and submitted too quickly to the latest magic; otherwise he would have always walked erect, instead of wearing fur on his back, and a tail at the end of it. A coat of tar and feathers would have been a mere circumstance compared with such an indignity. Well, it was the fault, perhaps it should rather be called the misfortune, of character.

'Sidi Norman,' said the lady, fixing upon him an amorous glance, 'you shall not only have revenge, but the richest kind of it. You have a bone to pick with your wife. She was brought up in the same school of magic that I was, hence I hate her. She has the secret of the same rouge, and concocts the same potions and love-filters; but she shall smart for it. Excellent man! injured husband! Monopolize to yourself all the whip-cords of Bagdad.'

Sid Norman kneeled and kissed her hand. Xarifa looked up from her embroidery and frowned.

The benefactress withdrew to consult her books, but returned presently.

'Your wife,' she said, 'has gone out shopping, also to leave some cards, to fulfil an engagement with the French minister, and to engage a band of music for an entertainment at which Prince Schearazade is expected to be present. Wait patiently for her return, then confront her boldly, upbraid her, toss this liquor in her eyes, and then you shall see what you shall see.'

Sid Norman went to his late home, which was in the West End, the Fifth Avenue of Bagdad. He opened the door, but silence prevailed. Costly silks, and many extravagant and superfluous things, lay strewn about. He sat down in a rocking-chair and gazed at a full-length portrait of the Haroun Alraschid.

About noon the lady came in, with six shop clerks after her, bearing packages, tossed off her head-dress, and flung herself inanimately on the sofa.

'Ahem,' grunted Sid Norman, who was concealed in the shadow of an alcove.

Amina looked up. Furies! what an appalling rencontre! She looked as pale as the corpses which she adored; she would have shrieked, but had no more voice than a ghost; she would have fled, but was riveted as with the gaze of a basilisk.

'Dear,' said Sid Norman, with an uxorious smile, 'what ails you? Has the fast of Kamazan begun? Hardly yet, for this looks more like the carnival. How much gave you for this Cashmere, my love?'

A great sculptor was Sid Norman, for, without lifting a hand, or using any other tool than a keen eye and a sharp tongue, he had wrought out before him, carved as in cold marble, the statue of a beautiful, bad woman. Such is genius. Such is conscience!

'Mrs. Amina Sidi Ghoul Norman,' proceeded the husband, giving his wife time to relax a little from her rigor, 'is dinner ready? We want nothing but a little rice. Set on only two plates, a knife and fork for me, and a bodkin for you, if you please, madam.'

(A symptom of hysterics, checked by a nightmare inability of action.)

'Have you nothing to say? Is thy servant a dog? Why have you wrought this deviltry? Take that.'

Therewith he flung some liquid in her face, and the late fashionable lady of Bagdad became a mare. Sid seized a cow-skin, and laid on with a will.

'You may now cut up as many capers as you please,' said he, reining her in with a bit and bridle, and cutting her with the whip until the blood rolled. 'To-morrow you may go to grass in the graveyard.'

Every day he made a practice of lashing her around the square, if possible, to get the devil out of her. When the Caliph Haroun Alraschid learned the true cause of such conduct, he remarked that it was punishment enough to be transformed into a beast; and, while the stripes should be remitted, still he would not have the woman to assume her own shape again, as she would be a dangerous person in his good city of Bagdad.

* * * * *

The moral of this tale of sorcery, which is equal to any in AEsop's Fables, may be drawn from a posthumous letter which was found among the papers of Sidi Norman, and is as follows:—

'TO BEN HADAD, SON OF BEN HADAD.

'You, who stand upon the verge of youth,—for that is the age, and there is the realm, of genii, fairies, and wild 'enchantments,—learn wisdom from the said story of Sidi Norman.

'I was brought up to respect the laws of God and the prophet. When I came to marriageable age, and, "unsight, unseen," was induced to espouse the veiled Amina, it was, as we say in Bagdad, like "buying a pig in a poke," although rumor greatly magnified her charms, and a secret inclination prompted me. I longed eagerly for the wedding-day; and when her face was revealed to conjugal eyes, methought that Mahomet had sent down a houri from his paradise. Yet I found out, to my cost, that a little knowledge of a woman is worse than ignorance, and that the blinding light of beauty hides the truth more than the thick veil of darkness. Oh, her bosom was white as the snows of Lebanon, and her eyes were like those of the dear gazelle. Cheeks had she as red as the Damascus rose, and a halo encircled her like that of the moon. Her smiles were sunshine, her lips dropped honey. I thought I saw upon her shoulders the cropping out of angelic wings. I sought out the carpets of Persia for the soft touch of her tiny feet, and hired all the lutes of Bagdad to be strung in praise of my beloved. I sent plum-cake to the newspapers, and placed a costly fee in the hand of the priest. Oh, blissful moments! But I purchased hell with them, for she began to lead me a dog's life. She had no taste for home, no appetite for healthful food; she ran me into debt, hated my friends, loved my enemies, and changed her soft looks into daggers to stab me with. Her bloom became blight; her lips oozed out poison, and she dabbled in corrupt things. I tracked her footsteps from my sacred couch as they led to the very brink of the grave.

'O, my son, beware of your partner in the dance of life; for, as Mahomet used to say, in his jocular moods, 'those who will dance must pay the fiddler.' To be tied, forever, for better, for worse, to such a —— as Amina Ghoul, is to be transformed in one's whole nature. It is the transmigration of a soul from amiability to peevishness, from activity to discouragement, from love to hate, and from high-souled sentiment to the dog-kennel of humility. Go thou, and don't do likewise.

'Woe is me! Who takes one wrong step, gets out of it by another; and so I went on from enchantment to enchantment, and fell out of the frying-pan into the fire. If I stood erect, and no longer groveled, if I was not any more a beast, I became like the devils which possessed them. So did I scourge and lash the object of my hatred with feelings of the deadliest revenge.

'Oh, my Ben Hadad, presume not from my ultimate escape. If I have ceased to snap and snarl and growl,—if I now, in the decline of life, pursue the even tenor of my way,—if I have been redeemed from snares, and learned even to forgive my enemies, it is because the fair Xarifa represented my better nature, and that has triumphed because I took counsel of her. Farewell, my son, and, in the pilgrimage of life, reflect upon the dear-bought experience of SIDI NORMAN.'

* * * * *

'WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH US?'

What will we do with you, if God Should give you over to our hands, To pass in turn beneath the rod, And wear at last the captive's bands?' 'What will we do?' Our very best To make of each a glorious State, Worthy to match with North and West,— Free, vigorous, beautiful and great! As God doth live, as Truth is true, We swear we'll do all this to you.

* * * * *

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

A late National Review asserts with true English shrewdness that American literature is yet to be born,—that it has scarcely a substantive existence. 'Its best works,' says this modern Scaliger, 'are scarcely more than a promise of excellence; the precursors of an advent; shadows cast before, and, like most shadows, they are too vague and ill-defined, too fluctuating and easily distorted into grotesque forms, to enable us to discriminate accurately the shape from which they are flung.... The truth is, that American literature, apart from that of England, has no separate existence.... The United States have yet to sign their intellectual Declaration of Independence: they are mentally still only a province of this country.' With a gallantry too characteristic to be startling, a discernment that does all honor to his taste, and a coolness highly creditable to his equatorial regions of discussion, the critic continues by assuring his readers that Washington Irving was not an American. He admits that by an accident, for which he is not responsible, this beloved scholar, writer and gentleman claimed our country as his birthplace, and even, perhaps, had a 'full appetite to this place of his kindly ingendure,' but informs us he was an undeniable contemporary of Addison and Steele, a veritable member of the Kit-Cat Club. We may reasonably anticipate that the next investigation of this penetrative ethnologist may result in the appropriation to us of that fossil of nineteenth-century literature, Martin Farquhar Tupper, an intellectual quid pro quo, which will doubtless be received gratefully by a public already supposed to be lamenting the unexpected loss of its co-nationality with Irving.

What species of giant the watchful affection of Motherland awaits in a literature whose unfledged bantlings are Cooper, Emerson, Holmes, Motley and Lowell, our imagination does not attempt to depict. We venture, however, to predict that the National Review will not be called upon to stand sponsor for the bairn, whose advent it so pleasantly announces, and for whose christening should be erected a cathedral more vast than St. Peter's, a temple rarer than that of Baalbec. But while our sensitive cousin across the water would pin us down to a credo as absurd as that of Tertullian, and hedge us in with the adamantine wall of his own lordly fiat, let us, who fondly hope we have a literature, whose principal defect—a defect to which the one infallible remedy is daily applied by the winged mower—is youth, inquire into its leading characteristics, seeing if haply we may descry the elements of a golden maturity.

It has been asserted that we are a gloomy people; it is currently reported that the Hippocrene in which of old the Heliconian muses bathed their soft skins, is now fed only with their tears; that instead of branches of luxuriant olive, these maidens, now older grown and wise, present to their devout adorers twigs of suggestive birch and thorny staves, by whose aid these mournful priests wander gloomily up and down the rugged steeps of the past. We have begun to believe that our writers are afflicted with a sort of myopy that shuts out effectually sky and star and sea, and sees only the pebbles and thistles by the dusty roadside. Truly, the prospect is at first disheartening. The great Byron, who wept in faultless metre, and whose aristocratic maledictions flow in graceful waves that caress where they mean to stifle, has so poisoned our 'well of English undefiled,' that wise men now drink from it warily, and only after repeated filterings and skillful analyses by the Boerhaaves of the press. And Poe, who, with all the great poet's faults, possessed none of his few genial features, has painted the fatal skull and cross-bones upon our banners, that should own only the oriflamme. Yet it is Poe whom the English critic honors as exceeding all our authors in intensity, and approaching more nearly to genius than they all.

Now may St. Loy defend us! At the proposition of Poe's intensity we do not demur. All of us who have shrieked in infancy at the charnel-house novelettes of imprudent nurses, shivered in childhood at the mysterious abbeys and concealed tombs of Anne Radcliffe, or rushed in horror from the apparition of the dead father of the Archivarius of Hoffman, tumbling his wicked son down stairs in the midst of the onyx quarrel, will willingly and with trembling fidelity bear witness to the intensity of Poe. He was indeed our Frankenstein (of whom many prototypes do abound), wandering in the Cimmerian regions of thought, the graveyards of the mind, and veiling his monstrous creations with the filmy drapery of rhyme and the mists of a perverted reason. In his sad world eternal night reigns and the sun is never seen.

'Tristis Erinnys, Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces,'

by whose red light awed audiences see the fruit of his labors.

But what right has he to a place in our van, who never asked our sympathy, whose every effort was but to widen the gulf between him and his fellow-man, whose sword was never drawn in defence of the right? Genius! The very word is instinct with nobility and heartiness. Genius clasps hands with true souls everywhere: it wakes the chord of brotherhood in rude hearts in hovels, and quickens the pulses under the purple and ermine of palaces. It has a smile for childhood and a reverent tone for white-haired age. Its clasp takes in the frail flower bending from slender stems and the stars in their courses. There is laughter in its soul, and a huge banquet-table there to which all are welcome. And to us, on its borders, come the summer-breath of Paestum roses and the aroma of the rich red wine of Valdepenas; and there toasts are given to the past and to the future, for genius knows no nation nor any age. It sparkles along the current of history, and under its warm smile deserts blossom like the rose.

And Poe? With a mind neither well balanced nor unprejudiced, and an imagination that mistook the distorted fantasies of a fevered brain for the pure impulses of some mysterious muse, and gave the reins to coursers that even Phaeton would have feared to trust, he can only excite our pity where he desires our admiration. Qui non dat quod amat, non accipit ille quod optat, was an inscription on an old chequer-board of the times of Henry II. And what did Poe love? Truth shrugs her shoulders, but forbears to answer,—Himself. His were the vagaries of genius without its large-hearted charities; its nice discrimination without its honesty of purpose; its startling originality without its harmonious proportions; its inevitable errors without its persevering energies. He acknowledged no principle; he was actuated by no high aim; he even busied himself—as so many of the unfortunate great have done—with no chimera. From a mind so highly cultured, an organization so finely strung, we expected the rarest blossoms, the divinest melodies. The flowers lie before us, mere buds, from which the green calyx of immaturity has not yet curled, and in whose cold heart the perfume is not born; the melodies vibrate around us, matchless in mechanism, wondrous in miraculous accord, but as destitute of the soul of harmony as the score of Beethoven's sonata in A flat to unlearned eyes. If his analyses and criticisms are keen and graceful, they are unreliable and contradictory, for he was often influenced by private piques, and unpardonable egotism, and the opinions of those whose favor he courted. He was Byron without Byron's wonderful perceptions of nature, Byron's consciousness of the good.

And is it from a genius like this that our literature has taken its tone? Heaven forbid! Wee Apollos there may be, 'the little Crichtons of the hour,' who twist about their brows the cypress sprays that have fallen from this perverted poet's wreath, and fancy themselves crowned with the laurel of a nation's applause. But these men are not types of our literature. The truly great mind is never molded by the idol of a day, a clique, a sect. Pure-hearted and strong the man must be whose hands take hold of the palaces of the world's heart, who grasps the spirit of the coming time. Errors may be forgiven, vices may be forgotten, where only a noble aim has influenced, as a true creative genius gleamed.

But larger constellations have appeared in our literary sky, that burn with undimmed lustre even beside that great morning star that rose above the horizon of the Middle Ages. Historians we have, with all of Chaucer's truthfulness and luxuriance of expression, and poets with his fresh tendernesses, his flashing thoughts, and exquisite simplicity of heart. And perhaps, if we inquire for the distinguishing features of our literature, we shall discover them to be the strength and cheerfulness so pre-eminently the characteristics of Chaucer, which we have so long been accustomed to deny to ourselves. Observe the stately but flowing periods of Motley; his polished courtliness of style, the warm but not exaggerated coloring of his descriptions, the firm but never ungraceful outlines of his sketches of character that mark him the Michael Angelo among historians. In his brilliant imagery, his splendid scholarship, his fine analytical power, he is not surpassed by Macaulay, while he far exceeds him in impartiality,—that diamond of the historian,—and in his keen comprehension of the great motive-principles of the age which he describes. Neither are Prescott, Bancroft, or Irving inferior to Gibbon, Hume, or Robertson.

And over and through our poetry blow fresh and inspiring the winds from our own vast prairies. Those names, few, but honorable, that have become as household words among us, are gilded, not with the doubtful lustre of a moonlit sentimentality, but with the real gold of day-dawn. If they are few, let it be remembered that we are now but first feeling our manhood, trying our thews and sinews, and must needs stop to wonder a little at the gradual development of our unsuspected powers. The most of our great men have been but stalwart mechanics, busied with the machinery of government, using intellect as a lever to raise ponderous wheels, whereon our chariot may run to Eldorado. We have a right to be proud of our poets; their verses are the throbs of our American heart. And if we do but peer into their labyrinth of graceful windings and reach their Chrimhilde Rose-garden, we shall find it begirt with the strong, fighting men of humor. This element lurks under many a musical strophe and crowns many a regal verse. And yet in real humorous poetry we have been sadly deficient. Only of late years have the constant lions by the gate begun to rouse from their strong slumber, to shake their tawny manes, and rumble out a warning of their future prowess.

Nor is it strange that we, who were scarcely an organized people, should have lacked this great witness to the vitality and stability of a race. The features of a national character must be marked and prominent, and a strong sense of a national individuality be developed, before that last, best faculty of man is aroused, and leaps forth to maturity in verse. The one magnificent trait of true humorous poetry is, that in its very nature it is incapable of trivialities. It must grasp as its key-note some vast truth, must grapple with some great injustice, must hurl its lances at some wide-spread prejudice, or toy with the tangles of some mighty Naerea's hair. Undines and satyrs, cupids and merry fauns, may spring laughing from under the artist's hand, but it is from the unyielding marble that these slender children of his mirthful hours are carved. It was not in her infancy that Rome produced her Juvenal. Martial and Plautus caricatured the passions of humanity after Carthage had been destroyed and Julius Caesar had made of his tomb a city of palaces. Aristophanes wrote when Greece had her Parthenon and had boasted her Pericles. France had given birth to Richelieu when Moliere assumed the sack, and England had sustained the Reformation and conquered the land of the Cid when Butler, with his satires, shaking church and state, appeared before her king. So with America. It was not until wrongs were to be redressed, and unworthy ambitions to be checked, that the voice of LOWELL'S scornful laughter was heard in the land, piercing, with its keen cadences and mirth-provoking rhyme, the policy of government and the ghostly armor of many a spectral faith and ism.

True, we had the famous 'Hasty Pudding' of Joel Barlow, the 'Terrible Tractoration' of Fessenden, and Halleck's 'Fanny,' but these were mere jeux, gallant little histories, over which we laughed and voila le tout! And our Astolfo, Holmes, flying by on his winged horse, sends down now and then

'His arrowes an elle long With pecocke well ydight,'

which we gather, and our fair dames weave into brilliant fans that flutter and snap in many a gay assembly, and whose myriad eyes of blue and purple smile with irresistible mirthfulness into the most hostile countenances. Still Holmes apparently likes best the unrestrained freedom of prose. His genius delights in periods finished after its own heart,—pyramidal, trapezoidian, isoscelesian, rhomboidical. But Lowell's genius is infinitely pliable, accommodating itself without hesitation to the arbitrary requirements of the Sieur Spondee, and laughing in the face of the halting Dactyl. His Birdofredom could, we doubt not, sail majestically in the clouds of a stately hexameter, make the aristocratic Alexandrine cry for quarter, and excel the old Trouveurs in the Rime equivoquee. From the quiet esteem which his early poems and essays had won for him, he leaped at once into the high tide of popularity, and down its stream

'Went sailing with vast celerity,'

with the 'Biglow Papers' for his sail. This work electrified the public. It pierced the crust of refinement and intelligence, and roused the latent laughter of its heart. Even newsboys chuckled with delight over its caustic hits at the powers that were, against which, with the characteristic precocity of Young America, each had his private individual spite; while they found in its peculiar phraseology a mine of fun. Patriots rejoiced that one vigilant thinker dared stand guard over our national honor, with the two-edged sword of satire in his hand. Men in authority, at whom the shafts of its scathing rebukes were leveled, writhed on their cushions of state, while, in sheer deference to his originality and humor, they laughed with the crowd at—themselves. And in sooth it was a goodly sight, the young scholar, who had hitherto only dabbled delicately with the treasures of poetry, whose name was a very synonym for elegance and the repose of a genial dignity, whom we suspected of no keen outlooks into the practical world of to-day,—to see this man suddenly flashing into the dusty arena, with indignation rustling through his veins and breathing more flame

'Than ten fire-kings could swallow,'

scorching with his burning words, which an inimitable carelessness made doubly effective, the willful absurdities of government and the palpable wrongs of society, to question which had seemed before almost a heresy. But Lowell's humor was the chrism, snatching together parallels whose apparent inequalities, yet real justice, were powerfully convincing. He never sought the inconsistencies of his subject, they flocked to meet him uninvited. And his infinite cheerfulness, his freedom, even in his most daring onslaughts, from ill-nature, these were the influences meet,

'That bowed our hearts like barley bending.'

Scarcely did we know our knight in his new armor. Off with the hauberk and visor, down with the glittering shield of his mediaeval crusade, and, lo! with his hand on the plow and his eyes on the fair fields of his own New England, our country boy sings his Ave Aquila! while other men are rubbing the sunbeams of of the new-born day into their sleepy eyes.

And it was not alone in our own country that this newly developed phase of our poet's genius was acknowledged and applauded. Says a British Review, with an admiration whose reservations are unfortunately too just to be disputed: 'All at once we have a batch of small satirists,—Mr. Bailey at their head,—in England, and one really powerful satirist in America, namely, Mr. J.R. Lowell, whose "Biglow Papers" we most gladly welcome as being not only the best volume of satires since the Anti-Jacobin, but also the first work of real and efficient poetical genius which has reached us from the United States. We have been under the necessity of telling some unpleasant truths about American literature from time to time, and it is with hearty pleasure that we are now able to own that the Britishers have been for the present utterly and apparently hopelessly beaten by a Yankee in one important department of poetry. In the United States, social and political evils have a breadth and tangibility which are not at present to be found in the condition of any other civilized country. The "peculiar domestic institution," the fillibustering tendencies of the nation, the charlatanism which is the price of political power, are butts for the shafts of the satirist, which European poets may well envy Mr. Lowell. We do not pretend to affirm that the evils of European society may not be as great in their own way as those which affect the credit of the United States, with the exception, of course, of slavery, which makes American freedom deservedly the laughing-stock of the world; but what we do say is, that the evils in point have a boldness and simplicity which our more sophisticated follies have not, and that a hundred years hence Mr. Lowell's Yankee satires will be perfectly intelligible to every one.'

The predictions of the English reviewer are fulfilled already. The prescribed century has not elapsed, and in a decade the 'Yankee satires' are comprehended as perhaps even their author failed to comprehend as he created them. There is something positively startling and uncanny in his prophetic insight into the passions that have attained their majority in this present year of grace,—passions that,

'Like aconite, where'er they spread, they kill.'

He does not approach with the old show of superstitious reverence the altar of our vaunted destiny, where men have sung their in-secula-seculorums, while pagans at the chancel rail have been distributing to infidel hordes the relics of their holiest saints, and threatening the very fane itself with fire. Mere words will never strike him dumb. He does not bow to the shadow of Justice or kneel with the ignorant and unsuspicious at the shrine of every plausible Madonna by the roadside. Hear him on the constitutional pillars that heaven and earth are now moved to keep in place, and let us commiserate what must now be the distracting dread of Increse D. O'Phace, Esquire, lest some Samson in blind revenge entomb himself in the ruins of the Constitution.

'Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers, Our four fathers fetched with 'em over the billers, Them pillers the people so soundly hev slept on, Wile to slav'ry, invasion an' debt they were swept on, Wile our destiny higher an' higher kep mountin' (Though I guess folks'll stare wen she hands her account in). Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em, They won't hev so much ez a feather left in em.'

Not less wonderful than his penetration into political affairs is Lowell's command of the pure Yankee dialect. His knowledge of it is perfect; he elevates it to the dignity of a distinct tongue, having its own peculiar etymology, and only adopting the current rules of prosody in tender consideration for its thousands of English readers. There is, however, we are tolerably assured, a certain class of critics who venture to lament that this laughter-inspiring muse should have descended from the sunny Parnassus of its own vernacular to the meads below, where disport the unlearned and uninspired, the mere kids and lambs of its celestial audience: a generous absurdity, at which the very Devil of Delphos might have demurred. These are the dapper gentlemen, who, tripping gayly along to the blasts and tinklings of Lanner's Waltzes, would judge every man's intellect by the measure of their own. Know, oh dwarfed descendants of Procustes, that the quality of humor is not strained, but droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven; and if, after patient blending with grains of intolerance and egotism, in the mortar of your minds, it seems to you but that poisonous foam that of old sorcerers drew, by their incantations, from the moon, we can only smile with Voltaire at your 'foolish ingenuities,' and recommend to you a new career. 'Go pype in an ivy lefe,' Monsieur Mustard-seed, or 'blow the bukkes' horne.'

It is no trifling merit in a work of so extraordinary a character that the original programme should have been so perfectly carried out. The poet never relaxes, even into a Corinthian elegance of allusion; his metaphors are always fresh and ungarnished; they no more shine with the polish of the court than do those of Panurge. In fact, there is a flavor of the camp about them, a pleasant suspicion, and more than a suspicion, of life in the open air, the fresh smell of the up-turned earth, the odor of clover blossoms. The poet is walking in the fresco, and the sharp winds cut a pathway across every page. Equally remarkable and pervaded by a most delightful personality are the editorial lucubrations of the Rev. Homer Wilbur. The very lustre of the midnight oil shines upon their glittering fragments of philosophy, admirably twisted to suit the requirements of an eminently unphilosophical age; moral axioms from heathen writers applied judiciously to the immoral actions of Christian doers; distorted shadows of a monstrous political economy, and dispassionate and highly commendable views 'de propaganda fide.' Like Johnson,

'He forced Latinisms into his line, Like raw undrilled recruits,'

that have yet done immense service in his conflicts with the enemy. This pedantry, so inimitable, is unequaled even by the most weighty pages of the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' of Sir Thomas Browne. That it should prove obnoxious to some critics only testifies to its perfection and their own incapacity for enjoyment. If a man does not relish the caviare and truffles at a dinner, he does not question the wisdom of his Lucullus in providing them; the fault is in his own palate, not in the judgment of his host. The aggrieved individuals, who are either too weak or too indolent to scale the numberless peaks of Lowell's genius, may comfort themselves with the reflection that the treasures of their minds will never be tesselated into the mosaic of any satirist's fancy, for in them can abound only emptiness and cobwebs—as saith the Staphyla of Plautus:—

'Nam hic apud nos nihil est aliud qua sti furibus, Ita inaniis sunt oppletae atque araneis.'

Caricatures have never been disdained by the greatest minds. They were rather the healthful diversion of their leisure hours. Even the stern and rugged-natured artist, Annibale Caracci, was famous for his humorous inventions, and the good Leonardo da Vinci esteemed them as most useful exercises. We all remember the group of the Laocoon that Titian sketched with apes, and those whole humorous poems in lines found in Herculaneum, where Anchises and AEneas are represented with the heads of apes and pigs. Lessing even tells us in his Laocoon that in Thebes the rage for these caricatura was so great that a law was passed forbidding the production of any work conflicting with the severe and absolute laws of beauty.

In quite another vein, yet transfused with the same irrepressible mirth, we have Lowell's 'Fable for Critics,' which, with its 'preliminary notes and few candid remarks to the reader,' is a literary curiosity whose parallel we have not in any work by an American author. It is all one merry outburst of youth and health, and music and poetry, with the spice of a criticism so rare and genial, that one could almost court dissection at his hands, for the mere exquisitely epicurean bliss of an artistic euthanasia. It is genius on a frolic, coquetting with all the Graces, and unearthing men long since become gnomes,

'In that country Where are neither stars nor meadows,'

to join in his merry carousing. They float on floods of Chian and moor their barks under 'hills of spice.' What golden wine of inspiration has our poet drunk, whose flush is on his brow and its fire in his veins? For every sentence of this poem is aglow with vigor and life and power;

'Its feeldes have een and its woodes have eeres.'

And if he sometimes stumbles over a metre or lets his private friendships and preferences run away with his cool discretion and judgment, why, bonus dormitat Homerus, let us, like the miser Euclio, be thankful for the good the gods vouchsafe us. Taken in themselves and without regard to their poetical surroundings, no more comprehensive, faithful, concise portraitures of our authors have ever been produced. They unite in the highest degree candor and justice, and there is withal a tone so kindly and a wit so pure, that we almost believe him to be describing a community of brothers affiliated by the close ties of deep mutual appreciation. He flings his diamonds of learning upon the page, and we recognize the scholar whom no extravagance in knowledge can make bankrupt. We seem to have come by rare chance upon one of those wardrobes of the early kings, wherein are all savory treasures,—the rose and violet colored sugars of Alexandria, sweet almonds, and sharp-toothed ginger. We pardon his puns, indeed we believe them to be inevitable, the flash of the percussion cap, the sparks of electricity, St. Elmo's stars, phosphorescent gleams, playing over the restless ocean of his fruitful imagination. And we are persuaded that if the venerable Democritus (who was uncanonized only because the Holy See was still wavering, an anomalous body, in Weissnichtwo, and who existed forty days on the mere sight of bread and honey) had been regaled with the piquant delicacies of Lowell's picture of a Critic, he might have continued unto this present. It is a satire so pleasantly constructed, so full of palpable hits at the 'musty dogmas' of the day, so rich in mirthful allusion, and with such a generously insinuated tribute to the true and earnest-hearted critic, that we know not which most to admire, the sketch, or the soul whence it emanated. The following description of a 'regular heavy reviewer' is complete:

'And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles, They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for; And nobody read that which nobody cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition; He could gauge the old books by the new set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools. But give him a new book fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart,— His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native, and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite, New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And reporting each circumstance just as he found it, Without the least malice—his record would be Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, borne by an Arab guide, venture to render a General view of the ruins of Denderah.'

He draws with a few strokes of his magical charcoal a sharp silhouette of Brownson upon the wall of our waiting curiosity, fills in his sketch of Parker with a whole wilderness of classical shades, disposes of Willis with a kiss and a blow, gives pages of sharp pleasantries to Emerson, pays a graceful tribute to Whittier, and Hawthorne,—

'His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,— He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck; When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man.'

Turning backward from these evidences of Lowell's ripening powers to his early poems, astonishment at his versatility is the first emotion produced. It is hard to believe that the 'Biglow Papers' slid from under the hand that wrote the 'Prometheus' and the 'Legend of Brittany.' His genius flashes upon us like a certain flamboyant style of poetic architecture—the flowing, flame-like curves of his humor blending happily with the Gothic cusps of veneration for the old, with quaint ivy-leaves, green and still rustling under the wind and rain, springing easily out of its severer lines. What resistless magic is there in the fingers whose touch upon the same rich banks of keys, summons solemn, vibrant peals as of Beethoven's grandest fugues, endless harmonies as of the deep seas, and the light and graceful fantasies of Rossini, which are as the glad sunshine upon their waves. Truly the poet's gift is a divine and an awful one. His heart must needs be proud and humble too, who is claimed as nearer of kin than a brother by myriads of stranger souls, each, perhaps, owning its separate creed, and in whose unspoken prayers his name is ever present. In his 'Conversations on some of the old Poets,' we discover the alembic through which his crude opinions, his glowing impulses, his exquisitely minute discrimination were distilled;—the old poets, to whom the heart turns ever lovingly as to the wide west at eve. They were the nursing mothers of his intellectual infancy, and it is probably to his reverent but not blind esteem for them, his earnest study of them, not merely as poets, but as men, citizens, and friends, that much of the buoyancy and vigor of his poetry is to be attributed. The 'Conversations' themselves are alive with that enthusiasm and sympathetic inquiry that disproves the false saying of the Parisian Aspasia of Landor—'Poets are soon too old for mutual love.' They are the warm photographs of feeling as it bubbles from a burning heart; sometimes burned over-deep, with a leaning to fanaticism, but with so much of the generosity and justice of maturity in their decisions that these necessary errors of an ardent youth are overlooked, and the more as they have disappeared almost entirely from the productions of later years. He betrays in his quick conception of an author's mood and meaning a delicacy so extreme, an organization so nervously alive to beauties and discords, and a religious sentiment so cultured to the last degree of feeling, that we dread lest we shall encounter the weakness, morbidness or bigotry that naturally results from the contact of such a soul with the passions of everyday life, recalling the oft-quoted 'Medio in fonte leporum'—

'In the bowl where pleasures swim, The bitter rises to the brim, And roses from the veriest brake May press the temples till they ache.'

But among the roses of his criticisms we look in vain for thorns. In style, it is true, these essays are halting and unequal. His adoption of the colloquial form for the expression of opinion to the public has never seemed to us remarkably felicitous, in spite of its venerable precedents. Where his imagery becomes lofty and his flow of thought should be continuous, we are indignant at its sudden arrest, and involuntarily devote the intruder to a temporary bungalow in Timbuctoo.

It is refreshing to lose the moony Tennysonian sensuousness which induced, with Lowell's vigorous imagination, the blank artificiality of style which was visible in several of his early poems. There was a tendency, too, to the Byzantine liberty of gilding the bronze of our common words, a palpable longing after the ississimus of Latin adjectives, of whose softness our muscular and variegated language will not admit. Mr. Lowell's Sonnets, too, we could wish unwritten, not from any defect in their construction, but from a fancied want of congeniality between their character and his own. In spite of its Italian origin, the sonnet always seems to demand the severest classical outlines, both in spirit and expression, calm and steadfastly flowing without ripples or waves, a poem cut in the marble of stately cadences that imprison some vast and divine thought. Lowell is too elastic, impulsive, for a sonneteer. But considered apart from our peculiar ideas of the sonnet, the following is full of a very tender beauty:—

'I ask not for those thoughts that sudden leap From being's sea, like the isle-seeming Kraken, With whose great rise the ocean all is shaken, And a heart-tremble quivers through the deep; Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep, Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, Which by the toil of gathering energies Their upward way into clear sunshine keep, Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, 'mid tall palms, the cave-roofed home is seen And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power.'

And what could be more drippingly quaint than his song to 'Violets,' which breathes so gentle and real a sympathy with its subject, that we almost imagine it was written in those early times when men communed with Nature in her own audible language. It is even more beautiful than Herrick's

'Why do ye weep, sweet babe? Can tears Speak grief in you, who were but born Just as the modest morn Teemed her refreshing dew?'

We give but a fragment of the Violet.

'Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years? Or with gladness are they full, For the night is beautiful, And longing for those far-off spheres? Thy little heart, that hath with love Grown colored, like the sky above On which thou lookest ever— Can it know All the woe Of hope for what returneth never, All the sorrow and the longing To these hearts of ours belonging?'

And there are touches of what we are wont to call dear, womanly feeling, as when the 'Forlorn,' out in the bitter cold,

'Hears a woman's voice within Singing sweet words her childhood knew, And years of misery and sin Furl off and leave her heaven blue.'

The 'Changeling' alone would sustain a reputation. It seems always like the plaintive but sweet warble of some unknown bird rising from the midst of tall water-rushes in the day's dim dawning. A wonderful melody as of Mrs. Browning's best efforts pervades every verse, priceless and rare as some old intaglio. But when we come to his 'Odes to the Past and the Future,' the full power of poesy unfolds before us. Their images are not the impalpable spectres of a poet's dream, but symbols hardened into marble by his skill, and informed with the fire of life by his genius.

'Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast; There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls, Earth worshiped once as deathless.'

Was ever picture of silence more effective and complete? We can see the desolate quiet of the vast arched halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' of the 'Land of Promise':—

'To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands, And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and noble: unto thee the Oppressor Looks and is dumb with awe; The eternal law Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding, And he can see the grim-eyed Doom From out the trembling gloom Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading.'

We pass by the 'Legend of Brittany,' which, as a mere artistic study of light and shade in words, is worthy an extended notice. Its fine polish and refinement of feeling remind us of Spencer's silver verses, frosted here and there with the old fret-work of his lovable affectations. But we pause at the 'Prometheus,' honestly believing that no poem made up of so many excellences was ever written in America. Its defects are not of conception, but in an occasional carelessness of execution—a gasp in the rhythm; and when we consider its richness and majesty, when we feel its resistless grasp upon the heart, we could pardon it if its great pearls were strung on straws or its diamonds hidden in a sand-hill of sentimentality. But never was poem freer from morbidness: it repels the sickly pallor of our modern stereotyped sorrow, and is made up only of a grief that is regal—more—divine. If any place by its side the Prometheus of AEschylus and appeal to the unapproachable dignity of their model, we can only say that we hold these two poems distinct as the East is from the West, only between them springs boldly the blue arch of a universal humanity that suffered and enjoyed as now when the earth was young. But it must not be forgotten that the Greek lived when with men was born a boundless sympathy for, and pride in, their gods; that what are now to us but the wonderful dreams of a primeval poesy, shadowing mighty truths, were to the ancients living influences that molded their lives. And if it be urged that already faith must have grown dim in so great a mind as that of AEschylus, then indeed we wonder not at the marvels of magnificent despair, the death-in-life of a godlike suffering which reach in his 'Prometheus Chained' a height of sublimity we may scarcely hope to see approached in modern times, for the mind that created it stood in a light shallop, drifting away from the old landmarks of a worn-out creed into the dark, unknown night of doubt and speculation. But the Prometheus of Lowell is not the god-man writhing in an awful conflict with his slavery but begun. His heart

'For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.'

The defiant pride and scornful dignity that raised him above our sympathy in AEschylus, are tempered by Lowell with a human longing for comfort that, in its mighty woe, might melt adamant, or draw from the watchful heavens

'Mild-eyed Astarte, his best comforter, With her pale smile of sad benignity.'

Chained to the rock in utter loneliness he lies. Long since the 'crisped smiles' of the waves and the 'swift-winged winds' had ceased to listen to his call.

'Year after year will pass away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dark summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness lessening on and on, Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet Must I lie here upon my altar huge, A sacrifice for man.'

'A sacrifice for man.' The theme has won a high significance with time. One more passage, and we are done—a passage which rivals Shakspeare in its startling vividness, as it whispers with awful power close to our ears. All night had the prisoned god heard voices,—

'Deeper yet The deep, low breathings of the silence grew

* * * * *

And then toward me came A shape as of a woman; very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them. Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice; A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night-fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt. And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red morn, through the heavy mist, Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling, Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars, Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove!'

Mr. Lowell is no fine dreamer, no enthusiast in the filmy questions of some cloud-land of poetry: the sword of power is in his hand, and the stern teachings of Right and Justice ring through his heart. To such men, Destiny looks for her unfolding. Woe to them, if upon their silence, inaction or irresolution in these great days, the steadfast gaze of her high expectation falls unheeded.

* * * * *

RESURGAMUS.

Go where the sunlight brightly falls, Through tangled grass too thick to wave; Where silence, save the cricket's calls, Reigns o'er a patriot's grave; And you shall see Faith's violets spring From whence his soul on heavenward wing Rose to the realms where heroes dwell: Heroes who for their country fell; Heroes for whom our bosoms swell; Heroes in battle slain. God of the just! they are not dead,— Those who have erst for freedom bled;— Their every deed has boldly said We all shall rise again.

A patriot's deeds can never die,— Time's noblest heritage are they,— Though countless aeons pass them by, They rise at last to day. The spirits of our fathers rise Triumphant through the starry skies; And we may hear their choral song,— The firm in faith, the noble throng,— It bids us crush a deadly wrong, Wrought by red-handed Cain. AND WE SHALL CONQUER! for the Right Goes onward with resistless might: His hand shall win for us the fight. WE, too, shall rise again!

* * * * *

AMONG THE PINES.

My last article left the reader in the doorway of the Colonel's mansion. Before entering, we will linger there awhile and survey the outside of the premises.

The house stands where two roads meet, and, unlike most planters' dwellings, is located in full view of the highway. It is a rambling, disjointed structure, thrown together with no regard to architectural rules, and yet there is a kind of rude harmony in its very irregularities that has a pleasing effect. The main edifice, with a frontage of nearly eighty feet, is only one and a half stories high, and is overshadowed by a broad projecting roof, which somehow, though in a very natural way, drops down at the eaves, and forms the covering of a piazza, twenty-feet in width, and extending across the entire front of the house. At its south-easterly angle, the roof is truncated, and made again to form a covering for the piazza, which there extends along a line of irregular buildings for sixty yards. A portion of the verandah on this side being enclosed, forms a bowling-alley and smoking-room, two essential appendages to a planter's residence. The whole structure is covered with yellow-pine weather boarding, which in some former age was covered with paint of a grayish brown color. This, in many places, has peeled off and allowed the sap to ooze from the pine, leaving every here and there large blotches on the surface, which somewhat resemble the 'warts' I have seen on the trunks of old trees.

The house is encircled by grand, old pines, whose tall, upright stems, soaring eighty and ninety feet in the air, make the low hamlet seem lower by the contrast. They have stood there for centuries, their rough, shaggy coats buttoned close to their chins, and their long, green locks waving in the wind; but man has thrust his long knife into their veins, and their life-blood is fast oozing away.

With the exception of the negro huts, which are scattered at irregular intervals through the woods in the rear of the mansion, there is not a human habitation within an hour's ride; but such a cosey, inviting, hospitable atmosphere surrounds the whole place, that a stranger does not realize he has happened upon it in a wilderness.

The interior of the dwelling is in keeping with the exterior, though in the drawing-rooms, where rich furniture and fine paintings actually lumber the apartments, there is evident the lack of a nice perception of the 'fitness of things,' and over the whole hangs a 'dusty air,' which reminds one that the Milesian Bridget does not 'flourish' in South Carolina.

I was met in the entrance-way by a tall, fine-looking woman, to whom the Colonel introduced me as follows:—

'Mr. K——, this is Madam ——, my housekeeper; she will try to make you forget that Mrs. J—— is absent.'

After a few customary courtesies were exchanged, I was shown to a dressing-room, and with the aid of 'Jim,' a razor, and one of the Colonel's shirts,—all of mine having undergone a drenching,—soon made a tolerably presentable appearance. The negro then conducted me to the breakfast-room, where I found the family assembled.

It consisted, besides the housekeeper, of a tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired personage, with a low brow, a blear eye and a sneaking look, the Overseer of the plantation; and of a well-mannered, intelligent lad,—with the peculiarly erect carriage and uncommon blending of good-natured ease and dignity which distinguished my host,—who was introduced to me as the housekeeper's son.

Madam P——, who presided over the 'tea things,' was a person of perhaps thirty-five, but a rich olive complexion, enlivened by a delicate red-tint, and relieved by thick masses of black hair, made her appear to a casual observer several years younger. Her face showed vestiges of great beauty, which time, and, perhaps, care, had mellowed but not obliterated, while her conversation indicated high cultivation. She had evidently mingled in refined society in this country and in Europe, and it was a strange freak of fortune that reduced her to a menial condition in the family of a backwoods planter.