"And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity, before my mortal life, and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to Ins Divine will, for our good.

"You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel,—my friend and companion from Eternity. In the Divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other.

"Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me forever to remain your grateful and affectionate

"WILLIAM BLAKE."

Other associations than spiritual ones mingle with the Felpham sojourn. A drunken soldier one day broke into his garden, and, being great of stature, despised the fewer inches of the owner. But between spirits of earth and spirits of the skies there is but one issue to the conflict, and Blake "laid hold of the intrusive blackguard, and turned him out neck and crop, in a kind of inspired frenzy." The astonished ruffian made good his retreat, but in revenge reported sundry words that exasperation had struck from his conqueror. The result was a trial for high treason at the next Quarter Sessions. Friends gathered about him, testifying to his previous character; nor was Blake himself at all dismayed. When the soldiers trumped up their false charges in court, he did not scruple to cry out, "False!" with characteristic and convincing vehemence. Had this trial occurred at the present day, it would hardly be necessary to say that he was triumphantly acquitted. But fifty years ago such a matter wore a graver aspect. In his early life he had been an advocate of the French Revolution, an associate of Price, Priestley, Godwin, and Tom Paine, a wearer of white cockade and bonnet rouge. He had even been instrumental in saving Tom Paine's life, by hurrying him to France, when the Government was on his track; but all this was happily unknown to the Chichester lawyers, and Blake, more fortunate than some of his contemporaries, escaped the gallows.

The disturbance caused by this untoward incident, the repeated failures of literary attempts, the completion of Cowper's Life, which had been the main object of his coming, joined, doubtless, to a surfeit of Hayley, induced a return to London. He feared, too, that his imaginative faculty was failing. "The visions were angry with me at Felpham," he used afterwards to say. We regret to see, also, that he seems not always to have been in the kindest of moods towards his patron. Indeed, it was a weakness of his to fall out occasionally with his best friends; but when a man is waited upon by angels and ministers of grace, it is not surprising that he should sometimes be impatient with mere mortals. Nor is it difficult to imagine that the bland and trivial Hayley, perpetually kind, patronizing, and obvious, should, without any definite provocation, become presently insufferable to such a man as Blake.

Returned to London, he resumed the production of his oracular works,—"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be found passages of great force, tenderness, and beauty. The concluding verses of the Preface to "Milton" we quote, as shadowing forth his great moral purpose, and as revealing also the luminous heart of the cloud that so often turns to us only its gray and obscure exterior:—

"And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountain green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen?

"And did the countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark, Satanic hills?

"Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!

"I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land."

The same lofty aim is elsewhere expressed in the line,—

"I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord!"

Our rapidly diminishing space warns us to be brief, and we can only glance at a few of the remaining incidents of this outwardly calm, yet inwardly eventful life. In an evil hour—though to it we owe the "Illustrations to Blair's Grave"—he fell into the hands of Cromek, the shrewd Yorkshire publisher, and was tenderly entreated, as a dove in the talons of a kite. The famous letter of Cromek to Blake is one of the finest examples on record of long-headed worldliness bearing down upon wrong-headed genius. Though clutching the palm in this case, and in some others, it is satisfactory to know that Cromek's clever turns led to no other end than poverty; and nothing worse than poverty had Blake, with all his simplicity, to encounter. But Blake, in his poverty, had meat to eat which the wily publisher knew not of.

In the wake of this failure followed another. Blake had been engaged to make twenty drawings to illustrate Ambrose Philips's "Virgil's Pastorals" for schoolboys. The publishers saw them, and stood aghast, declaring he must do no more. The engravers received them with derision, and pronounced sentence, "This will never do." Encouraged, however, by the favorable opinion of a few artists who saw them, the publishers admitted, with an apology, the seventeen which had already been executed, and gave the remaining three into more docile hands. Of the two hundred and thirty cuts, the namby-pambyism, which was thought to be the only thing adapted to the capacity of children, has sunk to the level of its worthlessness, and the book now is valued only for Blake's small contribution.

Of an entirely different nature were the "Inventions from the Book of Job," which are pronounced the most remarkable series of etchings on a Scriptural theme that have been produced since the days of Rembrandt and Albrecht Duerer. Of these drawings we have copies in the second volume of the "Life," from which one can gather something of their grandeur, their bold originality, their inexhaustible and often terrible power. His representations of God the Father will hardly accord with modern taste, which generally eschews all attempt to embody the mind's conceptions of the Supreme Being; but Blake was far more closely allied to the ancient than to the modern world. His portraiture and poetry often remind us of the childlike familiarity—not rude in him, but utterly reverent—which was frequently, and sometimes offensively, displayed in the old miracle and moral plays.

These drawings, during the latter part of his life, secured him from actual want. A generous friend, Mr. Linnell, himself a struggling young artist, gave him a commission, and paid him a small weekly stipend: it was sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, and that was enough: so the wolf was kept away, his lintel was uncrossed 'gainst angels. It was little to this piper that the public had no ear for his piping,—to this painter, that there was no eye for his pictures.

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

He had but to withdraw to his inner chamber, and all honor and recognition awaited him. The pangs of poverty or coldness he never experienced, for his life was on a higher plane:—

"I am in God's presence night and day, He never turns his face away."

When a little girl of extraordinary beauty was brought to him, his kindest wish, as he stood stroking her long ringlets, was, "May God make this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me!" His own testimony declares,—

"The angel who presided at my birth Said,—'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, Go, love without the help of anything on earth!'"

But much help from above came to him. The living lines that sprung beneath his pencil were but reminiscences of his spiritual home. Immortal visitants, unseen by common eyes, hung enraptured over his sketches, lent a loving ear to his songs, and left with him their legacy to Earth. There was no looking back mournfully on the past, nor forward impatiently to the future, but a rapturous, radiant, eternal now. Every morning came heavy-freighted with its own delights; every evening brought its own exceeding great reward.

So, refusing to the last to work in traces,—flying out against Reynolds, the bland and popular President of the Royal Academy, yet acknowledging with enthusiasm what he deemed to be excellence,—loving Fuseli with a steadfast love through all neglect, and hurling his indignation at a public that refused to see his worth,—flouting at Bacon, the great philosopher, and fighting for Barry, the restorer of the antique, he resolutely pursued his appointed way unmoved. But the day was fast drawing on into darkness. The firm will never quailed, but the sturdy feet faltered. Yet, as the sun went down, soft lights overspread the heavens. Young men came to him with fresh hearts, and drew out all the freshness of his own. Little children learned to watch for his footsteps over the Hampstead hills, and sat on his knee, sunning him with their caresses. Men who towered above their time, reverencing the god within, and bowing not down to the daemon a la mode, gathered around him, listened to his words, and did obeisance to his genius. They never teased him with unsympathetic questioning, or enraged him with blunt contradiction. They received his visions simply, and discussed them rationally, deeming them worthy of study rather than of ridicule or vulgar incredulity. To their requests the spirits were docile. Sitting by his side at midnight, they watched while he summoned from unknown realms long-vanished shades. William Wallace arose from his "gory bed," Edward I. turned back from the lilies of France, and, forgetting their ancient hate, stood before him with placid dignity. The man who built the Pyramids lifted his ungainly features from the ingulfing centuries; souls of blood—thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, and not inventing, and the simplicity and sincerity of his life forbid any thought of intentional deceit. No criticism affected him. Nothing could shake his faith. "It must be right: I saw it so," was the beginning and end of his defence. The testimony of these friends of his is that he was of all artists most spiritual, devoted, and single-minded. One of them says, if asked to point out among the intellectual a happy man, he should at once think of Blake. One, a young artist, finding his invention flag for a whole fortnight, had recourse to Blake.

"It is just so with us," he exclaimed, turning to his wife, "is it not, for weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, Kate?"

"We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake."

To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They saw that

"Only that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."

Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination bodied forth the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence of his visions,—an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This sense he believed to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the rank and file—but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and file—into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and reverent.

Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer clasp as they neared the Dark River.

It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! You have been ever an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise; but, "They are not mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "No! they are not mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high, he entered in through the gates into the City.

* * * * *

THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON.

One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood—and still stands, perhaps—on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road.

There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to her, upon a long and uncertain adventure.

He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better than book-learning,—a deep religious experience, which was to be his support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward. He had an impediment in his speech also. His name—it is an odd one, but you may perhaps have heard it—was Salmon.

He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,—her intelligent hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of her, when unpacked in a distant city.

A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early breakfast was eaten in silence,—anxious eyes looking up now and then at the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words.

"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full.

She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,—not with his own tears.

The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,—a heavy sound to the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty head.

Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune. Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere, beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,—but where?

In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter of introduction to the Rev. Mr. ——, who received him with hospitality, and used his influence to assist him in gaining a position. But the door of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path led farther.

So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the Frederick road to Washington.

Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination.

Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe also,—his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to dispense favors to him,—to receive him with cheerful look and cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and unknown,—a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him!

But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,—a prayer of earnest supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered?

The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted streets.

"Where do you stop?" asked the driver.

"Set me down at a boarding-house, if you know of a good one." For Salmon could not afford to go to a hotel.

"What sort of a boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right smart,—'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good enough in every way, only not quite so smart,—and with this advantage, you don't have the smartness to pay for."

"I prefer to go to a good house, where there are nice people, without too much smartness to be put into the bill."

"I know jest the kind of place, I reckon!"—and the driver whipped up his jaded horses.

He drew up before a respectable-looking wooden tenement on Pennsylvania Avenue, the windows of which, just lighted up, looked warm and inviting to the chilled and weary traveller.

"Good evening, Mrs. Markham!" said the driver to a kindly-looking lady who came to the door at his knock. "Got room for a boarder?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm afraid not," said the lady, loud enough for Salmon to hear and be discouraged. "There's only half a room unoccupied,—if he would be content with that, and if he's the right sort of person"—

Here she said something in a whisper to the driver, who apparently pointed out Salmon to her inspection.

But it was too dark for her to decide whether he would do to put into the room with Williams; so Salmon had to get down and show himself. She examined him, and he inquired her terms. They appeared mutually satisfied. Accordingly the driver received directions to deposit Salmon's baggage in the entry; and the hungry and benumbed young traveller had the comfort of feeling that he had reached a home.

Grateful at finding a kind woman's face to welcome him,—glad of the opportunity to economize his slender means by sharing a room with another person, strongly-recommended as "very quiet" by Mrs. Markham,—Salmon washed his face, combed his hair, and ate his first supper in Washington. He has eaten better suppers there since, no doubt,—but not many, I fancy, that have been sweetened by a more devout sense of reliance upon Providence.

"Williams was a companionable person, who had a place in the Treasury Department, and talked freely about the kind of work he had to do, and the salary.

"Eight hundred a year!" thought Salmon, deeming that man enviable who had constant employment, an assured position, and eight hundred a year. His ambition was to get a living simply,—to place his foot upon some certainty, however humble, with freedom from this present gnawing anxiety, and with a prospect of rising, he cared not how slowly, to the place which he felt belonged to him in the future. Little did he dream what that place was, when he questioned Williams so curiously as to what sort of thing the Treasury Department might be.

"If I could be sure of half that salary,—or even of three, or two hundred, just enough to pay my expenses, the first year,—I should be perfectly happy!"

"Haven't you any idea what you are going to do?"

"None whatever."

"What can you do?"

"For one thing, I can teach. I think I shall try that."

"You'll find it a mighty hard place to get pupils!" said Williams, with a dubious smile.

Which rather gloomy prediction Salmon had to think of before going to bed.

But soon another subject, which he deemed of far greater importance, occupied his mind. He had of late been seriously considering whether it was his duty to continue his private devotions openly, or in secret,—and had concluded, that, when occasion seemed to require it, he ought to make an open manifestation of his faith. Here now was a test for his conscience. His room-mate showed no signs of going out again that night: he had pulled off his boots, put on his slippers, and lighted his pipe. Salmon had already inferred, from the tone of his conversation, that he was not a person who could sympathize with him in his religious sentiments. Yet he must kneel there in his presence, if he knelt at all. It was not the fear of ridicule, but a certain sensitiveness of spirit, which caused him to shrink from the act. He did not hesitate long, however. He turned, and knelt by his chair. Williams took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at him over his shoulder with curious amazement. Not a word was spoken. Salmon, feeling that he had no right to intrude his devotions upon the ear of another, prayed silently; and Williams, compelled to respect the courageous, yet quiet manner in which he performed what he regarded as a solemn duty, kept his astonishment to himself.

Then Salmon arose, and went to bed for that first time in Washington under Mrs. Markham's roof.

On the twenty-third of December, 1826, the following advertisement appeared in the columns of the "National Intelligencer":—

"SELECT CLASSICAL SCHOOL.

"The Subscriber intends opening a Select Classical School, in the Western part of the City, to commence on the second Monday in January. His number of pupils will be limited to twenty, which will enable him to devote a much larger portion of his time and attention than ordinary to each individual student. Instruction will be given in all the studies preparatory to entering College, or, if desired, in any of the higher branches of a classical education. The subscriber pledges himself that no effort shall be wanting on his part to promote both the moral and intellectual improvement of those who may be confided to his care. He may be found at his room, three doors west of Brown's Hotel. Reference may be made to the Hon. Henry Clay; Hon. D. Chase and Hon. H. Seymour, of the Senate; Hon. I. Bartlett and Hon. William C. Bradley, of the House of Representatives; Rev. Wm. Hawley and Rev. E. Allen.

"SALMON ——.

"Dec. 23—3td & eotJ8."

The "Hon. Henry Clay" was then Secretary of State. The "Hon. D. Chase" referred to was Salmon's uncle Dudley, then United States Senator from Vermont. Congress was now in session, and he had arrived in town. He was a man of great practical sagacity, and kept a true heart beating under an exterior which appeared sometimes austere and eccentric. He had the year before been a second time elected to the Senate; and when he was on his way to Washington, Salmon had gone over from Hanover to Woodstock to meet him. They occupied the same room at the tavern, and the uncle had given the nephew some very good advice. What he said of the human passions was characteristic of the man; and it made a strong impression upon the mind of the youth:—

"A man's passions are given him for good, and not evil. They are not to be destroyed, but controlled. If they get the mastery, they destroy the man; but kept in their place, they are sources of power and happiness."

And he used this illustration, which, though the same thing has been said by others, remains, nevertheless, fresh as truth itself:—

"The passions are the winds that fill our sails; but the helmsman must be faithful, if we would avoid shipwreck, and reach the happy port at last."

Salmon had remembered well these words of his uncle, and the night spent with him at the Woodstock inn. Hearing of his arrival in Washington, he had called on him at his boarding-house. The Senator received him kindly, listened to his plans, approved them, and helped him to procure the references named in the advertisement.

Day after day the advertisement appeared; and day after day Salmon waited for pupils. But his room, "three doors west of Brown's Hotel," remained unvisited. Sometimes, at first, when there came a knock at Mrs. Markham's door, his heart gave a bound of expectation; but it was never a knock for him.

So went out the old year, drearily enough for Salmon. He had made the acquaintance of several people; but friends he had none. There was nobody to whom he could open his heart,—for he was not one of those persons "of so loose soul" that they hasten to pour out their troubles and appeal for sympathy to the first chance-comer. In the mean time the advertisement was to be paid for, barren of benefit though it had been to him. There was also his board-bill to be settled at the end of each week; and Salmon saw his slender purse grow lank and lanker than ever, with no means within his reach of replenishing it.

The new year came; but it brought no brightening skies to him. Lonely enough those days were! When tired of waiting in his room, he would go out and walk,—always alone. He strolled up and down the Potomac, and sometimes crossed over to the Virginia shore, and climbed the brown, wooded banks there, and listened to the clamor of the crows in the leafless oak-trees. There was something in their wild cawing, in the desolateness of the fields, in the rush of the cold river, that suited his mood. It was winter in his spirit too, just then.

Sometimes he visited the halls of Congress, and saw the great legislators of those days. There was something here that fed his heart. Wintry as his prospects were, the sun still shone overhead; his courage never failed him; he never gave way to weak repining; and when he entered those halls,—when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, and heard the superb thunder of his voice,—when he listened to the witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,—when charmed by this speaker, or convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,—there was kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic of his future.

On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he would ask, "Has anybody called for me to-day?" But there was never any letter; and Mrs. Markham's gentle response always was, "No one, Sir."

The thirteenth of January passed,—his birthday. He was now nineteen. When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing accomplishing,—to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,—to walk the streets of a lonely city, and think of home,—these things make a birthday sad and solitary.

At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,—it was appalling. What was he to do?

Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from starvation!" was his proud resolve.

Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable, patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who made them is no longer with us,—too often, alas, when she has passed forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,—we awake at once to a realization of her worth and of our loss.

What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt that she at least ought to know his resources.

"This is all I have for the present," he said to her one day, when paying his week's bill. "I thought you ought to know. I do not wish to appear a swindler,"—with a gloomy smile.

"You a swindler!" exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes. "I would trust you as far as I would trust myself. If you haven't any money, never mind. You shall stay, and pay me when you can. Don't worry yourself at all. It will turn out right, I am sure. You'll have pupils yet."

"I trust so," said Salmon, touched by her kindness. "At all events, if my life is spared, you shall be paid some day. Now you know how I am situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall be greatly obliged to you."

His voice shook a little as he spoke.

"As long as you please," she replied.

Just then there was a knock.

"Maybe that is for you!"

And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder.

She returned in a minute with shining countenance.

"A gentleman and his little boy, to see Mr. ——! I have shown them into the parlor."

Salmon was amazed. Could it be true? A pupil at last! He gave a hurried glance at himself In the mirror, straightened his shirt-collar, gave his hair a touch, and descended, with beating heart, to meet his visitor.

He was dignified enough, however, on entering the parlor, and so cool you would never have suspected that he almost felt his fate depending upon this gentleman's business.

He was a Frenchman,—polite, affable, and of a manner so gracious, you would have said he had come to beg a favor, rather than to grant one.

"This is Mr. ——? My name is Bonfils. This is my little boy. We have come to entreat of you the kindness to take him into your school."

"I will do so most gladly!" said Salmon, shaking the boy's hand.

"You are very good. We shall be greatly indebted to you. When does your school commence?"

"As soon, Sir, as I shall have engaged a sufficient number of pupils."

"All! you have not a great number, then?"

"I have none," Salmon was obliged to confess.

"None? You surprise me! I have seen your advertisement, I hear good things said of you,—why, then, no pupils?"

"I am hardly known yet. Allow me to count your son here my first, and I have no doubt but others will soon come in."

"Assuredly! Make your compliments to Mr. ——, my son. I shall interest myself. I think I shall send you some pupils. In mean time, my son will wait."

And with many expressions of good-will the cheerful Monsieur Bonfils withdrew.

This was a gleam of hope. The door of Providence had opened just a crack.

It opened no farther, however. No more pupils came. Salmon waited. Day after day glided by like sand under his feet. He could not afford even to advertise now. He was getting fearfully in debt; and debt is always a nightmare to a generous and upright mind.

"Any pupils yet?" asked Monsieur Bonfils, meeting him, one day, in the street.

"Not one!" said Salmon, with gloomy emphasis.

"Ah, that is unfortunate!"

He expected nothing less than that the Frenchman would add,—"Then I must place my son elsewhere." But no; he was polite as ever; he was charming.

"You should have many before now. I have spoken for you to my friends. But patience, my dear Sir. You will succeed. In mean time we will wait."

And with a cordial hand-shake, and a Parisian flourish, he smilingly passed on, leaving a gleam of sunshine on the young man's path.

Now Salmon was one who would never, if he could help it, abandon an undertaking in which he had once embarked. But when convinced that persistence was hopeless, then, however reluctantly, he would give it up. On the present occasion, he was not only spending his time and exhausting his energies in a pursuit which grew each day more and more dubious, but his conscience was stung with the thought that he was wronging others. Kind as Mrs. Markham was to him, he did not like to look her in the face and feel that he owed her a debt which was always increasing, and which he knew not how he should ever pay.

"Why don't you get a place in the Department?" said Williams, that enviable fellow, who had light duties, several hours each day to himself, and eight hundred a year!

"That's more easily said than done!" And Salmon shook his head.

"No, it isn't!" The fortunate Williams sat with his legs upon the table, one foot on the other, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his hand, enjoying himself. "You have an uncle in the Senate. Ask him to use his influence for you. He can get you a place." And puffing a fragrant cloud complacently into the air, he returned to his pleasant reading.

Salmon walked the room. He went out and walked the street. A sore struggle was taking place in his breast. Should he give up the school? Should he go and ask this thing of his uncle? Oh, for somebody to whom he could go for counsel and sympathy!

"Williams is perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to himself. It is not like asking him for money."

Yet he dreaded to trouble the Senator even thus much. Proud and sensitive natures do not like to beg favors, any way.

"I'll wait one day longer. Then, if not a pupil applies, I'll go to my uncle—"

He waited twenty-four hours. Not a pupil. Then, desperate and discouraged at last, Salmon buttoned his coat, and walked fast through the streets to his uncle's boarding-house.

It was evening. The Senator was at home.

"Well, Salmon?" inquiringly. "How do you get on?"

"Poorly," said Salmon, sitting down, with his hat on his knee.

"You must have patience, boy!" said the Senator, laying down a pamphlet open at the page where he was reading when his nephew came in. "Pluck and patience,—those are the two oars that pull the boat."

"I have patience enough, and I don't think I'm lacking in pluck," replied Salmon, coldly. "But one thing I lack, and am likely to lack,—pupils, I've only one, and I expect every day to lose him."

"Well, what can I do for you?" said the Senator, perceiving that his nephew had come for something.

"I would like to have you get me a place in the Treasury Department."

It was a minute before Dudley Chase replied. He took up the pamphlet, rolled it together, then threw it abruptly upon the table.

"Salmon," said he, "listen. I once got an appointment for a nephew of mine, and it ruined him. If you want half-a-dollar with which to buy a spade, and go out and dig for your living, I'll give it to you cheerfully. But I will not get you a place under Government."

Salmon felt a choking sensation in his throat. He knew his uncle did not mean it for unkindness; but the sentence seemed hard. He arose, speechless for a moment, mechanically brushing his hat.

"Thank you. I will not trouble you for the half-dollar. I shall try to get along without the appointment. Good night, uncle."

"Good night, Salmon." Dudley accompanied him to the door. He must have seen what a blow he had given him. "You think me harsh," he added; "but the time will come when you will see that this is the best advice I could give you."

"Perhaps," said Salmon, stiffly; and be walked away, filled with disappointment and bitterness.

"Well, did he promise it?" asked Williams, who sat up awaiting his return.

He had been thinking he would like to have Salmon in his own room at the Department; but now, seeing how serious he looked, his own countenance fell.

"What! Didn't he give you any encouragement?"

"On the other hand," said Salmon, "he advised me to buy a spade and go to digging for my living! And I shall do it before I ask again for an appointment."

Williams was astonished. He thought the Senator from Vermont must be insane.

But, after the lapse of a few years, perhaps he, too, saw that the uncle had given his nephew good advice indeed. Williams remained a clerk in the Department, and was never anything else. Perhaps, if Salmon had got the appointment he sought, he would have become a clerk like him, and would never have been anything else.

In a little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had the making of such clerks. And what happened a dozen years later? This: he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to administer the finances of the nation. Instead of a clerk grown gray in the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying to-day, "——, do this," or, "——, do that," and he doeth it, he is himself the supreme ruler there. He could never have got that place by promotion in the Department itself. I mention this, not to speak slightingly of clerkships,—for he who does his duty faithfully in any calling, however humble, is worthy of honor,—but to show that the ways of Providence are not our ways, and that often we are disappointed for our own good. Had a clerkship been what was in store for Salmon, he would have obtained it; but since, had he got it, he would probably have never been ready to give it up, how fortunate that he received instead the offer of fifty cents wherewith to purchase a spade!

It may be, when the new Secretary entered upon his duties, Williams was there still; for there were men in the Treasury who had been there a much longer term than from 1826 to 1861. I should like to know. I can fancy him, gray now, slightly bald, and rather round-shouldered, but cheerful as a cricket, introducing himself to the chief.

"My name is Williams. Don't you remember Williams,—boarded at Mrs. Markham's in '26 and '27, when you did?"

"What! David Williams? Are you here yet?"

"Yes, your Honor." (These old clerks all say, "Your Honor," in addressing the Secretary. The younger ones are not so respectful.) "I was never so lucky as to be turned out, and I was never quite prepared to leave. You have got in at last, I see! But it was necessary for you to make a wide circuit first, in order to come in at the top!"

Did such an interview ever take place, I wonder?

But we are talking of that evening so long ago, when Williams seemed the lucky one, and things looked so black to Salmon, after he had asked of his uncle bread, and received (as he then thought) a stone.

"Well, then I don't know what the deuse you will do!" said Williams, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

You would have said that his hopes of Salmon were likewise ashes: he had entertained himself with them a little while; now they were burnt out; and he seemed to knock them out of his pipe, too, into the fire. He got up, yawned, said he pitied ——, and went to bed.

In a little while his breathing denoted that he was fast asleep.

Salmon went to bed, too; but did he sleep?

Do not think, after all this, that he gave way to weak despondency. Something within him seemed to say, "What you have you must obtain through earnest struggle and endeavor. It is only commonplace people and weaklings who find the hinges of life all smoothly oiled. Great doors do not open so easily. Be brave, be strong, be great." It was the voice of Faith speaking within him.

The next morning he arose, more a man than he had ever felt before. This long and severe trial had been necessary to develop what was in him. His self-reliance, his strength of character, his faith in God's providence,—these were tried, and not found wanting.

Still the veil of the future remained impenetrable. Not a gleam of light shone through its sable folds. He could only watch for its uplifting, and sit still.

"A bad beginning makes a good ending," said Williams, one evening, to comfort him.

"Yes,—and a good beginning sometimes makes a bad ending. I had a lesson on that subject once. When I was about eleven years old, I started from Keene, with one of my sisters, to go and visit another sister, who was married and living at Hookset Falls, over on the Merrimac. It was in winter, and we set out in a sleigh with one horse. I was driver. My idea of sleighing was bells and fast driving; and I put the poor beast up to all he knew. We intended to reach a friend's house, at Peterborough, before night; but I found I had used up our horse-power before we had made much more than half the journey. Then came on a violent snow-squall, which obliterated the track. It grew dark; we were blinded by the storm; we got into drifts, and finally quite lost our way. Not a house was in sight, and the horse was tired out. The prospect of a night in the storm, and only a winding-sheet of snow to cover us, made me bitterly regret the foolish ambition with which I had set out. At last my sister, whose eyes were better than mine, saw a light. We went wallowing through the drifts towards it, and discovered a house. Here we got a boy to guide us; and so at last reached our friend's, in as sad a plight as ever two such mortals were in. Since which time," added Salmon, "I have rather inclined to the opinion that slow beginnings, with steady progress, are best."

"That's first-rate philosophy!" said Williams, secretly congratulating himself, however, on having made what he considered a brisk start in life.

One day Salmon passed a store where some spades were exposed for sale. He stopped to look at them. There was a strange smile on his face.

"Perhaps, after all, digging is my vocation! Well, it is an honorable one. I only wish to know what God would have me to do. If to dig, then I will undertake it cheerfully."

However, there was one great objection to his lifting a spade. It would first have been necessary to apply to his uncle for the once-rejected half-dollar. He was determined never to do that.

He walked home, very thoughtful. He could not see how it was possible that any good fortune should ever happen to him in Washington. The sights of the city had become exceedingly distasteful to him, associated as they were with his hopes deferred and his heart-sickness. He reached his door. Mrs. Markham met him with beaming countenance.

"There is a gentleman waiting for you! I reckon it's another pupil!"

His face brightened for an instant. But it was clouded again quickly, as be reflected,—

"One more pupil! Very likely! That makes two! At this rate, I shall have four in the course of a year!"

He was inclined to be sarcastic with himself. But he checked the ungrateful thoughts at once.

"What Providence sends me, that let me cheerfully and thankfully accept!"

He entered the parlor. A gentlemanly person, with an air of culture, advanced to meet him.

"This is Mr. ——?"

"That is my name, Sir."

"Mrs. Markham said you would be in in a minute; so I have waited."

"You are very kind to do so, Sir. Sit down."

"I have seen your advertisement in the 'Intelligencer.' You still think of establishing a school?"

"That is my intention."

"May I ask if you have been successful in obtaining pupils?"

"Not very. I have one engaged. I would like a dozen more, to begin with."

The gentleman took his hat. "Of course he will go, now he knows what my prospects are!" But Salmon was mistaken. The visitor seemed to have taken his hat merely for the sake of having something in his hands, to occupy them.

"Then perhaps you will be pleased to listen to my proposition?

"Certainly, Sir."

"My name is Plumley. I have established a successful classical school, as you may be aware. It is in G-Street."

"I have heard of you, Sir." And Salmon might have added, "I have envied you!"

"Well, Mrs. Phimley has recently opened a young ladies' school, which has succeeded beyond all our expectations."

"I congratulate you sincerely!"

"But it is found that the two schools are more than we can attend to. I propose to give up one. Now, if you choose to take the boys' school off my hands, I will make over my entire interest in it to you. Perhaps you may know the character the school sustains. We have, as pupils, sons of the Honorable Henry Clay, William Wirt, Southard, and other eminent men. The income amounts to something like eight hundred a year. You can go in next Monday, if you like."

Thus suddenly the door, so long mysteriously closed, flew open wide, "on golden hinges turning." What Salmon saw within was heaven. He was dazzled. He was almost stunned with happiness. His lips quivered, his voice failed him as he spoke.

"Mr. Plumley, this is—you are—too kind!"

"You accept?"

"Most gratefully!"

The young man was regaining possession of himself. He grasped the other's hand.

"You do not know what this is to me, Sir! You cannot know from what you have saved me! Providence has surely sent you to me! I cannot thank you now; but some day—perhaps—it may be in my power to do you a service."

He was not the only one happy. Mr. Plumley felt the sweetness of doing a kind action for one who was truly worthy and grateful. From that moment they were friends. Salmon engaged to see him again, and make arrangements for entering the school the next Monday; and they parted.

His benefactor gone, Salmon hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. Markham. But he could not remain in the house. His joy was too great to be thus confined. Again he went out,—but how different now the world looked to his eyes! He had not observed before that it was such a lovely spring day. The sky overhead was of heaven's deepest hue. The pure, sweet air was like the elixir of life. The hills were wondrously beautiful, all about the city; and it seemed, that, whichever way he turned, there were birds singing in sympathy with his joy. The Potomac, stretching away with soft and misty glimmer between its hazy banks, was like the river of some exquisite dream.

It was no selfish happiness he felt. He thought of his mother and sisters at home,—of all those to whom he was indebted; and in the lightness of his spirit, after its heavy burden had been taken away, he lifted up his heart in thanksgiving to the Giver of all blessings.

The school, transferred to his charge, continued successful; and it opened the way to successes of greater magnitude. Through all his subsequent career he looked back to this as the beginning; and he ever retained for Mr. Plumley the feeling we cherish for one whom we regard as a Heaven-appointed agent of some great benefaction. Were it not for trenching upon ground too private and personal, we might here complete the romance, by relating how the young man's vaguely uttered presentiment, that he might some day render him a service, was, long afterwards, touchingly realized. But enough. All we promised ourselves at the start was a glance at the Secretary's first visit to Washington.

* * * * *

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

IV.

Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader, there seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not readily be able to take up our strain of conversation, just where we left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left us seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what a home was, and how to make one.

The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals were winking dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of white ashes,—just as if some household sprite there were opening now one eye and then the other, and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us.

The close of my piece, about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell on my little audience. Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and laid her head on her knee; and though Jennie sat up straight as a pin, yet her ever-busy knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint of a tear in her quick, sparkling eye,—yes, actually a little bright bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up actively, and declared that the fire wanted just one more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; and then there was such a raking among the coals, such an adjusting of the andirons, such vigorous arrangement of the wood, and such a brisk whisking of the hearth-brush, that it was evident Jennie had something on her mind.

When all was done, she sat down again and looked straight into the blaze, which went dancing and crackling up, casting glances and flecks of light on our pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar furniture seem full of life and motion.

"I think that's a good piece," she said, decisively. "I think those are things that should be thought about."

Now Jennie was the youngest of our flock, and therefore, in a certain way, regarded by my wife and me as perennially "the baby"; and these little, old-fashioned, decisive ways of announcing her opinions seemed so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly "Jennyish," as I used to say, that my wife and I only exchanged amused glances over her head, when they occurred.

In a general way, Jennie, standing in the full orb of her feminine instincts like Diana in the moon, rather looked down on all masculine views of women's matters as "tolerabiles ineptiae"; but towards her papa she had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last degree; and one of these turns was evidently at its flood-tide, as she proceeded to say,—

"I think papa is right,—that keeping house and having a home, and all that, is a very serious thing, and that people go into it with very little thought about it. I really think those things papa has been saying there ought to be thought about."

"Papa," said Marianne, "I wish you would tell me exactly how you would spend that money you gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just your views."

"Precisely," said Jennie, with eagerness; "because it is just as papa says,—a sensible man, who has thought, and had experience, can't help having some ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth attending to. I think so, decidedly."

I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and myself with my best bow.

"But then, papa," said Marianne, "I can't help feeling sorry that one can't live in such a way as to have beautiful things around one. I'm sorry they must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am made so that I really want them. I do so like to see pretty things! I do like rich carpets and elegant carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass and silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms. I should so like to have my house look beautiful!"

"Your house ought not to look mean and common,—your house ought to look beautiful," I replied. "It would be a sin and a shame to have it otherwise. No house ought to be fitted up for a future home without a strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its arrangements. If I were, a Greek, I should say that the first household libation should be made to beauty; but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say that he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty neglects the example of the great Father who has filled our earth-home with such elaborate ornament."

"But then, papa, there's the money!" said Jennie, shaking her little head wisely. "You men don't think of that. You want us girls, for instance, to be patterns of economy, but we must always be wearing fresh, nice things; you abhor soiled gloves and worn shoes: and yet how is all this to be done without money? And it's just so in housekeeping. You sit in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts of impossible things to be done; but when mamma there takes out that little account-book, and figures away on the cost of things, where do the visions go?"

"You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk just like a woman,"—(this was my only way of revenging myself,)—"that is to say, you jump to conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I maintain that in house-furnishing, as well as woman-furnishing, there's nothing so economical as beauty."

"There's one of papa's paradoxes!" said Jennie.

"Yes," said I, "that is my thesis, which I shall nail up over the mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed his to the church-door. It is time to rake up the fire now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on the Economy of the Beautiful."

* * * * *

"Come, now we are to have papa's paradox," said Jennie, as soon as the teachings had been carried out.

Entre nous, I must tell you that insensibly we had fallen into the habit of taking our tea by my study-fire. Tea, you know, is a mere nothing in itself, its only merit being its social and poetic associations, its warmth and fragrance,—and the more socially and informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping with its airy and cheerful nature.

Our circle was enlightened this evening by the cheery visage of Bob Stephens, seated, as of right, close to Marianne's work-basket.

"You see, Bob," said Jennie, "papa has undertaken to prove that the most beautiful things are always the cheapest."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Bob,—"for there's a carved antique bookcase and study-table that I have my eye on, and if this can in any way be made to appear"—

"Oh, it won't be made to appear," said Jennie, settling herself at her knitting, "only in some transcendental, poetic sense, such as papa can always make out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths turn out to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to apply them to matters of fact."

"Now, Miss Jennie, please remember my subject and thesis," I replied,—"that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the addition-table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my own observation."

* * * * *

THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.

Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow step by step. To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and back parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses. We will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. Philip buys the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars a roll. This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings, according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of arabesque,—roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color and tracery. There, is no restraint in price,—four or six dollars a yard, it is all the same to them,—and soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, at a cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our rooms progress. Then comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may skilfully barricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord, tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave; but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us, then, with our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars; and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, etageres, centre-tables, screens, chairs of every pattern and device, for which it is but moderate to allow a thousand more. We have now two parlors furnished at an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a single article of statuary, a single object of Art of any kind, and without any light to see them by, if they were there. We must say for our Boston upholsterers and furniture-makers that such good taste generally reigns in their establishments that rooms furnished at hap-hazard from them cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the individual things are concerned. But the different articles we have supposed, having been ordered without reference to one another or the rooms, have, when brought together, no unity of effect, and the general result is scattering and confused. If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply is,—"Oh, the usual way of such parlors,—everything that such people usually get,—medallion-carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze mantel-ornaments, and so on." The only impression a stranger receives, while waiting in the dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner is rich, and able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich people get.

Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the same social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,—his house is the twin of the one Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which Philip has fitted up elegantly and three thousand?

Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make his prayer to the Graces,—for, if they cannot save him, nobody can. One thing John has to begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of Venus,—not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into harmony and proportion. Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange a garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it, and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the house. It is a veritable "gift of good faerie," this tact of beautifying and arranging, that some women have,—and, on the present occasion, it has a real material value, that can be estimated in dollars and cents. Come with us and you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple of blue-birds picking up the first sticks and straws for their nest.

"There are two sunny windows to begin with," says the good fairy, with an appreciative glance. "That insures flowers all winter."

"Yes," says John; "I never would look at a house without a good sunny exposure. Sunshine is the best ornament of a house, and worth an extra thousand a year.

"Now for our wall-paper," says she. "Have you looked at wall-papers, John?"

"Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven cents a roll; all you want of a paper, you know, is to make a ground-tint to throw out your pictures and other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of light."

"Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone-color is the best,—but I can't bear those cold blue grays."

"Nor I," says John. "If we must have gray, let it at least be a gray suffused with gold or rose-color, such as you see at evening in the clouds."

"So I think," responds she; "but better, I should like a paper with a tone of buff,—something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In short, John, I think the color of a zafferano rose will be just about the shade we want."

"Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said before, at from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then, our bordering: there's an important question, for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms?"

"There are only two to choose between," says the lady,—"green and maroon: which is the best for the picture?"

"I think," says John, looking above the mantel-piece, as if he saw a picture there,—"I think a border of maroon velvet, with maroon furniture, is the best for the picture."

"I think so too," said she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;—it is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon rep, it will make such a pretty effect."

"Yes," said John; "and then, you know, our picture is so bright, it will light up the whole. Everything depends on the picture."

Now as to "the picture," it has a story must be told. John, having been all his life a worshipper and adorer of beauty and beautiful things, had never passed to or from his business without stopping at the print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was there.

On one of these occasions he was smitten to the heart with the beauty of an autumn landscape, where the red maples and sumachs, the purple and crimson oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut-tree, on a distant hill, which stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt his fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with a desire to bound over on to the rustling hill-side and pick up the glossy brown nuts. Everything was there of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple asters and scarlet creepers in the foreground.

John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown French artist, without name or patrons, who had just come to our shores to study our scenery, and this was the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had just been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him of board-bill and washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars.

To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his. John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over, and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much less than its worth. "It was all I could give, though," he said; "and one who paid four times as much could not value it more." And so John took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,—our rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same, let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a bow-shot from our Boston.

This picture had always been the ruling star of John's house, his main dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the picture was still his mine of gold. For a picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something of the charm of the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the rallying-point of their hopes.

"Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, "I am really in doubt whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa for our parlors? They are putting in such splendid things at the other door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost disreputable,—like a heap of rubbish."

"Well," said John, laughing, "I don't suppose all together sent to an auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are, they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary, the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really is no money to get any more."

"Ah, well, then, if there isn't, we must see what we can do with these, and summon all the good fairies to our aid," said Mary. "There's your little cabinet-maker, John, will look over the things, and furbish them up; there's that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and everything revarnished; then I have found such a lovely rep, of just the richest shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they will be quite another thing."

"Trust you for that, Mary! By-the-by, I've found a nice little woman, who has worked on upholstery, who will come in by the day, and be the hands that shall execute the decrees of your taste."

"Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you know that I'm almost glad we can't get new things? it's a sort of enterprise to see what we can do with old ones."

"Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a lime-cask which the plasterers had left, and taking out his memorandum-book, "you see, I've calculated this thing all over; I've found a way by which I can make our rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on new furniture."

"Well, let's hear."

"Well, my way is short and simple. We must put things into our rooms that people will look at, so that they will forget to look at the furniture, and never once trouble their heads about it. People never look at furniture so long as there is anything else to look at; just as Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the dome des Invalides' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking at that, forgot everything else."

"But I'm not clear yet," said Mary, "what is coming of this rhetoric."

"Well, then, Mary, I'll tell you. A suit of new carved black-walnut furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, such as I should choose at David and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars, and I haven't the three hundred to give. What, then, shall we do? We must fall back on our resources; we must look over our treasures. We have our proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's; we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before, we have 'our picture.' What has been the use of our watching at the gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. Take this front-room. I propose to fill those two recesses each side of the fireplace with my books, in their plain pine cases, just breast-high from the floor: they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top of these shelves on either side to be covered with the same stuff as the furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie and put it the other side. Then I shall get of Williams and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which give you all the style and charm of the best English water-color school. I will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from those suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como over my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be 'our picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in; and the glorious Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed and hung here and there, and your flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging in the most graceful ways and places, and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which you are always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent three times the money on new furniture."

In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such beautiful rooms,—so charmingly furnished,—you must go and see them. What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the folk,—for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often, "How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family. Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue, though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original. Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art!

There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets, speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber, she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum.

But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.

* * * * *

"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? In house-furnishing, nothing is more economical than beauty."

"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up."

* * * * *

THE BLACK PREACHER.

A BRETON LEGEND.

At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, They show you a church, or rather the gray Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach; Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, 'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone, 'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see That may have their teaching for you and me.

Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell. But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, He talking his patois and I English-French, I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.

An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: 'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose; But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul. But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, Where only the wind sings miserere. Of what the monks came by no legend runs, At least they were lucky in not being nuns.

No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot, Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass In midnights unholy his witches' mass, Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by; But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.

Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair Hear the dull summons and gather there: No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; No knight whispers love in the chatelaine's ear, His next-door neighbor this five hundred year; No monk has a sleek benedicite For the great lord shadowy now as he; Nor needeth any to hold his breath, Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.