brilliant. Her pale brow, overshadowed with profuse braids of dark-brown hue, is the throne of lofty and noble thought; and her full ruby lips can give utterance to words, which, voiced with melodious sweetness, sink into the listener's soul, as softly as snow within the silent sea. She is more beautiful in form than in face. Perfect beauty, alas! is a fatal dower. "Beauty," says the highest authority, in the sternness and severity of truth, "is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine and vices blush.”* Is her temper naturally violent?-it has been sedulously checked, and turned, like a headlong torrent, to the purposes of utility. Were the feelings of her heart impetuous?—they have been allayed by a course of judicious discipline, and have become as peaceful as the stars shining on graves. She is in the full bloom of womanhood; yet she has carefully avoided the incurable evils of an early, a rash, an indiscreet marriage; and, although her bosom is susceptible of the tenderest, the most enduring

• Lord Bacon's Essay on Beauty.

impressions-although she could interweave faithfulness, and truth, and duty in the fair garland of blooming affection, her judgment is not blinded against the certainty of disappointment, when the heart becomes a fearful wreck, and its fair freight of love wholly ingulphed in the sea of unrelenting despair. Over her brilliant imagination, the charms of fancied constancy and eternal devotion have never woven their fatal web. No. Her days are passed in harmonious sweetness and in the calm serenity of heavenly peace; and her couch, during the darkness of the mute night, is not disturbed by a host of vain and empty phantasies. Discrimination is her guidejudgment her precept-and propriety her rule. This is the true BELLE OF THE VILLAGE. Happy the man who is worthy to call her WIFE-thrice happy the child who shall call her MOTHER!

THE FERRY.

So forth they rowed: and that ferry-man

With his stiff oars did brush the stream so strong

That the hoare waters from his firgot ran,

And the light-bubbles danced all along,

SPENCER. Faerie Queene.

A boat, a boat, and to the ferry,

And we'll go over and be merry,

And laugh, and quaff, and drink old sherry.

Ancient Ballad.

SHALL there still exist those somewhat rare, but no less interesting, spirits who are blessed or cursed, as the case may be, with the power of a brilliant imagination, joined to a love of literature, and a warm attachment to the beauties and sublimities of external nature, and who, creating an ideal world of their own, in which they live and move, and have their being, forsake the beaten, dusty, muddy-pathways of worldly emolument and worldly ag

grandisement, to indulge in feelings which to them are perfectly congenial? Shall the indulgence of these feelings, and the practice of these habits, be permitted in these days of extraordinary enlightenment?

The feelings and habits of even these imaginative spirits may well meet with the meed of plausibility. They may, it is true, be somewhat peculiar; but they are by no means devoid of interest. It may be the case, too, that, under the influence of these circumstances, the judgment may be improved, and become fully matured; but the probability is rather questioned. At all events, the paths of vice and wickedness, in all their perilous sinuosities, the dissipation and the effeminacy of luxury, and the gewgaws and frivolities of fashion meet with dislike, and with utter detestation and abhorrence. Thus, at least, the most baneful sources of evil are prevented from working upon them their demoralising and withering influences.

To minds thus constituted and thus refined, shedding their cloudless brilliancy over all objects either remarkably formidable or comparatively insignificant; to hearts thus possessing the well-spring of pure and generous feelings,

F

most grateful are the remnants of the old forests, in the peaceful hollows of those magnificent woodland scenes, which yet meet the eye in several parts of the country-spots where many waters have met with a joyful turbulence and formed a tranquil lake, the mirror of the heavens, and where the giant trees and thick underwood have crowded down to the very margin of the resplendent waters-in sauntering through the deep gloom of far-spreading branches, shielding whole families of flowersand in loitering along the green margin of the river-stream, which, after having, in by-gone ages, undermined the towering rocky stratum, and laid the giant bulk prostrate with a fearful crash, has now found its tranquil bed, and steals on its course in sober stillness, broken only at particular periods of the year by the descent of the heavy rains of summer, and the sudden breaking up of the frost and snow of winter. Nor, amid these interesting scenes, is the observant loiterer disposed to disregard even the Ferry, and its peculiar locality.

The river ford may, in some parts of the country, claim precedence, in point of antiquity, over the Ferry, particularly in those localities which are placed more inland, where the rivers at some points are comparatively shallow,