gravelled path to the door. Stop with me at the gate, and I will make them grow again, those goodly, smooth-barked cherry trees, in each high corner, guardians of the entrance. Often have the flat-heads of the gate-posts served as a platform to the branches, when they were looking black and heavy, as if a swarm of bees had lighted on them. These sentinel trees belonged to a range that stretched around both sides of the house, and their life was a part of mine. I counted time by their blossoming, and setting to fruit, and reddening, till the boughs were all stripped, and then I dated by the changes on the pear-tree. That patriarch harvest-pear tree! How has irreverence become the sin of a generation that could lay bare its aged roots! Here — no, there, it must have stood. Come under its broad shadow, and look up, as I used of a summer night, through its high branches, and see if you can tell which are stars and which are pears. What an influence that old tree exerted over us, even in our slumbers; for while the fruit lasted, who should be earliest under the tree, was the strife. Many a morning have my foot-prints been the first on the wet grass, that I might triumph over an apron full. Puritan fathers must have hung a spell upon its boughs, for now it is cut down, we sleep later. But the pears, the pears! and the grand shaking time! How they rolled down the slope of the yard, and over the fence into the road, and how we childishly gloried in the many great basketsfull! There was something of sublimity in such abundance, and of a fruit, too, that wanted nothing but juice and flavor !

Here was another veteran, the old plum-tree, in the low notch of which I used to sit, and call it my throne. Their stands, not to be mistaken, lopped and shorn as it is, the venerable apple-tree that bore the swing. What merry groups bas that good-natured old tree thrown its shadow over, as if it loved romping and frolic! Time was when we held a circus there. Archie turning somersets, and Mink, the black cat, performing great jumpiug feats, while Ponto astonished a crowd of juveniles by more than canine sagacity. Up and down we swung, under a shower of apple blossoms sometimes taking a rough rub on the cheek from the bark of the sturdy old trunk. How we laughed, when the apples came down on our heads! Dearer yet was the still time, when I could sit there alone, and, gently swayed by the wind, as it were, give myself up to the enchantment of a story book. That was to be lapped in Elysium.'

Here stood the summer house, covered with a mysterious vine, that year after year baffled my penetration, setting thick with clusters that never came to fruit. That and the Magnumbonum tree, (that would drop all its great plums, touched by decay, after I had watched them swelling and swelling, and just putting on the purple,) I never could be friends with. Perhaps they were teaching me my first lessons of mortality, and the blasting of human hopes. They awed me beyond sociability.

But there, in that row of ragged gooseberry-bushes, is something with which the hens and I were familiar to gossiping, suffering ourselves to be scratched twice for every berry. It is strange that it should outlive so many worthier things, and be so green and thrifty yet. It shows where the garden fence ran. A gate opened here, and another there, and then the paths from each met, and joined company

forward. The space between was a semi-circular flower-bed, the pride of the garden, bordered with the bright little strawberry rose, and filled with choice bulbs. An immense peony sat in the centre, to preside. Each side of the long walk was set with flowers and shrubs, carefully mated, aptly reminding us of that great original garden lesson, 'not good to be alone.'

I am dizzy with a rainbow in my head, when I recall all those flowers, as distinct and as dear to me then, as the friends I have found since. Here were the strawberry-beds. What a broken fence shuts off the road! Every picket was in its place once, and a hedge of currant bushes kept side by side with it for its whole length. I used to go and pick currants from the outside, to try to make them taste as they did to the little pilferers going home from school. But come out from the garden, for it sickens me to see nothing left of all but these old tufts of fleur-de-luce, and yellow lilies. Stop, let me gather one.

Let us keep away from those ploughing people. We are safe here. All this was a mowing lot. Here we had our winter sliding course, and here our freaks, when the new boy sent Irish Thomas complaining to the mistress.' Here was the debatable ground, where we transacted all the wilder doings that might not be brought nearer the house, the scene of all the assault-and-battery cases that came up for trial in the maternal court. Here the boys wrestled out their quarrels, and from here the girls always came back sullen. It seemed as if we shut the great gate on subordination and good order every time we went into the mowing lot, probably because we were usually forbidden to go there, and laid aside the character of good children with the first step.

That new brick house, so sweet with its white pillars, stands on the very spot where our barn did. But come away; time would fail me to tell of our gambols there. Shall I take you into the house? Not through the wood-house, by the back door, though the tall white rosebushes, trained up to upper windows, make that entrance inviting enough. Not by the side toward the garden, through the glass door, into the little breakfast-room, though the offsets of smooth turf, and the lilacs that grew in the shade, made this pleasant enough. You must go quite around the house, and enter by one of the street doors. If you were totally familiar, you might go in at the south side, as I did, through the piazza. I would show you beside the door, the rosebush that bore both red and white flowers, which was always associated with thoughts of that parent of whom I recollected nothing so distinctly as the process of this grafting.

You might throw your bonnet and books upon the ball table, though the moment mother saw them, you would be called to put them in their places. How much a New England mother, and an orderly bringing up, are worth, let those who have looked about on womankind, in some sections of our country, tell. But you ought to go in at the company door, up the gravel walk, stopping to gather lilacs, or snow-balls, seringa, and roses by the way, and lingering long enough on the door steps to breathe in the fragrance of the boneysuckle that wound its way nearly across the whole front, and looked in at every window.

But ah! it is of no use, if I could do it. They do not live here

now. It is a scattered family, and I brought you on a vain errand. But before we go away, look on the fair prospect, for no stranger ever turned away without admiration. Here, separated from us by a little winding river, and a valley of green fields and trees, though ranges of white houses have crept up almost to the spot where we are standing, and have taken away this rural appearance I speak of, is a fair city, with spires and masts, and a state-house dome. The setting sun is flashed back from innumerablc roofs and windows, and the.vanes on those white steeples fairly burn. If

you could have seen it, from those upper windows, when the red bars of light first fell through the closed shutters on our white walls, and we looked out in the fresh morning on all that was hidden and revealed! A beavy mist would often fill the valley, and spread out before us like a lake, and then islets with trees would peep out, and one prominent object of the city after another, till from hill to hill all stood out in the glad yellow light, and a burst of song and sound ruse simultaneously from the trees and the chicken-yards.

That glittering city was the world to me, once. I remember well the first time I was trusted to go there alone. I had a written permission to leave school at half-past four, and I look care that every body should know the great occasion. It was to buy for our nurse and myself each a gay new fan. And I put on airs upon the strength of something so important, and started, not in glee, for it was too weighty an expedition, but with high hopes, and firm resolve. The half mile of road looked dusty and immeasurably long, but I went forward, planning the device and colors of my purchase, and arranging what I must say, to ask for it. Alas! I had not gone half the distance, when I discovered that my magical little silver piece was lost, and I had to return home when it was too late to go back. Then the mortification of having no fan to exhibit to the expectant crowd at school! The elation and self-confident energy, the perplexity and final despair, which made up the history of that errand, were to be acted over in many of my later attempts. But we have made these men stare long enough. Come away!

THE OAK'S PROGRESS.

Tuou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
Sceking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn nut ihat held ihee, swallowing down,
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs,
And all thine embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But faith thy growih decreed; autumnal rains,
Beneath thy parent-tree mellowed the soil,
Design'd thy cradle, and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepar'd
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudimenis should sleep the winter through.
Time made thee what thou wast- king of the woods,
And time hath made thee what thou art-a cave
For owls to roost in! thou hast outliv'd
Thy popularity, and art become,
(Unless verse rescue thee a while,) a thing
Forgotten as the foliage of thy youth !

CAMPBELL, AUTHOR OF PLEASURES OF HOPE,' ETC.

Fallen as he is, this king of birds still seems
Like royalty in ruins. Though his eyes
Are shut, that look undazzled on the sun,
He was the sultan of the sky, and earth
Paid tribute to his eyrie. li was perched
Higher than human conqueror ever built
His bannered fort. Where Atlas' top looks o'er
Zahara's desert to the equator's line,
From thence the winged despot marked his prey,
Above th' encampments of the Bedouins, ere
Their watch-fires were extinct, or camels knelt
To take their loads, or horsemen scoured the plain ;
And there he dried his feathers in the dawn,
While yet th' unwakened world was dark below.

There's such a charm in natural strength and power,
That human fancy has for ever paid
Poetic homage to the bird of Jove.
Hence, 'neath his image, Rome arrayed her turms
And cohorts for the conquest of the world.
And figuring his flight, the mind is filled
With thoughts that mock the pride of wingless man.
True the carred aëronaut can mount as high ;
But what's the triumph of his volant art?
A rash intrusion on the realms of air.
His helmless vehicle, a silken toy,
A bubble bursting in the thunder-cloud;
His course has no volition, and he drifts
The passive plaything of the wind. Not such
Was this proud bird: he clove the adverse storm,
And cuffed it with his wings. He stopped his flight
As easily as the Arab reins his steed,
And stood at pleasure 'neath Heaven's zenith, like
A lamp suspended from its azure dome;
While underneath him the world's mountains lay
Like mole-hills, and her streams like lucid threads.
Then downward, faster than a falling star,
He neared the earth, until his shape distinct
Was blackly shadowed on the sunny ground;
And deeper terror hushed the wilderness,
To hear his nearer whoop. Then, up again
He soared and wheeled. There was an air of scorn
In all his movements, whether he threw round
His crested head to look behind him, or
Lay vertical, and sportively displayed
The inside whiteness of his wing declined,
In gyres and undulations full of grace,
An object beautifying Heaven itself.

He - reckless who was victor, and above
The hearing of their guns— saw fleeis engaged
In flaming combat. It was nought to him
What carnage, Moor or Christian, strewed their decks;
But if his intellect had matched his wirgs,
Methinks he would have scorned man's

vaunted power
To plough the deep; his pinions bore him down
To Algiers the warlike, or the coral groves
That blush beneath the green of Bona's waves;
And traversed in an hour a wider space

66

VOL. XI.

Than yonder gallant slip, with all her sails
Woving the winds, can cross from morn till eve.
His bright eyes were his compass, earth his chart,
His talons anchored on the stormiest cliff,
And on the very light-house rock he perched,
When winds churned white the waves.

The earthquake's self
Disturbed not him that memorable day,
When, o'er yon table-land, where Spain had built
Cathedrals, cannoned forts, and palaces,
A palsy-stroke of Nature shook Oran,
Turning her city to a sepulchre,
And strewing into rubbish all her homes;
Amidst whose traceable foundations now,
Of streets and squares, the hyæna hides himself.
That hour beheld him fly as careless o'er
The stifled shrieks of thousands buried quick,
As lately when he pounced the speckled snake,
Coiled in yon mallows and wide nettle-fields,
That manile o'er the dead old Spanish town.

Strange is the imagination's dread delight
In objects linked with danger, death, and pain!
Fresh from the luxuries of polished life,
The echo of these wilds enchanted me;
And my heart beat with joy when first I heard
A lion's rear come down the Lybian wind,
Across yon long, wide, lonely inland lake,
Where boat ne'er sails from homeless shore to shore.

And yet Numidia's landscape has its spots
Of pastoral pleasantness though far between,
The village planted near the Maraboot's
Round roof has aye its feathery palm trees
Paired, for in solitude they bear no fruits.
Here nature's hues all harmonize ; fields white
With alasum, or blue with hugloss -- banks
Of glossy fennel, blent with tulips wild,
And sunflowers, like a garment prankt with gold;
Acres and miles of opal asphodel,
Where sports and couches the black-eyed gazelle.
Here, too, the air 's harmonious - deep-toned doves
Coo to the fife-like carol of the lark;
And when they cease, the holy nightingale
Winds up his long, long shakes of ecstacy,
With noies that seem but the protracted sound
Of glassy runnels bubbling over rocks.

'CONFESSION.'

'Let me confess to God, and save my shilling.'-OLD ANECDOTE.

CONFEssion, like physic, mid mortal extremes,

In the hands of a skilsul concoctor,
Is an excellent thing for the patient, it seems,

Though not quite so good for the doctor.

Hence some spiritual quacks, in attending their sick,

On the virtues insist of confessions ;
But should a small thorn their own consciences prick,

Their sole lenitive pills are professions.
As to tears for our sins, if amendment it work,

An ounce-vial full ample perhaps is;
And too little the Heidelberg tun, if there lurk

At the bottom the seeds of relapses.

c.