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ulties got absorbed in the dreary sense of| The morning passed, however, without cold and bodily discomfort, and then she any further words on the subject, and her rose and said her prayers, and untwisted heart had begun to beat easier and her her pretty hair and brushed it out, and excitement to calm down, when Mrs. went to bed, feeling as if she would have Damerel suddenly came to her, after the to watch through the long dark hours till | children's lessons, which was now their morning, though the darkness and loneli- mother's chief occupation. She came ness frightened her, and she dreaded the upon her quite unexpectedly, when Rose, night. But Rose was asleep in half an moved by their noiseless presence in the hour, though the tears were not dry on room, and unable to keep her hands off her eyelashes, and I think slept all the them any longer, had just commenced in long night through which she had been the course of her other arrangements afraid of, and woke only when the first (for Rose had to be a kind of upper housegrey of daylight revealed the cold room maid, and make the drawing-room habitaand a cold morning dimly to her sight ble after the rough and ready operation slept longer than usual, for emotion tires which Mary Jane called "tidying") to the young. Poor child! she was a little make a pretty group upon a table in the ashamed of herself when she found how window of Mr. Incledon's flowers. Cersoundly she had slept. tainly they made the place look prettier and pleasanter than it had ever done yet, especially as one stray gleam of sunshine, somewhat pale, like the girl herself, but cheery, had come glancing in to light up the long, low, quaint room and caress the flowers. "Ah, Rose, they have done you good already!" said her mother; "you look more like yourself than I have seen you for many a day."

"Mamma would not let me call you," said Agatha, coming into her room; "she said you were very tired last night; but do please come down now and make haste. There is such a basket of flowers in the hall from Whitton, the man says. Where's Whitton! Isn't it Mr. Incledon's place? But make haste, Rose, for breakfast, now that you are awake."

So she had no time to think just then, but had to hurry down-stairs, where her mother met her with something of a wistful look, and kissed her with a kind of murmured half apology. "I am afraid I frightened you last night, Rose."

Oh, no, not frightened," the girl said, taking refuge among the children, before whom certainly nothing could be said; and then Agatha and Patty surged into the conversation, and all gravity or deeper meaning was taken out of it. Indeed, her mother was so cheerful that Rose would almost have hoped she was to hear no more of it, had it not been for the cluster of flowers which stood on the table, and the heaped-up bunches of beautiful purple grapes which filled a pretty Tuscan basket, and gave dignity to the bread and butter. This was a sign of the times which was very alarming; and I do not know why it was, unless it might be by reason of her youth, that those delicate and lovely things-fit offerings for a lover - never moved her to any thought of what it was she was rejecting, or tempted her to consider Mr. Incledon's proposal as one which involved many delightful things along with himself, who was not delightful. This idea, oddly enough, did not find any place in her mind, though she was as much subject to the influence of all that was lovely and pleasant as any girl could be.

Rose took her hands from the last flower-pot as if it had burnt her, and stood aside, so angry and vexed to have been found at this occupation that she couln have cried.

"My dear," said her mother, going up to her, "I do not know that Mr. Incledon will be here to-day; but if he comes I must give him an answer. Have you reflected upon what I said to you? I need not tell you again how important it is, or how much you have in your power."

Rose clasped her hands together in self-support -one hand held fast by the other, as if that slender grasp had been something worth clinging to. "Oh! what can I say?" she cried; "I — told you; what more can I say?”

"You told me ! Then, Rose, everything that I said to you last night goes for nothing, though you must know the truth of it far, far better than my words could say. Is it to be the same thing over again

always over again? Self, first and last, the only consideration? Everything to please yourself; nothing from higher motives? God forgive you, Rose!

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"Oh, hush, hush! it is unkind — it is cruel. I would die for you if that would do any good!" cried Rose.

"These are easy words to say; for dying would do no good, neither would it be asked from you,” said Mrs. Damerel, impatiently. Rose, I do not ask this in

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ordinary obedience, as a mother may thing that will weigh more with you than command a child. It is not a child but a anything I can say. Your father had set woman who must make such a decision; his heart on this. He spoke to me of it but it is my duty to show you your duty, on his death-bed. God knows ! perhaps and what is best for yourself as well as he saw then what a dreary struggle I for others. No one neither man nor should have, and how little had been woman, nor girl nor boy can escape done to help us through. One of the last from duty to others; and when it is things he said to me was, 'Incledon will neglected some one must pay the pen-look after the boys.' alty. But you you are happier than most. You can, if you please, save your family."

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"We are not starving, mamma," said Rose, with trembling lips; "we have enough to live upon and I could work I would do anything.

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"Papa said that?" said Rose, putting out her hands to find a prop. Her limbs seemed to refuse to support her. She was unprepared for this new unseen antagonist. Papa? How did he know?' The mother was trembling and pale, too, overwhelmed by the recollection as "What would your work do, Rose? well as by her anxiety to conquer. She If you could teach—and I don't think made no direct answer to Rose's quesyou could teach you might earntion, but took her hand within both of enough for your own dress; that would hers, and continued with her eyes full of be all. Oh, my dear! listen to me. The tears: "You would like to please him, little work a girl can do is nothing. She Rose it was almost the last thing he can make a sacrifice of her own inclina-said—to please him, and to rescue me tion of her fancy; but as for work, from anxieties I can see no end to, and she has nothing in her power." to secure Bertie's future. Oh, Rose ! "Then I wish there were no girls!" you should thank God that you can do so cried Rose, as many a poor girl has done much for those you love. And you would before her, "if we can do nothing but bebe happy, too. You are young, and love a burden if there is no work for us, no use for us, but only to sell ourselves. Oh, mamma, mamma! do you know what you are asking me to do?"

"I know a great deal better than you do, or you would not repeat to me this vulgar nonsense about selling yourself. Am I likely to bid you sell yourself? Listen to me, Rose. I want you to be happy, and so you would be nay, never shake your head at me -you would be happy with a man who loves you, for you would learn to love him. Die for us! I have heard such words from the lips of people who would not give up a morsel of their own will- not a whim, not an hour's comfort

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"But I—I am not like that," cried Rose, stung to the heart. "I would give up anything everything - for the children and you!"

"Except what you are asked to give up; except the only thing which you can give up. Again I say, Rose, I have known such cases. They are not rare in this world."

"Oh, mamma, mamma!"

"You think I am cruel. If you knew my life, you would not think so; you would understand my fear and horror of this amiable self-seeking which looks so natural. Rose," said her mother, dropping into a softer tone, "I have something more to say to you — perhaps some

begets love. He would do everything that man could do to please you. He is a good man, with a kind heart; you would get to love him; and, my dear, you would be happy too."

"Mamma," said Rose, with her head bent down and some silent tears dropping upon Mr. Incledon's flowers-a flush of colour came over her downcast face, and then it grew pale again; her voice sounded so low that her mother stooped towards her to hear what she said "mamma, I should like to tell you something."

Mrs. Damerel made an involuntary movement a slight instinctive withdrawal from the confidence. Did she guess what it was? If she did so, she made up her mind at the same time not to know it. "What is it, dear?" she said, tenderly, but quickly. "Oh, Rose! do you think I don't understand your objections? But, my darling, surely you may trust your mother, who loves you more than all the world. You will not reject it - I know you will not reject it. There is no blessing that is not promised to those that deny themselves. He will not hurry nor press you, dear. Rose, say I may give him a kind answer when he comes?"

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Rose's head was swimming, her heart throbbing in her ears and her throat. The girl was not equal to such a strain.

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To have the living and the dead both | vapours before her. She sat thus till the uniting against her-both appealing to stir of the children in the house warned her in the several names of love and her that they had come in from their daily duty against love was more than she walk to the early dinner. She listened to could bear. She had sunk into the near- their voices and noisy steps and laughter est chair, unable to stand, and she no with the strangest feeling that she was longer felt strong enough, even had her herself a dreamer, having nothing in mother been willing to hear it, to make common with the fresh real life where all that confession which had been on her the voices rang out so clearly, where lips. At what seemed to be the extremity people said what they meant with sponof human endurance she suddenly saw taneous outcries and laughter, and there one last resource in which she might was no concealed meaning and nothing still find safety, and grasped at it, scarcely beneath the sunny surface; but when she aware what she did. "May I see Mr. heard her mother's softer tones speaking Incledon myself if he comes?" she to the children, Rose got up hurriedly, gasped, almost under her breath. and fled to the shelter of her room. anything more were said to her she thought she must die. Happily Mrs. Damerel did not know that it was her voice, and not the noise of the children, which was too much for poor Rose's overstrained nerves. She sent word by Agatha that Rose must lie down for an hour and try to rest; and that quiet was the best thing for her headache, which, of course, was the plea the girl put forth to excuse her flight and seclusion. Agatha, for her part, was very sorry and distressed that Rose should miss her dinner, and wanted much to bring something upstairs for her, which was at once the kindest and most practical suggestion of all.

"Surely, dear," said her mother, surprised; of course that would be the best; - if you are able for it, if you will think well before you decide, if you will promise to do nothing hastily. Oh, Rose! do not break my heart!"

"It is more likely to be my own that I will break,” said the girl, with a shadow of a smile passing over her face. "Mamma, will you be very kind, and say no more? I will think, think- everything that you say; but let me speak to him myself, if he comes."

Mrs. Damerel looked at her very earnestly, half suspicious, half sympathetic. She went up to her softly and put her arms round her, and pressed the girl's drooping head against her breast. "God bless you, my darling!" she said, with her eyes full of tears; and, kissing her hastily, went out of the room, leaving Rose alone with her thoughts.

ALFRED B. STREET.

THAT it should be possible for a series of extracts from the works of one eminent American to be attributed, with little danger of contradiction, to another, is only one more illustration of the too well known fact, that what is most excellent, is not always most widely known, nor most highly esteemed.

If I were to tell you what these thoughts were, and all the confusion of them, I should require a year to do it. Rose had no heart to stand up and fight for herself all alone against the world. Her young frame ached and trembled from head to foot with the unwonted strain. If there had been indeed any one any one — to struggle for ; but how was she to stand alone and battle for herself? Everything combined against her; every motive, every influence. She sat in a vague trance of pain, and, instead of thinking over what had been said, only saw visions gleaming before her of the love which was a vision, nothing more, and which she was called upon to resign. A vision! - that was all; a dream, perhaps, without any foundation. It seemed to disperse like a mist, as the Why his poems have been too generworld melted and dissolved around her ally forgotten while he is still only on the -the world which she had known threshold of a respected and venerated showing a new world, a dreamy, undis-old age, might be hard to tell. Probably covered country, forming out of darker lines and couplets from his writings, em

The British Quarterly Review, in an extended notice of the Life and Writings of Thoreau, quotes as proof and illustration of his poetic genius, numerous gems of description which certainly establish the claims of their author to the character of a true poet, but which, many of them, were really written, not by Thoreau, but by Alfred B. Street, who has been called the "Herrick" and the "Teniers " of American poets.

bodying some delicately discriminating | it would be difficult to find within its and suggestive description, some preg- bounds another region of such sylvan nant epithet, linger in the minds of many beauty and wild grandeur. The eye is who have forgotten or who never knew the name of their author.

As is so often the case the longer and more ambitious poems of this writer are of much less value than the shorter and less pretentious ones, though all embody more or fewer of those exquisite mosaics of descriptive touch, which constitute the principal charm of his works.

That his merits were not overlooked by the highest authorities of the past or passing generation, some of their criticism on his works will best show; the extracts which they give in support of their opinions, have an intrinsic and abiding beauty which will be at least equally appreciated now.

filled with images that make their own enduring places in the mind, storing it with rich and unfading pictures. Among these scenes, as might be supposed, Mr. Street ranged with a ceaseless delight, probably heightened by the strong contrast they afforded in their startling picturesqueness to the soft, quiet beauty of those of Dutchess. Instead of the smooth meadowy ascent, he saw the broken hillside blackened with fire, or just growing green with its first crop. Instead of the yellow corn-field stretching as far as the eye could see, he beheld the clearing spotted with stumps, with the thin rye growing between; instead of the comfortable farm-house peeping from its orAlfred B. Street was born in the vil-chards, he saw the log-cabin stooping lage, now city, of Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, N. Y., well known as one of the most beautiful in the State, situated on the side and summit of a slope that swells up from the Hudson. From College Hill there is a prospect of almost matchless beauty. A scene of rural and sylvan loveliness expands from every point at its base; the roofs and steeples of the busy village rise from the foliage in which it seems embosomed; the river stretches league upon league with its gleaming curves beyond; to the west is a range of splendid mountains ending at the south in the misty peaks of the Highlands; whilst at the north, dim outlines sketched upon the distant sky, proclaim the domes of the soaring Catskills. It was among these scenes that our author passed his days of childhood; here his young eye first drank in the glories of Nature, and "the foundations of his mind were laid.”

When, however, at the age of fourteen, he removed with his family to Monticello, he was immediately surrounded with scenes in striking contrast with those of his former life. Sullivan County had been organized only a score of years, and was scarcely yet rescued from the wilderness. Monticello, its county town, was surrounded by fields which only a short time before were parts of the wild forest, which still hemmed them in on every side. These forests were threaded with bright streams and scattered with broad lakes, while here and there the untiring axe of the settler, during the last quarter of a century, had been employed in opening the way for the industry and enterprise of Secluded as Sullivan County is in the southwesternmost nook of the State,

man.

amid the half-cleared trees; the dark ravine took the place of the mossy dell, and the wild lake of the sail-spotted and farstretching river.

Thus communing with nature, Mr. Street embodied the impressions made upon him in language, and in that form most appropriate in giving vent to deep enthusiastic feeling and high thought the form of verse. Poem after poem was written by him, and being published in those best vehicles of communication with the public, the periodicals, soon attracted attention. Secluded from mankind, and surrounded with nature in her most impressive features, his thought took the direction of that which he saw most, and thus description became the characteristic of his verse. Equally cut off from books, his poetry found its origin in his own study of natural scenes, and in the thoughts that rose in his own bosom. The leaves and flowers were his words; the fields and hillsides were his pages; and the whole volume of Nature his treasury of knowledge. This, while it may have made him less artistic, was the means of that originality and unlikeness to any one else which are to be found in his pages.

But while thus employing his leisure, Mr. Street was engaged in studying his profession of law in the office of his father, and in due time was admitted to the bar. After practising for a few years at Monticello, in 1839 he removed to Albany, where he has continued to reside until the present time.

The Foreign Quarterly Review, one of the most distinguished of the English publications, in an article which bears

severely upon nearly every other American poet except Bryant, Longfellow, Halleck, and Emerson, speaks in the following manner of Mr. Street:

"He is a descriptive poet, and at the head of his class. His pictures of American scenery are full of gusto and freshness; sometimes too wild and diffuse, but always true and beautiful. The opening of a piece called the 'Settler' is very striking.

His echoing axe the settler swung

Amid the sea-like solitude,

And rushing, thundering down were flung
The Titans of the wood;

Loud shrieked the eagle, as he dashed
From out his mossy nest, which crashed
With its supporting bough,
And the first sunlight, leaping, flashed
On the wolf's haunt below.

His poems are very unequal, and none of them can be cited as being complete in its kind. He runs into a false luxuriance in the ardor of his love of nature, and in the wastefulness of a lively, but not large imagination; and like Browne, the author of the Pastorals,' he continually sacrifices general truth to particular details, making un-likenesses by the crowding and closeness of his touches. Yet with all his faults his poems cannot be read without pleasure."

The Westminster Review also noticed the poems in the following manner :

"It is long since we met with a volume of poetry from which we have derived so much unmixed pleasure as from the collection now before us.

"Right eloquently does he discourse of Nature, her changeful features and her varied moods, as exhibited in his own 'America with her rich green forestrobe;' and many are the glowing pictures we would gladly transfer to our pages, did our limits permit, in proof of the poet's assertion

that Nature is

man's best teacher.' But we must only quote

A FOREST WALK.

A lovely sky, a cloudless sun,

A wind that breathes of leaves and flowers,
O'er hill, through dale, my steps have won
To the cool forest's shadowy bowers;
One of the paths, all round that wind

Traced by the browsing herds, I choose,
And sights and sounds of human kind,
In Nature's lone recesses lose ;
The beech displays its marbled bark

The spruce its green tent stretches wide,
While scowls the hemlock, grim and dark,
The maple's scalloped dome beside.

All weave on high a verdant roof
That keeps the very sun aloof,
Making a twilight soft and green
Within the columned, vaulted scene.

Sweet forest odors have their birth
From the clothed boughs and teeming earth;
Where pine-cones dropped, leaves piled and

dead,

Long tufts of grass and stars of fern
With many a wild-flower's fairy urn
A thick, elastic carpet spread;
Here, with its mossy pall, the trunk
Resolving into soil, is sunk;

There, wrenched but lately from its throne,
By some fierce whirlwind circling past,
Its huge roots massed with earth and stone,
One of the woodland kings is cast.

Above, the forest tops are bright
With the broad blaze of sunny light;
But now a fitful air-gust parts

The screening branches, and a glow
Of dazzling, startling radiance darts

Down the dark stems, and breaks below;
The mingled shadows off are rolled,
The sylvan floor is bathed in gold;
Low sprouts and herbs, before unseen,
Display their shades of brown and green;
Tints brighten o'er the velvet moss,
Gleams twinkle on the laurel's gloss;
The robin, brooding in her nest,
Chirps, as the quick ray strikes her breast,
And as my shadow prints the ground,
I see the rabbit upward bound,
With pointed ears an instant look,
Then scamper to the darkest nook,
Where, with crouched limb and staring eye,
He watches while I saunter by.

A narrow vista carpeted
With rich green grass invites my tread;
Here, showers the light in golden dots,
There, sleeps the shade in ebon spots,
So blended that the very air
Seems network as I enter there.
The partridge, whose deep rolling drum
Afar has sounded on my ear,

Ceasing its beatings as I come,

Whirrs to the sheltering branches near; The little milk snake glides away, The brindled marmot dives from day; And now, between the boughs, a space Of the blue laughing sky I trace; On each side shrinks the bowery shade; Before me spreads an emerald glade; The sunshine steeps its grass and moss, That couch my footsteps as I cross ; Merrily hums the tawny bee, The glittering humming-bird I see; Floats the bright butterfly along, The insect-choir is loud in song; A spot of light and life, it seems A fairy haunt for fancy dreams.

*

Here stretched, the pleasant turf I press In luxury of idleness;

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