Bob's father had been absent for some time on business, and was expected that day week. So for fear any anxiety should be felt at his staying out very late, he remarked at the table, that he had an engagement with a friend that evening, which might detain him very late. 'Bob," said his sister Lilly, half frettingly, "why can't your stay contented with me at home one evening in the week at least? You are always away. Now I've just learned some new pieces of music I thought you might like to hear and was going to beg of you to keep in the house to-night. You'll surely meet with some one you would rather not, some of these dark nights. Come, do stay at home for my sake."

Had this protest and appeal fallen on the ears of any other person than Bob Sangar, Timothy Twitter for instance, they would have had their due effect. But Bob could be governed no better by a silken than a leathern rein, and his heedlessness of both had made him just what we find him, a furious, though by no means reckless, young man, as allied to danger as to a harmless frolick. He heeded no such advice, and thought it no trespass to disobey the mild commands of one, who would love him none the less for so doing. But for appeasing her desires, he consented to stay a little while and listen to her merry laugh, or comment on her improved fingering of her instruments, or perhaps tell her a sad tale of some poor victim of the dissecting knife, with which he met in his daily lectures, (as if to brace himself to his coming task.) The hours passed, and ascertaining by his watch it wanted but a few minutes of his appointed hour-nine-he abruptly left the house, and found his way around to the barn, where Tony had equipped every thing to his satisfaction. Again he warned Tony to be ready waiting for him and his horse, and drove away to Tim Twitter in as high flow of spirits as could under the circumstances be expected.

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Wul, wul," said Tony, when he was once fairly out of hearing, "it's my turn now nigga flesh be as good as white skin, and massa ought to know it too. I'll manage to inform him." The negro wheeled about on his heel with his hands in his pockets and arranged matters about the premises to direct his course immediately to an old tavern not far from their scene of action, where he well knew they would stop to warm themselves with a glass of liquor.

Up this street, and down that, dashed Bob and his lumbering vehicle, now in the full glare of the lighted street lamp, and again through a lane so dark and muddy that a traveler would never have dared to intrude upon its silent precincts. But still the horse and rider went on, straight on, to the well known residence of Mr. Timothy Twitter. In the condition in which we left him, gazing in the fire, trembling with fearful suspense and agitation, sat our redoubtable Tim, when Bob drew up at the door, fastened his horse and commenced thundering at the door of his terror-stricken friend. Tim's hair fairly stood on end; he hesitated whether to go at all, not knowing but he might fall beneath the bludgeon of a robber or the steel of some hardened assassin. By some fortunate means he so far recovered himself as to recollect his

appointment with his friend Bob, and as if suddenly relieved, he sprang to the door and opened it, neglecting to ask as the price of admission the name of his visitor, lest Lilly might possibly hear of his fear. In sprang Bob in his great-coat and skull-cap and with his jovial "Hallo," pushed into the inner room, leaving Tim again to fasten the door if he chose.

Tim soon found his way back, inwardly exclaiming the while, "I was in hopes he wouldn't come!" and soon seated himself by the fire by the side of his newly arrived friend. The comer spoke not for some time, but sat with his hands spread out on his knees, intently surveying the arrangements of the fire department, and possibly hoping Tim would open the conversation. But such a hope was to all appearance groundless: Tim would willingly have set there all night, if by so doing he thought his services on the coming occasion could have been dispensed with. So he looked into the fire too.

Well," suddenly exclaimed Bob Sangar, with striking emphasis on this first word, "you're ready, I suppose, Twitter," for he often called him by his christian name, when his thoughts were serious.

'Why, y-e-s," yawned Tim, "I s'pose so," but still he made no effort to move, nor showed the least signs of any such disposition.

"Well then, on with your coat and hat," rejoined Bob in a tone that betokened some impatience; "the sooner we're off now the better. Just the night for us too; the very ghosts won't dare to leave their haunts on such a night as this."

Tim had at this command risen to envelop himself in his coat, and was for him fast advancing in his labor; but at the word ghost he trembled, and the arm that was stretched out to find its way through its coat sleeve fell as if lifeless or struck with palsy. "You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Bob ?" said Tim in a somewhat low voice.

"Ghosts!" shouted Bob, till the poorly furnished room fairly echoed again, “devil a bit I care for those night-walkers. Of course I can't help believing in 'em when their existence carries such incontestible evidence to our very senses. My own uncle Jed saw one once with his own eyes, and well would it have been for him if that had been all, poor man. He had a bed with four posts above it, there, like yours there; he felt unwell one night, and was startled from his sleep by hearing several persons in slow and solemn conversation; so he listened the sound came nearer and nearer-soon he saw four upright figures, one at each corner of his bed, gesturing and chattering away. He heard one of them say, "What a large coffin Jed must have!" and shrieked for very fright, till the whole house came to his relief. The spectres were gone, but he never got over it, and after lingering along for some time under the tortures of a burning brain fever, died repeating to his friends that stood around his bedside,—' Let Jed have a large coffin!' That's all true too!"

Poor Tim was not proof against all this, and never would have stood it another moment, had not the bold Bob offered to sing an old graverobber's song to cheer himself up with, and commenced his singing too before time was given for Tim's acquiescence. It ran thus:

"Away, Boys! away!

To the grave-yard, I say,—

Away with your pick-axe and spade!
There's a cloud overhead,

And the moon is a-bed,

And all noise in deep silence is laid

Then away, haste away,

Ere the light of the day

And suspicion your motions has weighed.

Here we go there we go,—

Now above-now below,

O'er turf-mounds and graves of the sleepers;
O'er foes, and o'er friends,-

Where the light willow bends,

And the grass is refreshed by the weepers!
The red-crested worm

Will ne'er harm the form

Of which we have made ourselves.keepers.

The spade-how it rings

In the ear as it brings

The half-eaten coffin to light!

And the dirt-how it falls

Back to its dark halls,

Where it mouldered away from the sight!

And the sleeper is moved

From the place that he loved

At the speed of the grave-robber's flight.”

By the time this comforting solo had been performed, Tim had become somewhat hardened, and mustered spunk enough to speak in high terms of praise concerning the whole musical performance. His coat was fastened tightly around him, and his hat drawn in a very unusual manner down over his eyes, when after intently surveying his appearance in the glass before him, whose presence we had forgotten in the enumeration of his earthly possessions, he very significantly made it known to Bob that he thought he was ready. Such report of progress was extremely welcome to Bob, and he was, as the reader may imagine, the first out of doors, standing by the side of his vehicle. Tim followed on, fastened the door, and was soon seated by the side of his friend on the seat.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE THREE NEW ELEMENTS OF MODERN LIFE.

MODERN LIFE has three new elements which mainly distinguish it from ancient. 1st. A new physical constitution, bestowed by the Germanic conquests. 2d. The perfected Roman Law and Literature, and 3d. Christianity. With the operation of each of these elements on ourselves, we are familiar: every circumstance of Life, from the earliest formation of the body to the highest religious impulse of the soul, is moulded by one or another of them. But there are certain remarkable facts connected with the union of these elements, and a great conclusion to be drawn from the future development of this union, with which we are not so familiar.

Our physical constitution derives from the ancient Germans.

Of their history, I need say nothing; they swept away the worn-out, useless races that lay stagnant on the noblest regions of the earth, as the fresh wind of the mountain sweeps away the foul mists which moulder in the valleys around its base it was a violent wind indeed, and in those valleys, many a fair flower perished, whose beauty we cannot but lament; even huge trees and rocks which had stood so firm in their age and strength that they seemed the very buttresses of Nature, would sometimes fall; but we may be sure that a more valuable vegetation has grown in the soil which the flowers occupied, and that out of the fragments of the trees and rocks men have built their dwellings. There are indeed great charms in all that is connected with these Northerners of the world. There was a luxuriance of grandeur in their dark old forests, scarce younger than the deep rivers and inland seas upon which their shadows fell in their unknown beasts and people of giant stature and strength-in the wonderful tales they told of their half human parents, and half human deities; but it was only physical luxuriance. There was a luxuriance of beauty too, in the cold silent shades of those forests, in their quiet summers and in their blue-eyed, fair-haired men ; but it was only physical luxuriance. You will look in vain, through the histories of this people, previous to the fall of the Roman Empire, in their few writings, and in the traces of their action on society, for any thing which appears like what we call intellectual culture. Modern history has obtained its bodies of them, but its mind must be sought elsewhere. While the Germans were reared in twelve hundred years' contest with the strictest forms of Nature and of Man, to be the physical ancestors of a new history, the Romans had been taught in all the knowledge which the world could afford, to be the ancestors of its mind. But is this really so? Do we indeed owe nothing of this mind, to the parentage of this body? The mountain stream does indeed bring down a few golden grains which are worth preserving, but the great mind, the chief source of our treasure, must be sought elsewhere. From the Norse pirates, through the Saxon Kings of England, you will find little of this race worth preserving-little that has been preserved, besides the strong physical frame. No, the Romans are as truly our intellectual ancestors, as the German our physical.

1844.]

THE THREE NEW ELEMENTS OF MODERN LIFE.

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But what are the body and the mind without the soul? What is strength, while a frightful uncertainty pervades us whether it come of God or of the Demon? What is mind, while its cultivation only makes us doubt of Virtue and of Vice, which is our Master, which our Maker? When in the beginning the Earth was created in chaos and emptiness-God yet designed it for the dwelling place of beings sensitive to beauty and deformity. All the elements which we call strong, the winds, the waters, and the fires, were set for a hundred centuries at work upon the mass, yet nothing beautiful appeared until there were but six days left, before the sensitive beings must be created. There was no sun by day, nor moon by night, to soften the rough surface of rocks and waters-there was no life of beasts, of birds nor of flowers-there was no light save occasional foul glimmers on the ground, or quick flashes of lightning through the sky, when of a sudden, a voice was heard "Let there be light;" then was the accumulated strength of those dark ages brightened by the sun and the moon: a soft bed of flowers and herbage overspread the naked rocks, and Man appearedthe sensitive being for whose eye of beauty the whole was made. But was not Man in the Earth before? was he an entirely new creation, or was he not part of the original, and made complete when the elements had prepared the place of his life? You remember that "the Lord God formed Man out of the dust of the ground." Wonderfully like this whole scene of the birth of animal life in Man, was the birth of his spiritual, the introduction of Christianity. Through long ages, the original elements of Nature had been working among the masses of men, developing their strength and arranging their powers, and strength was developed and power after power received its proper equilibrium, until all that these elements could do, was done. But, as in the beginning there had been no light by which to discern the excellencies of creation, nor animal life, to enjoy these excellencies, so, now there was no moral light, nor life. Man had indeed tried his strength in grappling with the forms of evil, which he could not fail to perceive always about himyet how vainly! The darkness was scarcely broken by the faint light that would sometimes glimmer like a will-o'-the-wisp across a few feet of ground, or it was torn asunder by a flash through the sky alike terrible and unprofitable-then suddenly shone out that calm star in the East, and the troubled religions and philosophies which lay half dead, half alive through the world, were revived and purified into the perfect, universal faith. This was the true birth of the soul-its ancestry was God.

But was not the soul on Earth before? Was the soul an entirely new creation? As the body lay unformed and useless dust, before it was inspired with animal life, so did the soul lie formless and useless before it was inspired with spiritual life.

Behold now, the three elements united: a German body, with a Roman mind and a Christian soul.

There is that in the very fact of this union which of itself would lead us to anticipate great results, if we had not already knowledge of them. Indeed, had we lived at the very time when it first began, we think we