But it was only for a moment. The next brought more gracious thoughts. One look at her husband-one thought of what he was-of his patience, his unselfishness, his devotion to ber-cleared her mental horizon at once. Light from his character seemed to irradiate her whole path, past and future.

With a gush of grateful tears she threw herself into his

arms

"Forgive you, Henry !" she said; "forgive you for your love and goodness for making me so happy? What gentler method could you have devised for awakening me from my dream? Dear husband-dearest friend-I owe myself to you. Love and truth have revealed life to me. How could you have answered it to yourself if you had let me sink into nothingness under delusions so fatal !"

"I know not," he replied; "yet I confess I was completely at a loss. Your convictions were brought about by means wholly beyond any power of mine. We cannot devise and create circumstances to suit our wishes. Happy those who are willing to use such as are offered by a benign Providence. Still, dearest Kate, remember I am ready and willing to enlarge our way of life whenever you desire it; there may be very good reasons for doing so."

"I shall never desire it," she replied, "for there is a sense of weariness and disgust comes over me whenever I think of the life we used to lead. Not that I pretend to have grown indifferent to wealth, or the privileges it buys, or the consequence it gives. I love to spend money as well as ever, but spending it without display, and for objects which the world cannot appreciate, seems to me a higher pleasure than any that show ever gave me. Of mere luxury we have enough-all that we can really enjoy;

for I have discovered that whatever of it we provide beyond a certain limit is not for ourselves, and becomes a burthen. If, with abundant means, you were disposed to hoard," she added, smiling, "I believe I should be a very bad wife ; but as you love to spend too why, it seems to me we shall be very happy as we are."

"Is that all?" said Miss Grove, when the reader stopped. "What more would you have?" said Mr. Berry; "is not every body very happy, and haven't we made out our case?"

"But I thought you would have told us more about George -how he behaved, and whether he ever fell in love."

"O you know it would be long before it was proper for George to fall in love, and when he did there would be a great deal to be said about it; we must reserve that for other summer hours in the House of Industry."

"I consider the permanence of the young wife's conversion so ticklish a topic," said Mr. Ingoldsby, with his usual disposition to a certain quizzical skepticism, "that I hold you very wise to stop where you do. The brother's reformation I can believe in, for it is easier to forsake vice than folly."

"Shall I tell you papa's creed-only pretended, thoughabout women?" said Elinor; "he often repeats these lines :

Is it that for such outward ornament

Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts

Were left, for haste, unfinished-judgment scant,

Capacity not rais'd to apprehend

Or value what is best

In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong?”

"I could bury those lines so deep under a mountain of oppos

ite ones, from poets of all time," said Mr. Berry, "that it would take another summer to find them. But tell us whether we

have proved our position?"

"Hardly," said Mr. Ingoldsby; "for after all, you have been obliged to resolve Beauty into Virtue."

"Not at all-we have only shown that Beauty and Virtue are a twin growth, and cannot be separated without violence to Nature."

"And do you feel entitled to end with a Q. E. D.?”

"We must leave the decision of that question with our read

ers."

WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION.

CONSIDERING how highly every age has prized the history and biography of previous times, it is matter of surprise that there are not always found those who systematically record passing events and delineate living characters. Fame is, indeed, in a good degree, an affair of distance. It is difficult for friends, associates, or contemporaries to be sure that actions or events, which arise from the present condition of things, will seem as important to posterity as to those who have an immediate interest in the emergencies which gave them birth. But the desire to know what has been done and said by those who have gone before us who helped to prepare the world for the coming of our day-is so universal, and we are so often vexed to think we know so little, that it seems wonderful that mere sympathy should not lead us to prepare pleasant things of this sort for the people whose pioneers we are. How delicious are the bits of private history now and then fished up from the vast sea of things forgotten! How we pounce upon some quaint diary, some old hoard of seemingly insignificant letters, some enlightening passage in an old author, who little suspected his blunt quill of playing the part of an elucidator of history! What could repay the world for the withdrawal from its knowledge of the straight-forward fibs of Sir John Mandeville, illustrative as

they are of the state of general credulity in his day? Or of Pepys's Diary, or Horace Walpole's, or Madame de Sevigne's letters, or Bozzy's inestimable jottings?

Each and every generation lives in "a very remarkable age," and it is obviously a high moral duty of somebody to write it down, circumstantially, for the benefit of those who are destined, through its preparing influence, to enter upon experiences still more remarkable. Yet when we would seek materials for the minute private history of a time, in the bosom of whose common life were contained the characterizing elements of this great empire-as the rich satin folds of the tulip are traceable in a bulb which looks very like that humble piece of domesticity, an onion-we are obliged to search as if for the proverbial needle; to dive into family records, dim with the dust of time, or useless from the suspicious coloring of pride or affection; to call upon the East and the West, the North and the South, to rummage the memory-garrets of their "oldest inhabitants;" in short, to pick, as it were, from thorns and briers by the wayside, stray locks of the material which should have been carded and spun by the growers, ready for the weaving skill of the present day.

All honor, then, to the patriotic labors of those to whom we owe the gathering of these fragments! Honor to Mrs. Ellet, who has alone done for our Revolutionary mothers what so many men have been zealous in doing for their own sex, ever since the national struggle was ended.

No one perhaps will question, that the women of the Revolution bore a far larger share of its actual hardships and sufferings than the men. The life afield, shorn though it may be of home comforts, has its poetry, its inspirations, its heroic element,