treated with great kindness, but his earnest desire to get out rendered the interview very heart-trying. He expressed a wish to recover, that he might write hymns and spiritual songs all the rest of his life. In some quiet intervals, he complained of the jokes that had been practised on him, and said it was not kind; but he was fearfully delirious most of the timecalling vociferously for 'Water! Water!' and complaining that his brain was all on fire.

His

He died a few days after, aged about 44. friend of the Carlton House took upon himself the charge of his funeral; and it is satisfactory to think that it was all ordered, just as the kind and simple-hearted being would have himself desired. The body was conveyed to Grace church, and the funeral service performed in the presence of a few who had loved him. Among these was Fitz-Greene Halleck, who it is said often befriended him in the course of his suffering life. Many children were present; and one with tearful eyes, brought a beautiful little bunch of flowers, which a friend laid upon his bosom with reverent tenderness. He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery, under the shadow of a pine tree, next to the grave of a little child-a fitting resting place for the loving and childlike poet.

He had often expressed a wish to be buried at Greenwood. Walking there with a friend of mine, they selected a spot for his grave; and he seemed pleased as a boy, when told of the arrangements that should be made at his funeral. 'I hope the children will come,' said he, 'I want to be buried by the side of children. Four things I am sure there will be in heaven; music, plenty of little children, flowers, and pure air.'

They are now getting up a subscription for a marble monument. It seems out of keeping with his character and destiny. It were better to plant

a rose-bush by his grave, and mark his name on a simple white cross, that the few who loved him might know where the gentle, sorrowing wanderer sleeps.

LETTER XVI.

August 7, 1842.

Were you ever near enough to a great fire to be in immediate danger? If you were not, you have missed one form of keen excitement, and awful beauty. Last week, we had here one of the most disastrous conflagrations that have occurred for a long time. It caught, as is supposed, by a spark from a furnace, falling on the roof of a wheelwright's shop. A single bucket of water, thrown on immediately, would have extinguished it; but it was not instantly perceived, roofs were dry, and the wind was blowing a perfect March gale. Like slavery in our government, it was not put out in the day of small beginnings, and so went on increasing in its rage, making a great deal of hot and disagreeable work.

It began at the corner of Chrystie-street, not far from our dwelling; and the blazing shingles that came flying through the air, like a storm in the infernal regions, soon kindled our roof. We thought to avert the danger by buckets of water, until the block opposite us was one sheet of fire, and the heat like that of the furnace which tried Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Then we began to pack our goods, and run with them in all haste to places of safety; an effort more easily described than done for the streets all round were filled with a dense mass of living beings, each eager in playing the engines, or saving the lares of his own hearth-stone.

Nothing surprised me so much as the rapidity of the work of destruction. At three o'clock in the afternoon, there stood before us a close neighbourhood

of houses, inhabited by those whose faces were familiar, though their names were mostly unknown; at five the whole was a pile of sinking ruins. The humble tenement of Jane Plato, the coloured woman, of whose neatly-kept garden and white-washed fences I wrote you last summer, has passed away forever. The purple iris, and yellow daffodils, and variegated sweet-williams, were all trampled down under heaps of red-hot mortar. I feel a deeper sympathy for the destruction of Jane's little garden, than I do for those who have lost whole blocks of houses; for I have known and loved flowers, like the voice of a friend-but with houses and lands I was never cumbered. In truth, I am ashamed to say how much I grieve for that little flowery oasis in a desert of bricks and stone. My beautiful trees, too—the Ailanthus, whose graceful blossoms, changing their hue 'from month to month, blessed me the live-long summer; and the glossy young Catalpa, over which it threw its arms so lovingly and free—there they stand, scorched and blackened; and I know not whether nature, with her mighty healing power, can ever make them live again.

The utilitarian and the moralist will rebuke this trifling record, and remind me that one hundred houses were burned, and not less than two thousand persons deprived of shelter for the night. Pardon my childish lamentations. Most gladly would I give a home to all the destitute; but I cannot love two thousand persons; and I loved my trees. Insurance stocks are to me an abstraction; but stock gilliflowers a most pleasant reality.

Will your kind heart be shocked that I seem to sympathize more with Jane Plato for the destruction of her little garden-patch, than I do with others for loss of houses and furniture?

Do not misunderstand me. It is simply my way of saying that money is not wealth. I know the universal opinion of mankind is to the contrary; but it

is nevertheless a mistake. Our real losses are those in which the heart is concerned. An autograph letter from Napoleon Bonaparte might sell for fifty dollars; but if I possessed such a rare document, would I save it from the fire, in preference to a letter from a beloved and deceased husband, filled with dear little household phrases? Which would a mother value most, the price of the most elegant pair of Parisian slippers, or a little worn-out shoe, once filled with a precious infant foot, now walking with the angels?

Jane Plato's garden might not be worth much in dollars and cents; but it was to her the endeared companion of many a pleasant hour. After her daily toil, she might be seen, till twilight deepened into evening, digging round the roots, pruning branches, and training vines. I know by experience how very dear inanimate objects become under such circumstances. I have dearly loved the house in which I lived, but I could not love the one I merely owned. The one in which the purse had interest might be ten times more valuable in the market; but let me calculate as I would, I should mourn most for the one in which the heart had invested stock. The common wild-flower that I have brought to my garden, and nursed, and petted, till it has lost all home-sickness for its native woods, is really more valuable than the costly exotic, purchased in full bloom from the conservatory. Men of princely fortunes never know what wealth of happiness there is in a garden.

The rich man in his garden walks,
Beneath his garden trees;

Wrapped in a dream of other things,
He seems to take his ease.

One moment he beholds his flowers,

The next they are forgot;
He eateth of his rarest fruits,

As though he ate them not.

It is not with the poor man so;

He knows each inch of ground,
And every single plant and flower,
That grows within its bound.
And though his garden-plot is small,
Him doth it satisfy;

For there's no inch of all his ground.
. That does not fill his eye.

It is not with the rich man thus;
For though his grounds are wide,
He looks beyond, and yet beyond,
With soul unsatisfied.

Yes, in the poor man's garden grow

Far more than herbs and flowers;
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,
And joy for weary hours.

The reason of this difference is easily explained:

The rich man has his gardeners

His gardeners young and old:
He never takes a spade in hand,
Nor worketh in the mould.

It is not with the poor man so

Wealth, servants, he has none;

And all the work that's done for him,
Must by himself be done.'

I have said this much to prove that money is not wealth, and that God's gifts are equal; though jointstock companies and corporations do their worst to prevent it.

And all the highest truths, as well as the genuine good, are universal. Doctrinal dogmas may be hammered out on theological anvils, and appropriated to spiritual corporations, called sects. But those high and holy truths, which make the soul at one with God and the neighbour, are by their very nature universal-open to all who wish to receive. Outward forms are always in harmonious correspondence with