bat the hard and bitter strokes of fortune with which she was so often lashed.

Just here it may be proper to state that Mrs. Warren Jourdan, at the ripe age of fifty-four years, has in course of preparation a practical Cookery Book," which will be peculiarly adapted to the wants of the young and inexperienced housekeepers in our distressed and impoverished Southland. Reared, as the women of the South were, in luxury and ease, and being deprived of their inheritance, trained servants, etc., they are left without guide or director in the culinary department. This book, then, is a sine qua non with the wives of our soldier-boys. It will soon be ready for their use. All who have ever eaten at the hospitable board of Col. Jourdan can testify to the excellency and deliciousness of Mrs. Jourdan's cuisine.

Begging pardon for our digression, we return to that which interests us more particularly the birth, education, talents, and literary career of our authoress. The felicitous union of which we have spoken was fruitful of four as handsome and intelligent children as ever blessed the home and hearts of fond parents. The third child and second daughter was Maria Elizabeth Jourdan. Loveliness of person and precocity of mind were her gifts from nature. It was a rare thing for one to pass the thoughtful little beauty without prophesying a brilliant future for her. Even in tender childhood she gave unmistakable evidences of that genius which has given to the literati those essays which have appeared from time to time in the columns of "Scott's Monthly," and the "Ladies' Home Gazette," both periodicals published in the city of Atlanta, the home of Mrs. Westmoreland.

With Maria Jourdan, music was a passion. Having been so fortunate as to have always enjoyed the tuition of skilful masters, she early became a proficient in the art, and, unlike most married ladies, she has never thrown aside her favorite amusement, but devotes much time to familiarizing herself with the various operas, etc., her rendition of some of which is worthy a Strakosch or a Verdi. Her touch is exquisite and thrilling, her manipulation wonderful. Nor should we fail to speak of her beautiful improvisations, which so often charm and delight the home circle. Hour after hour have we seen her under the inspiration, as it were, of Orpheus, while strain after strain of the most witching music would be borne upon the air, ravishing the ear, melting the heart, and causing the eye to grow liquid, and the lip to quiver with emotion. On such occasions Mrs. Westmoreland is tran

scendently charming. The rapt look she wears; the deeply sad expression of her large, dark, and lustrous eyes; the heightening color, the classic brow, where "thought sits enthroned "—all, all combine to form a picture over which artists would delight to linger. Her manners are fascinating—not indeed free from that hauteur peculiar to high-bred Southern women; but she commands without repulsing. She is a brilliant colloquist, her conversations abounding in wit, repartee, and pleasantry.

Mrs. Westmoreland is endowed with a high order of intellect, excelling, when at college, in mathematics and the languages. She also early evinced a preference for the study of the classics, and her mind is richly stored with stories and legends of those real and mythical personages whose marvellous deeds and glorious achievements have been sung from time immemorial. The Baptist College, located in the beautiful and refined city of La Grange, is the alma mater of Mrs. Westmoreland, as it is also of her not less gifted but less ambitious sister, Mrs. Madeline V. Bryan, who writes charmingly both in prose and poetry. A few weeks after the completion of her seventeenth birthday, Maria Jourdan became the wife of Dr. W. F. Westmoreland, of Atlanta. They went to Atlanta to reside. Mrs. Westmoreland's musicals and conversazioni were always brilliant and recherché. She was also the founder of a "literary club," whose members convened once a week at her residence on Marietta Street. On these occasions, private theatricals were performed, and poems read or delivered, each member being compelled to contribute something for the amusement and edification of the "club." These weekly reunions were replete with interest and information, and happy they, indeed, who formed one of this charmed circle. Mrs. Westmoreland's home has been brightened by two lovely and intelligent children; the elder, a daughter of eight summers, resembles her mother both in mind and person.

The advent of this little one occurred on the day South Carolina seceded; her father, a staunch and uncompromising secessionist, immediately gave his daughter the name of that gallant and chivalric State. The younger child is a lovely, golden-haired boy of scarce four years. He came to his mother, not when the cause of the South was hopeful, but at the fatal hour when Sherman captured and desolated Atlanta! They are both children of the revolution, and we can but breathe a prayer that before they arrive at their respective estates of woman

hood and manhood, the clouds which blacken and threaten our political horizon may be dissipated, and that peace and harmony may be restored to our wretched and distracted Southland.

Mrs. Westmoreland was devoted to the cause of the South, and toiled unremittingly, through heat and cold, rain and sunshine, during those terrible years of blood and carnage from which we have but emerged. She composed two very creditable "dramas," which were entitled "The Soldier's Wife," and "The Soldier's Trials;" these were performed upon the "boards" of the Atlanta Athenæum. The proceeds, which were munificent, were donated to the destitute wives and children of those brave Atlantians who were battling so manfully for our cause on the historic soil of the "Old Dominion."

The first evening the play of "The Soldier's Wife" was presented, the Athenæum was crowded almost to suffocation: the order and decorum observed on that occasion was wonderful, and bespoke at once the high regard and appreciation which the Atlanta public felt for the dramatic neophyte. The emotion evinced by that vast audience was deep and unfeigned; and every eye shed a tear and every bosom heaved a sigh over the stricken wife who had abandoned herself to sorrow, in the hourly expectation of the news of the condemnation of her husband, who had deserted the army, and fled to his home and little ones to preserve them from starvation. The play was a decided success, and the youthful follower of Eschylus left the Athenæum amid the congratulations of many sincere and loving friends.

Mrs. Westmoreland has discovered a wonderful talent for essay writing; her reviews also of different authors evince a rare conception, and a nice discrimination possessed by few. Her charming reviews of Owen Meredith's "Lucille" and "Aurora Leigh" have caused many to read those poems who would never have done so but for the rapturous eulogies pronounced by her upon their writings. Her "Cacoethes Loquendi," "Scribendi," and "Carpendi " are characteristic pieces, conversational in style, and abounding in humor, satire, and wit. Among the many essays which have emanated from the graceful and facile pen of Mrs. Westmoreland, not one has been more warmly received than "What is It?" There are many things in that production which go home to the heart of every reader, and he vainly asks himself, “What is it?" that he is ever desiring, ever striving after. Alas! echo mockingly answers, "What is it?"

Her contributions appeared under the signature of "Mystery."

"Onward - Upward," an essay of much vigor and research, is pronounced by many to be her chef-d'œuvre: really, where one has written so many clever things, we confess ourselves at a loss to know on which to bestow the palm. Mrs. M. J. Westmoreland's name is before the public; the veil of "Mystery" in which she was so long enshrouded has been swept aside; and with the heart-felt wish that the "gods" may look kindly upon her, we leave her to the fulfilment of her destiny. Mrs. Westmoreland will shortly publish a novel anonymously, and contemplates issuing her "Essays" in a gala suit of "blue and gold,” a dress they merit, and deserve a large circulation.

THE UNATTAINABLE.

That indefinable longing—that hopeless yearning after what we have not — that craving of the human heart which is never satisfied that irrepressible desire to go forth into the Invisible—to live in the ideal, forgetting and forgotten to roam from star to star, from system to system, only holding intercourse with the unseen spirits that dwell in this imaginary world! Twelve hours of such existence were worth a whole lifetime tamely spent in eating, drinking, and sleeping! We are taught that reason and judgment are more to be desired and cultivated than all the other mental faculties, while imagination is the least desirable, and, if indulged in, produces a listless inertia, which erects an ideal standard of life, leading us into untold vagaries and idiosyncrasies. But, in the words of Mrs. Browning:

"If heads

That hold a rhythmic thought must ache perforce,
For my part, I choose headaches."

So, if imagination, on this je ne sais quoi, can carry us beyond this "vale of tears" can stop for a moment Ixion's fatal wheel can make Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, essay his efforts for water—then give us the ideal — let us dwell in the imaginary. First let us consider what are we born for? A purpose. What do we live for? —vainly pursuing that will-o'-the-wisp, Happiness, which, while we grasp it, glides through our fingers, and is gone. We die-hoping to reach heaven. Since Adam's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, human nature, in every age, in every clime, and under all circumstances, has been the same. Empires have risen and fallen men tempted and overcome women flattered and betrayed-martyrs in every cause have perished on the rack and at the stake. And what is the cause of it all? Is it not that uncontrollable desire to "o'erleap our destinies," and

penetrate the realms of the unknown? We are undoubtedly born to fill some niche in the great walls of the world; but where that vacancy is, few of us discover until too late, or, having found, still fewer go to work in real earnest to fulfil their allotted destinies. That "life is real, life is earnest," too few of us appreciate; and that we are all rather blindly following some phantom, some ideal of the soul, is too palpably true to be controverted. There is implanted in every human breast, with any aspiration at all, a heart-felt craving that will not be stilled- a something that preys upon our very lives as the vulture upon the vitals of Prometheus. It seeks to go beyond our present life, and fain would pierce the dim shades of futurity, hoping to find in its winding mazes that phantasm which did not reveal itself in the past, and which the present denies.

These phantoms rise up from the shrine of ambition, and every other passion to which mankind are prone. Does it not seem strange, that with all the lights of the past before us, we should so often be deluded? Is it not stranger still that we should trust this ignis fatuus, knowing it has lured so many unwary pilgrims to destruction - these spectres, that lead us blindly on, and elude our very grasp when we stretch forth our hands to clasp them? Each individual fancies himself the fortunate one who is to escape disappointment and sorrow-whose bark is to sail upon an unruffled sea, propelled by propitious gales — still hoping to evade the fatal whirlpool, until he is irretrievably lost in its circling eddies. This "Wandering Jew," this restive demon is never at ease. Take the first mentioned of these phantoms

– these invisible giants that crush as they bear you onward: Ambition, for example. It is a monster of frightful mien, a fiend incarnate, which sacrifices everything to gain its ends. It heeds not the cries of orphans, nor the prayers of widows. It sheds with wanton hand the blood of the brave, and gazes on the criminal with defiant scorn. It snatches from men their morals, from women their virtue. It turns love into hate-rends asunder family ties-disrupts governments- toils unceasingly on, ever on, and levels everything in its march to victory. Argus-eyed, it watches to add more victims to its list. The night is engrossed with plots which the day shall execute. When, at last-having forfeited honor, principle, friends, name, and everything worth living for--this proud Lucifer reaches the topmost round of the ladder of fame, dragging its weary victims after it, we find, alas! too late, that the dream of our lives, the Ultima Thule of our hopes, "like DeadSea fruit, turns to ashes on our lips." By ambition, angels fell; and it cannot be expected that poor, frail mortals should win where seraphs failed.