coach drove up, one arose, and making a great effort to maintain a sober face, and his equilibrium, gave a toast, The Fair Sex!' in compliment probably to the ladies of our party, which was received with astounding acclamations; and as a gentleman' rolled from his seat, another, in regimentals of the cut of seventy-six,' arose, and swaying now this way, now that, held out a brimming bumper, and exclaimed: Fel' citizens! I give you JOHN BULL! If ever ag'in he dares to set his foot in this land, to invade it, may Uncle Sam beat him, till he beats his head off!'

I HAVE had a few thoughts on ambition, and some of its varieties. 'He fills his space with deeds, and not with lingering years,' who, like the Spartan Lycurgus, lives but for the glory, and dies for the welfare, of his country. His was a noble, a self-sacrificing

ambition.

The ambition of Brutus was wicked and selfish. Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more,' he says in his address to the people. No such thing! As he was ambitious, I slew him!' Even so! Cupido dominandi cunetis affectibus flagrantior est ;' and o'er the fallen Cæsar hoped the patriot Brutus to rear the column of his own imperious desires. The disposition has not perished with the Roman. The world hath yet many a Brutus.

The weak yet aspiring ambition of one who overrates himself, was his, who, at the Natural Bridge, climbed nearly up its two hundred feet of rocky side, and there, hanging between the parapet and the abyss the earth and loose stones crumbling from beneath his feet sought far, far above all others, to write his name upon the enduring height. Unable, from terror, to accomplish his object, he had inevitably fallen from his lofty perch, but for the kindly aid of a rope, and a helping hand tendered him from above, by which, almost paralyzed with affright, he was drawn to the top in safety.

That of the clown, in Shakspeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' who was desirous of enacting the whole play himself, from the 'Lion,' even to Wall,' or Moonshine,' was a grasping and all-conquering ambition. Had he been born to empire, he had doubtless been an Alexander.

A laudable ambition was his, whose adventure is recorded in an interesting little work, entitled 'Mother Goose's Melodies.' He was evidently, from the tenor of the story, a fisherman. None of your Isaac Walton sort of person, sitting all the day long beside a brook, and angling with flies for trout. No! He disdained even a cod, or a halibut, or any such small fry, as all too mean for his vast purpose. He went boldly down to the sea-side, and there,

with a surpassing grandeur of imagination, he

'Baited his hook with a dragon's tail,

And sat on a rock and bobbed for whale!'

This was true ambition. Commend me to the man whose aim is to excel in his vocation.

And he too was ambitious, in a kindred way, who, in an extreme western state, replied to one who asked him, far in the old solemn

wilderness, where his house was: Umph!' said he, 'house, eh? I a'n't one o' them kind. No, no! I sleep o' nights in the big government purchase, eat raw bear and buffalo, and drink out o' the Mississippi!' Like Daniel Boon, he was ambitious of elbow-room,' and heartily detested those losel scouts, who were crowding round him, some not more than a hundred miles off!

TIME was, ere Babel was my habitation, and unbounded leisure my heritage; ere the green and palmy days of youth had ripened into womanhood, or ere I, athirst, bent for a draught at Helicon, and the sweet face of Poësy gleamed up to me through the bright waters; when Broadway to me was not, and this proud city was the Utopia of mine imagination; when I, an untravelled, unsophisticated villager, ambitious of a character for notability, like the little busy bee, improved each shining hour.'

When I, a lesser orb, under the tutelage of my maternal planet, shone in the household as 'cook's oracle, and house-keeper's assistant,' and an infallible regenerator of superannuated indescribables. What time I, emulous of Atlas, the great globe-bearer himself, took my world of duties lightly upon my back, and in my circumscribed sphere, sped on through time and space, with a velocity comparable to his the worthy sometime proprietor and wearer of the famous seven-league boots-shadowless Master Peter Schemil! Ah, me! and have I then shot from my sphere of usefulness, to become here 'a voice, and nothing more?'

Our life! Is it not as the banquet of the ancient Egyptians, where the skeleton PRESENT is ever before us? And from that. hidden Isis, the FUTURE, who hath ever raised the veil? But' Vive la Bagatelle !'

I am not sad the world for me
Twirls on its axis merrily:

No grave M. D. prescribes my diet,

My couch yields rest-sweet dreams and quiet :

My heart feels not its weight of years,

It hath high hopes-it hath no fears;

But this deep impress it doth bear,

The names of dear friends graven there.

MUSIC! To the sound of a barrel-organ, my heart bounds with the monkey, its usual accompaniment, or swells with a jews-harp, or one of the thousand strings. But wo is me! Would that mine habitation were in the skirts of Jericho, rather than thus, next door to, and separated from, by a very thin partition, that of a family of musical young ladies, whose ear-torturing executions' I am doomed to suffer, from morning to night! There they go! • U-na vo-ce po-ca fa-piano and voice each in its own independent half dozen keys, with flats and sharps, ad libitum. Surely they were taught in chaos, ere time was— or ere the spheres were tuned to harmony - or ere 'the morning stars sang together!' M. E. H.

MARKS OF TIME.

AN infant boy was playing among flowers;
Old TIME, that unbribed register of hours,
Came hobbling on, but smoothed his wrinkled face,
To mark the artless joy and blooming grace
Of the young cherub, on whose cheek so fair
TIME Smiled, and pressed a rosy dimple there.

Next Boyhood followed, with his shout of glee,
Elastic step, and spirit wild and free

As the young fawn, that scales the mountain height,
Or new-fledged eaglet in his sunward flight;

TIME cast a glance upon the careless boy,
Who frolicked onward with a bound of joy!

Then Youth came forward; his bright glancing eye
Seemed a reflection of the cloudless sky!
The dawn of passion, in its purest glow,
Crimsoned his cheek, and beamed upon his brow,
Giving expression to his blooming face,
And to his fragile form a manly grace;

His voice was harmony, his speech was truth-
TIME lightly laid his hand upon the youth.

Manhood next followed, in the sunny prime
Of life's meridian bloom; all the sublime
And beautiful of nature met his view,
Brightened by Hope, whose radiant pencil drew
The rich perspective of a scene as fair
As that which smiled on Eden's sinless pair;
Love, fame, and glory, with alternate sway,
Thrilled his warm heart, and with electric ray
Illumed his eye, yet still a shade of care,
Like a light cloud that floats in summer air,
Would shed at times a transitory gloom,
But shadowed not one grace of manly bloom.
TIME sighed, as on his polished brow he wrought
The first impressive line of care and thought.

Man in his proud maturity came next;

A bold review of life, from the broad text
Of Nature's ample volume! He had scanned
Her varied page, and a high course had planned;
Humbled ambition, wealth's deceitful smile,
The loss of friends, disease, and mental toil,

Had blanched his cheek, and dimmed his ardent eye,
But spared his noble spirit's energy!

God's proudest stamp of intellectual grace
Still shone unclouded on his care-worn face!
On his high brow still sate the firm resolve
Of judgment deep, whose issue might involve
A nation's fate. Yet thoughts of milder glow
Would oft, like sunbeams o'er a mound of snow,
Upon his cheek their genial influence cast,
While musing o'er the bright or shadowy past:
TIME, as he marked his noblest victim, shed
The frost of years upon his honored head.

Last came, with trembling limbs and bending form,
Like the old oak scathed by the wintry storm,
Man, in the last frail stage of human life;
Reason's proud triumph, passion's wild control,
No more dispute their mastery o'er his soul!
As rest the billows on the sea-beat shore,
The war of rivalry is heard no more;
Faith's steady light alone illumes his eye,
For TIME is pointing to ETERNITY!

New-York, February, 1838.

K. A. W.

SHAKSPEARE'S SEVEN AGES.

AGE THIRD.

'And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow.'

THE youth that but yesterday was an infant, and just now a school-boy, is already before us as a lover. Our life is a shadow. Our 'seven ages' are soon told. They pass as rapidly as the incidents in the story of the bean, which little Jack planted, and saw grow, in a few nights, quite out of sight. Our life, too, like this famous bean, bears events, and concludes histories, not second in strangeness and importance to the castles and giants which the latter supported on its slender stalk; for, though fragile and fleeting, our life is the beginning of an eternity: the ages' all tend to this, and the 'history' proceeds.

Adieu, ye innocent pastimes of boyhood! - the ball, the kite, the skate, the top, the hoop, two-'ole cat, leap-frog, and going-ina-swimming! Welcome to your duties, moonlight, night damps, corrosive thought, attempts to shave, a stiff stock, and tight boots! The youth now brushes his hat o' mornings; what should that bode?' 'He rubs himself with civet, and is melancholy;' in short, he is in love. Who has done this? What spell is cast upon his open spirit? What power bends his head, and why muses he by streams? His horse, his gun, are neglected. He joins not the chorus at the dinner; he remembers not the text at church; he looks not at the parson. Ah! those bright eyes in the gallery have done his business!—those eyes, so soft that but for the eye-brows that arch so gracefully above them, and give them character and force, could never strike so deep a wound. Henceforth, our school-boy is a

man.

In considering this chapter of man, we would prepare the reader for serious conclusions. We have not here to deal with love-letters and Cupid's darts, pretty feet and ankles, nor any of the common flirtations which, as to any effect upon the character, are mere froth and wind. No. Poor fellow! look at him; he 'sighs like furnace,' and suffers enough without our ridicule. A vast change is going on within him- a chemical change; and latent heat is evolved, and rolled up through his breast, and out at his mouth and nose, drawing tears from his eyes, and almost blood from his heart. He is suffering an eruption of certain newly-formed combinations, and presents to the by-standers a volcanic appearance. In the pas sage from boy to man, none escape this trial. Bachelor or husband, all are destined once to 'sigh like furnace.'

Ordinarily, some token of the coming change is evinced. Large boys and collegians have sweet-hearts, openly and proclaimedly, and begin to brush their hats o' mornings,' and to perfume. As the mountain warns the inhabitants upon its sides, by bellowing, and noise, and smoke, of the approaching crisis of melted stones and earths, about to devastate its surface, so these fopperies and fool

eries are tokens of a no less fiery eruption; and as the one changes the whole face of a country, so the other discovers new features in the character. Sometimes, in the male youth, a passionate love for dogs and horses is the smoke that portends a fire, while in the female, quick tears, sudden resolutions to walk in the street, and to be less regardful of dress than is usual-smiles and sadness, unaccountable and mysterious show that a change is at hand. The future poetic lover will often show it, in regard for inanimate objects, a favorite spot, a plant, a book. Great amativeness of temperament will, at this time, be apt to fix itself to things, with life and warmth. In the first, love will be a genial glow, that shall ripen his nature, and fertilize his mind. In the latter, it will be a tornado of passion, full of gusts, and squalls, and shipwreck, hurrying him to unripe enjoyments, and forbidden scenes.

Bulwer says finely, in Ernest Maltravers: Nine times out of ten, it is over the bridge of sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually occupied by an illplaced or disappointed affection. We recover, and find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wreck of every passion, and we measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.' This is the notion of Shakspeare, modernized.

Now it often happens in these affairs yes, nine times out of ten that our lover' fixes himself as a worshipper at the shrine of some one older than himself. The youth at eighteen or twenty loves the full-blossomed rose of twenty-two or twenty-four. Schoolmisses are too fond of laughing, to appear to have any serious feelings, and young lovers are very solemn. He loves with the devotion of an idolater. He loves the richness, the fulness, the ripeness, of his mistress. Her careless laughter has become tempered to winning smiles, and her sweet seriousness feeds his sad passion. He thinks it is a melancholy sympathy with his fate; for having read that'the course of true love never did run smooth,' he is already preparing himself for a catastrophe. Reason, too, tells him that it all must come to nought. Passion, love of love, urges him on. 'He sucks in melancholy as a weasel sucks eggs.' It nourishes him. He hopes against hope, and conforms to his fate.

Happy may he consider himself, who gives his early romance of feeling, (we will not call it love, in the apostolic sense,) to a worthy object; one who can appreciate the part she has to act toward these young enthusiasts. Woman is never so worshipped, as by those younger than herself. No influence is so powerful as that she may exert over her admirer none so salutary to him. None can so ripen his taste, his love of elegance and refinement. None can so shield him from the corrupting examples of the world. She will give a meaning to his studies, and the idea of beauty in his mind will call up in him a respect for the beautiful in nature and morals. He will revolt at vice, and recoil from the suggestions of sense. Wherever he is, his divinity is present with him. She is veiled in the cloud, and whispers to him in the breeze. He dreams of her by night, and the thought of her by day gives a tinge of romance to the most common and laborious pursuit. He writes a 'ballad' to her