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I tried?" asked the lady, rather more shrilly than usual. Her husband shook his head, smiled, and was silent. "I ask," she said, “why a woman, why I, should not write verses as well as any other rhymer?"

Her flashing eye rested on the shabby young man; and he, fancying himself peremptorily addressed, looked slightly embarrassed for an instant, and then replied:

"Indeed, madam, I believe only for this reason. Poetesses are generally indifferent housewives. Rhyme does not, in their case, always accord with reason." Having said which, he slowly returned to his work; while the lady looked at him with a puzzled expression, as if she could not very well make out whether he had intended to be caustic or complimentary.

"You doubtless fancy yourself," she said tartly, "as famous as the authors we have hired you to review."

He looked round, with a flush on his face made up of hope and conviction of present power to be worked to further ends. "Who knows?" he asked, not of them, but of himself. "Who knows?" he repeated; and old Morgan, looking in, and gazing at that strange face with interest, saw the tears in his eyes. "Who knows?" he asked for a third time. "There is something there," he added, placing his podgy finger on his pallid brow. "Patience! God does not let the tide run up to high-water in an instant. I can wait." And he resumed his task, with this final remark, murmured low to himself, "I can wait. The spring will yet bloom for me. I know that he who cuts the balsam in the winter gets no juice. can wait; I can wait."

I

pressible, seductive, subduing, inimitable such as the son of Semele might have worn before he took to ferment his grapes and drink deeply of the liquor. The voice sounded sweet, silvery, and saucy too, as she said:

"Good folks, be kind enough to inform me if you have in the house a gentleman of the name of Mr. Oliver Goldsmith." Before reply was given, she had tapped Mrs. Griffiths on the cheek, and after kissing her husband, clapped his wig on him wrong side before, and broke into melodious peals of laughter, in which every one present would have joined, had they not of one accord kept silence to listen to the silvery intonations of her own mirth.

"My dear Mrs. Bellamy," said Griffiths, "I am glad to find you well enough to be out. As to Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, there he stands; but may I be bold enough to ask what you want with my servant ?"

"Don't be impertinent, Griffiths, nor use false terms. Mrs. Griffiths, you should teach your husband better manners. You can't? Don't I know it, my dear? Mr. Goldsmith, I have read the specimens you have sent me of your intended tragedy, and they will not do. Now don't look downhearted. I commend to you the maxim of our German trumpeter in the orchestra-Time brings roses.'"

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"Alas! madam," said Goldsmith timidly, even if it be so, shall I ever reach then without pricking my fingers with the thorns ?"

"Of course not! Why should you? Who does? As long as we can pluck the roses, never mind a scratch or two. Everybody has a thorn. Even wealthy Griffiths here feels the smart of it. Who is Griffiths' thorn, eh, Mrs. Griffiths ?" "Madam," said that lady, who hated Mrs. Bellamy, "I hope she is not."

"I hope so too, my dear," answered the actress: "and I did not say she was. I only asked the question. And, then, we have all got our pleasant little faults, which we must strive to amend-some day." (This was said with a saucy look.) "Have we anything else that is objectionable, Mr. Goldsmith ?”

In a few minutes a lady entered the shop, one of those bright creatures who can scarcely be described, and who defy criticism, except, of course, from a sister. If it be true that Lycurgus set up a graceful statue representing Laughter, and that he bade his Spartans worship the new goddess, this was the deity herself. Eye, lip, cheek, nay, as the poet says, her foot smiled. Praxiteles might have thought himself happy to have had her for a model. "Well, madam," said Oliver, "I dare Had she been by when Paris had to give say we all have; our vices, which we away the apple, it would not have fallen surrender, as Lais did her mirror, when into the bosom of Helen. Semele was she grew old, and found no more pleasure only a dairymaid in comparison with her; in using it. Our hopes, I trust, we may aland, then, she wore a saucy look-inex-ways retain. Do you bid me keep mine?"

"Bid you! Young man, there is stuff in you that shall make people talk of you centuries to come." "And love me?" "And love you. Some of us will be despised, and some forgotten, when you, sir, will be honored; but you must not write tragedies. You have the most charming style possible, but no more suited to tragedy than my muslin slip to-to-to Titus Andronicus. What have you done besides making these attempts on stilts ?" "I have only written a trifle," said the author modestly. "It's my first article -a review of Mr. Mallet's Northern Antiquities."

Mrs. Bellamy made a comically wry face, shook her head, and then remarked, "I dare say it is as bad as your tragedy." "Probably," replied the perplexed

author.

"And perhaps not," good-naturedly exclaimed the actress. "Will you come and take a dish of tea with a queen, and read this article to her majesty ?"

"Queen!" cried the two Griffithses. "What queen? We have no queen since the demise of her most gracious majesty Queen Caroline. He take tea with a queen ?"

"Ah, dear stupid old folks, Mr. Goldsmith has more wit than both of you. Now, sir," she added, "put your manuscript in your pocket, and come along." She glanced rapidly at his coat, slightly curled her charming and ineffably impertinent nose; and then, with a pshaw," and a stamp of her little foot, as if annoyed with herself, she exclaimed, "My chariot waits; let us go."

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She swept through the shop like a graceful vision; and as Goldsmith, his hour for labor having expired, prepared to follow her, Griffiths put his hand on his sleeve, and asked with great simplicity, "Mr. Goldsmith, who is the queen you are going to take tea with, and to read to her your first article?"

"Queen Roxalana," said Goldsmith, with a smile.

"O," exclaimed the publisher and his wife, "the character she plays in Alexander the Great! It is only herself."

"Only herself!" returned Goldsmith. "She, herself, is worth to me a throneroom full of queens. She has encouraged me with a hope of fame and the love of a generation to come. The promise is an

inducement to labor, and I will endure much for the great recompense."

“Ah, sir, I see, from the company you keep, you will be a miserable writer of comedies, or some such trash. Sir, you will die in the Mint, and be forgotten a fortnight afterward."

"I have faith in her promise, and in my own perseverance to make reality of it. This is 1757, and I have written nothing but an article for a review. Perhaps, in 1857, sovereigns may have my collected works in their libraries, and I may be affectionately known beyond the ocean. Perhaps―"

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Now, Mr. Goldsmith," called the sweet voice from the coach at the door. "You are stark staring mad," said Griffiths; but remember, sir, I expect you here early to-night, and at work by nine tomorrow. There is the article on Douglas to be concluded, and a second is to follow on Mr. Jonas Hanway's book; and I fear that this rantipole company will unfit you for steady labor."

"Cease to fear it, sir. What I have undertaken to perform shall be accomplished;" and he hurried off to the impatient sovereign lady in the glittering vehicle at the door. She kissed the tips of her rosy fingers to the pair who had followed Goldsmith to the threshold; and many a queen would have given her ears—or, at least, her earrings-to have looked half so imperiously and saucily handsome.

"Humph," said Griffiths, as the carriage drove off with its well-contrasted freight, "Beauty and the Beast."

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PENCILED PASSAGES.

FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS.

JOHN NEWLAND MAFFITT, with all his eccentricities, was one of the most eloquent pulpit orators of his day. His imaginative powers have been seldom equaled, and his command of language was wonderful. His written style, however, will not bear the severity of criticism. It is overloaded with ornament. Occasionally, as in this handsome tribute to

MORAL EXCELLENCE,

his sentiments, unobscured by the gorgeousness of their drapery, are worthy of preservation for their intrinsic beauty and truthfulness:

Wide and far-reaching as is the triumph of genius and art, the triumph of moral excellence is more endearing; its empire more undisputed; its immortality more certain. The great Luther, who graved the deep lines of the Reformation upon the tablet of the sixteenth century, and bade the clock of eternity pause until he had "notched the century with the impress of his master mind," he was the man! Around his brow the honors cluster that belong to him who hews an age into a shape of moral beauty, and fashions a huge fragment of time after the great model of eternity. To express the moral grandeur of these men-a Luther-a Phidias, and a Praxiteles, and a Thorswalsden might carve; a Raphael, a David, and a West might paint. They only fashion blocks and breathe beauty into tableaux: he was the creator of an age; he rolled back the dial of the dark years of the world, and wound up destiny to a brighter course."

THE BITTER AND THE SWEET. DR. BONAR, in his account of the great desert of Sinai, thus moralizes upon the two fountains found by the Israelites in their journeyings:

Marah and Elim! How near they lie to each other? Thus near to each other are the bitter and sweet of life, the sorrow and the joy of time! Both in the same desert, and oftentimes following each other in the progress of one day or hour. The bitter, too, is first, and then the sweet. Not first Elim and then Marah; but Marah first and then Elim; first the cloud, then the sunshine; first the weariness, then the rest. In token of this we broke off a small branch of palm from one of these Elim trees, and laying it on the similar branch which we had brought from Marah, we tied them together, to be kept in perpetual memorial, not merely of the scenes, but of the truth which they so vividly teach.

GLOOM AND SUNSHINE.

Here is a striking parallel between the natural and the moral world, which may induce some faint heart, in the hour of adversity, to be of good cheer:

There are dark hours that mark the history of the brightest years. For not a whole month in many of the millions of the past, perhaps, has the sun shone brilliantly all the time.

And there have been cold and stormy days in every year. And yet the mists and shadows of the darkest hour disappeared and fled heedlessly. The most cruel ice fetters have been broken and dissolved, and the most furious storm loses its power to harm.

And what a parable is this in human life, of our inside world, where the heart works at its destined labors! Here, too, we have the overshadowings of the dark hours, and many a cold blast chills the heart to its core. But what matters it? Man is born a hero, and it is only in the darkness and storms that heroism gains its greatest and the best development, and the storm bears it more rapidly on to its destiny. Despair not, then. Neither give up; while one good power is yours, use it. Disappointment will not be realized. Mortifying failure may attend this effort and that one; but only be honest and struggle on, and it will work well.

CURIOSITY AND THE LOVE OF STUDY Are reciprocal. The one promotes the other, and both are susceptible of indefinite increase, as is well observed by SIDNEY SMITH:

Curiosity is a passion very favorable to the love of study, and a passion very susceptible of increase by cultivation. Sound travels so many feet in a second, and light travels so many feet in a second. Nothing more probable; but you do not care how light and sound travel. Very likely; but make yourself care; get up, shake yourself well, pretend to care, make believe to care, and very soon you will care, and care so much, that you will sit for hours thinking about light and sound, and be extremely angry with any one who interrupts you in your pursuits; and tolerate no other conversation but about light and sound; and catch yourself plaguing everybody to death who approaches you, with the discussion of these subjects,

THE EXPECTED MESSENGER.

Whom the gods love die young. So reads the ancient heathen proverb. And blessings brighten as they take their flight. So sings the Christian poet; and another, coming still nearer to the heart,

There is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!

In plain prose, and yet poetically, a writer in the Olive Branch, the editor, we suppose, describes the coming of the dreaded but expected messenger:

For weary days and nights his coming had been anticipated. Love had kept its nightly vigils by the cradle-side. "Hope against hope" kept the heart from bursting. Only those who have waited anxiously, and waited long, in painful suspense, can appreciate such thrilling moments. At midnight, when all was silent as the grave, save the quick, short breathing of the little sleeper, a watcher said, "He will come ere the morning sun look in at the window." "O, that he might tarry long, yea, forever," was the first impulsive outburst of bleeding hearts! Unwelcome messengers darken every door they enter. But O how dark when the visitor comes to dash away cups of human

Joy! Say, reader, did you ever wait through the still, solemn night for the coming of such a guest? When the clock struck twelve was there no startling significance in the announcement, "He will come ere the sun is up!" How much of life, hope, and fear were crowded into those remaining hours!

For a moment we rested upon a pillow. Dreams, full of bright, heavenly visions, delighted the spirit, as they bore it away to Elysian fields. But the sweet spell was broken by the sound of a voice, “He has come! He has come!" In an instant we were leaning over the cradle, and looking down into the face of our angel babe. Sure enough (and none but those who have had the bitter experience can know how terrible is the reality) the expected messenger had come. His name was DEATH.

MOUNT WASHINGTON.

THOSE who are familiar with the majestic grandeur of the scenery here alluded to, will appreciate this description from the pen

of EDWARD EVERETT :

I have been something of a traveler in our own country, though far less than I could wish; and in Europe have seen all that is most attractive, from the Highlands of Scotland to the Golden Horn of Constantinople; from the summit of the Hartz Mountains to the Fountain of Vaucluse; but my eye has yet to rest on a lovelier scene than that which is discovered from Mount Washington, when, on some clear, cool summer's morning, at sunrise, the cloud-curtain is drawn up from nature's grand proscenium, and all that chaos of wildness and beauty starts into life; the bare gigantic tops of the surrounding heights; the precipitous gorges a thousand fathoms deep, which foot of man or ray of light never entered; the somber matted forest; the moss-clad rocky wall, weeping with crystal springs; winding streams, gleaming lakes, and peaceful villages below; and in the dini, misty distance, beyond the lower hills, faint glimpse of the sacred bosom of the eternal deep, ever heaving up with the consciousness of its own immensity; all mingled in one indescribable panorama by the hand of the DIVINE ARTIST.

CLERICAL REPUTATION.

DR. CHEEVER, in an address before the Andover Theological Seminary, made some forcible and pertinent remarks on the present position of the pulpit with reference to its efficiency. We copy a few sentences:

Preachers should have no care for their reputation as preachers, but they should have all-absorbing love for the truth; they should be permeated with it, and then their reputation will take care of itself. There are many men, who, having acquired a reputation, spend not a little of their precious time in taking care of it! It is their wealth; they hoar it as they do money.

The price of fancy stocks in this world depreciates in proportion as we lay up treasures in the world to come, and the beautiful bubbles which we blow, burst in proportion as we look at the substantial and enduring relations of eternity. The physician of the body never asks if the medicine is agreeable to the patient, or to the friends of the patient, and so should the preacher ever be deaf to the opinions and prejudices of men to the truth. The human heart is not to be approached by the preacher as if he were afraid of it; VOL. XI.-35

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as if it was a fort or citadel, and that he was to be anly; not by zigzag approaches, but by all the great nihilated by its guns; but it must be approached boldpark of artillery at his command; the cannon shotted, ready to be touched off; not with mere intellectuality; with beautiful banners, too nice to be blackened by the smoke.

To speak with power, the pulpit must preach to the conscience, and not to prejudices and opinions. Human opinions or laws never should come between tho preacher and his duty. Pew rents have nothing to do with preaching. Only think of St. Paul or Timothy being waited upon by a committee of the society, advising them not to preach to the consciences of men, because it will affect the rents of the pews!

MAN'S NOBLEST WORK.

works of nature. They are commended as THERE is a great deal of cant about the the country, we are told, but man made the the sole object worthy of study. God made town, and the line has passed into almost perpetual currency. Like many other proverbs, however, it conveys more than the truth. There is something more than the work of man in the crowded city. There is mind there, intellect, genius. And it is well said by a writer in a recent number of Blackwood:

When the labors of the day are over, the delicious calm of candle-light invites us to quiet intercourse with one of the great spirits of the past, or one of their worthy successors in the present. It is well thus to refresh the mind with Literature. Contact with Nature, and her inexhaustible wealth, is apt to beget an impatience at man's achievements; and there is danger of the mind becoming so immersed in details, so strained to contemplation of the physical glories of the universe, as to forget the higher grandeurs of the soul, the nobler beauties of the moral universe. From this danger we are saved by the thrill of a fine poem, the swelling sympathy with a noble thought, which flood the mind anew with a sense of man's greatness, and the greatness of his aspirations. It is not wise to dwarf Man by comparisons with Nature; only when he grows presumptuous may we teach him modesty by pointing to her grandeur. At other times it is well to keep before us our high calling and our high estate. Literature, in its finest moods, does this. And when I think of the delight given by every true book to generations after generations, molding souls and humanizing savage impetuosities, exalting hopes and prompting noblest deeds, I vary the poet's phrase, and exclaim:

An honest book's the noblest work of man!

PUSEYISM FOR YOUNG LADIES. academic belle, and her High Church proCONYBEARE is satirical. Describing an clivities, he says:

She was also very romantic, very enthusiastic, passionately fond of music and poetry, and a most devoted disciple of Tractarian orthodoxy. Indeed, it may be remarked in passing, that this faith is peculiarly suited accomplishments, sets them upon embroidering altar to young ladies; for it encourages and utilizes their cloths, illuminating prayer-books, elaborating sur

plices, practicing church music, carving credence tables, and a hundred other innocent diversions, which it invests with the prestige of religious duty. And besides this, it imposes no cruel prohibition (like the rival creed) upon their favorite amusements; but commends the concert, smiles upon the ball, and does not even anathematize the theater.

THE BEAUTY OF WOMAN

Is not increased by gaudy dress, nor heightened by costly ornaments. Feminine loveliness is not a purchasable commodity. Like the absolute necessaries of life, air and water, grace and loveliness are within the reach of all; and there is truth in the sentiment that

A woman has not a natural grace more bewitching than a sweet laugh. It is like the sound of flutes on the water. It leaps from her heart in a clear sparkling rill, and the heart that hears it feels as if bathed in the cool, exhilarating spring. And so of the smile. A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to the landscape. It embellishes an inferior face, and redeems an ugly one. A smile, however, should not become habitual, or insipidity is the result; nor should the mouth break into a smile on one side, the other remaining passive and unmoved, for this imparts an air of deceit and grotesqueness to the face. A disagreeable smile distorts the lines of beauty, and is more repulsive than a frown. There are many kinds of smiles, each having a distinctive character; some announce goodness and sweetness, others betray sarcasm, bitterness, and pride; some soften the countenance by their languishing tenderness, others brighten it by their brilliant and spiritual vivacity. Gazing and poring before a mirror cannot aid in acquiring beautiful smiles half so well as to turn the gaze inward, to watch that the heart keeps unsullied from the reflection of evil, and is illumined and beautified by all sweet thoughts.

LIGHT FROM GERMANY.

THE Germans are great book-makers, and England steals from them, expanding their thoughts, and not unfrequently appropriating them without acknowledgment. There is truth, however, in the somewhat satirical remarks of an English reviewer upon the subject:

Modern Germany is everything by turns and nothing long. With her, and with not a few of her admirers, newest and best are synonymous terms. She is vain, not so much of her consistency, as of her mu

SEA-WEED.

SEA-WEED! What a loss those inland people have, who, when they read Longfellow's exquisite lay, can only fancy what it is like, and do not know how true is the musical murmur of the song of the sea-weed. When descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks:
From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars uplifting

On the desolate, raving seas:
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting,
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;
Till in shelter'd coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.

PLAIN SPEAKING.

IN former days, it seems, as well as now, ministers were in the habit of dealing in fine phrases and dainty epithets. That stern Anglo-Saxon, SOUTH, was unmitigated in his denunciation of the practice. Speaking of one of Paul's discourses, he says:

Nothing here (in Paul's discourse) of the fringes of the North star, nothing of the down of angels' wings or the beautiful locks of cherubim, and clouds rolling in airy mansions. No; these were similitudes above the apostolic spirit; for they, poor mortals, were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world in plain terms that he who believed not should be damned.

FRIENDSHIP.

THERE is a great deal of selfishness in the world, and it is the common cant to magnify men's failings, and to darken the picture presented by the rarity of true friend

tability. It is made to be a reproach to the English ship. It is nevertheless true, as Emerson

man that to know him once is to know him always. Whereas a German may have a new speculative whereabouts every twelvemonth or two years, and may regard each new change as a creditable indication of his activity and independence. Hence the neverending contradiction, not only between each man and his neighbor, but between each man and himself. It becomes a thoughtful man, therefore, to be careful how he avails himself of apparent light from that quarter, seeing that much of it is-cannot fail to be, of the ignis fatuus description.

has it, that

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Mauger all the selfishness that chills the world like east winds, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eyebeams. The heart knoweth.

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