leaves, by too rough handling; but an old oak desk, at which my grandfather in his days of courtship was wont to pen epistles and sonnets to my grandmother, escaped the violence of the revolution with only a few scratches. I have had the dust wiped off its black polish, brought it down by my study fire, and placed before it the old gentleman's armchair, which I found standing calm and stately upon its four legs, amidst the disordered rubbish of the garret. The mice have made a hole in the smooth leather bottom; which, however, I have never mended, as I kept it to remind me of the neglect and ingratitude of the world. It does not make you hate the world. No man could sit in my grandfather's chair and hate his fellow beings. I am seated in it this moment; and with my pen fresh dipped in his leaden inkstand, shall scribble on till my mind

and heart are eased.

To this corner I retire, at the shutting in of day, for selfexamination and amendment. It is here that I sit, in the shadow of a melancholy mind, and see pass before me, in solemn order, my follies and my crimes, and follow them with trembling into the portentous uncertainty of the future. It is here that I learn that we must not lean on the world for comfort. It is here that I give myself up to the visions of the mind, and fill the space about me with millions of beings from distant regions and of other times. Here, too, have I looked with a dream-like contemplation, upon the shadows sliding over the wall, silent as sunlight, till they seemed to me as monitors from the land of the dead, who had come in kindness to tell me of the vanity of present things, and of the hastening on of another and an enduring world.

It is natural in these lonely musings to brood over the heartlessness and noisy joys of the world. There is at bottom, a feeling of self-complacency in it. Our calmed reason sets us above the beings about us, while we forget how many, at that very moment are as sober and rational as ourselves; and how few there are, amidst the multitudes that cover the earth, that have not their hours of solitary contemplation too.

It was in this cast of thought in which the heart is made sad for want of communion with some living thing; when the tasteless character of all which surrounds us hurries the mind forward to the excitement of hope, or carries it back to dwell for a time amidst the softened, but deep feelings of the past; that the fresh and thoughtless joys, and the pure and warm affections of my boyhood came over me like a dream; and the cares of years, and the solemn and darkening scene about me, gave way, and I stood in the midst of the green and sunshine

of a child. I felt again the wrinkled cheek, over which my baby hand had a thousand times past in fondness, entered into all the plays of children, and then remembered the quaint customs, the individualities of the age of strong character and warm feeling, which marked the times of our fathers; when the old sometimes mingled with the young, and the young bowed in reverence to the old. That was the age of feeling. Would that this over-wise age had something of its childlike simplicity; something of its rough and honest manliness, which dared at times to be a boy. But the age has changed, and those amusements in which we were all children together, and which made the heart better without weakening the understanding, are at an end.

There are no April fool's day tricks in this period of decorum; no "merry Christmas;" no "happy New Year." I feel the blood move quick again at the recollection of the glad faces I once used to see, when every body was running to wish you "happy New Year." I can remember when hurrying from my chamber, with my fingers too stiff and cold to button my little jacket, I burst open the parlor door, that I might be the first to "wish." Though, on this morning I was sure to be up an hour earlier than usual, yet I always found the family standing round the new-made, crackling fire, ready to break out upon me in full voices with the old greeting. There was something restoring in it, which made me feel as if we had all awoke in a new world, and to another existence; and a vague, but grateful sensation that new and peculiar joys were in store for us, went warm and vivifying to the heart. I was filled with kindness; and eager as I had been but a moment before, to surprise every one in the house, the laugh of good natured triumph at my defeat, made it dearer to me than a victory.

But old things are passed away; all things are become new. Not only those customs which now and then met us in our dull travel over the road of life, are gone; even the seasons seem changing. We no longer gather flowers in May; and our very last new year's morning, instead of rising upon the crusted snow, and fields glittering with ice, spread itself with a sleepy darkness over the naked earth. I awoke with an ill foreboding languor upon me, and with a weighed down heart sauntered into the silent parlor. The brands had fallen over the hearth, and by their half extinguished heat, seemed to doubt their welcome. I knew not where to sit or stand; the fireside looked cheerless and there was an uncomfortable, illnatured chill at the window. The vapor was passing off

from the withered grass; the freshness of every thing about me appeared deadened, and the beauty of nature faded. In the midst of this dull decay and solitude a sense of desertion overshadowed me. The world's inhabitants were as strangers, and even the objects of nature, with which I was wont to hold discourse, seemed to shut me out from communion with them. The family at last came in one after another. I was about wishing them the new year's blessing, but the memory of the heartfelt sprightliness of old times came across my mind, and brought along with it those that were at rest in the grave. I gave a loud "hem!" (for my throat was full) and bade a cold "good morning." I would not have uttered the old wish, if I could have done it. There was a feeling of proud resentment at the neglect of ancient customs, which forbade it. I did not care to wipe off the dust, which is fast and silently gathering over the sacred customs of past times, to bring them forward to the ridicule of the affected refinement and cold rationality of this enlightened age. They would as ill sort with our modern labored polish of manners, as our grandmother's comfortable arm-chair and worked cushion in a fashionable drawingroom, with distressingly slender fancy chairs, and settees, on which ladies are now seated together, to crowd and elbow one another. No; these good-natured and homely observances are past away, and I have a sacred attachment for their memory, which, like that for a departed friend, forbids mention of them to strangers.

Amidst this neglect and decay of old customs and characters, when every thing is brought to a wearisome level, when all is varnish and polish, so that even the roughness upon the plum, (to use the modern cant,) is vulgar and disgusting, when the utterance of strong feeling is ill breeding, and dissimulation wisdom; it is well for the world that there are beings not mindless of the past; who live with ages long gone by, and look upon the characters of the present time as trifling and artificial; who bring back, and keep alive amongst us, something of the wild and unpruned beauties of the earth, the ardent and spontaneous movements of man; so that the forest and rock, the grassplot, and field-flower, are yet about us; and some few walking in the midst, who are mighty and awing, kind and like a child.

In that period of the world, when the ignorance, which had settled down upon the mind of man, was passing off, and his understanding and heart were turned up and laid open to the day, there was a morning, earthy freshness in all he saw and felt. The dust and hot air of noon had not dimmed the colors, or killed the wholesomeness of all about him,

The relentless curiosity of modern times had not broken in pieces the precious stone, or soiled and torn asunder the flower. Man was the worshipper of the works of God in their simple beauty and grandeur; not the vain inquisitor, eager to learn their structure, that he might prate of what he knew. All was rustic and unforced; "a generous nature was suffered to take her own way to perfection." The cottage seemed a shelter for earth's children, from which they might look out upon, and learn, and love her beauties. They dwelt in the religious twilight of her woods, and mused by her water falls, on the passage of years. The universal puttings forth of spring quickened the pure spirits of the young; and the yellow leaf was the moral companion of the old. All, indeed, was nature without doors and within. Man walked abroad upon the green sod, and sat him down upon rushes by his fireside. The mind was as full of motion, various and creative, as the earth about it; and like hers, its productions were the mere relievings of its fulness, effortless, but plentiful. Its images were not formed in an exactly finished mould, or laboriously chisselled out; but like fairy frostwork, or the wavy sweep of a snow-drift, though ever beautiful, yet always seeming accidental. It was, indeed, the poetic age. Growing up in the absence of a false elegance, and not educated to the cautious politeness which crowded society has forced upon us, men were left to an independent individuality of character and conduct. Without the excitements of the pleasures and distinctions of the city, the mind spread itself out over the beauties about it; felt and nursed their truth; perceived a fitness and kindly relation in all things; not only gazed upon the lofty works of God, and walked by his still waters in the valley; but looked untired upon the flat and waste, or the long stretch of a rough heath. The taste was not pampered and vitiated by ill assorted prettinesses, turning the unnumbered beauties, the simplicity, and outspread grandeur of this gigantic earth into the huddled and offensively contrasted crowd of a garden; but the rock, fringed and scattered over with its green and silvery moss, was looked upon, though not seated in a bed of roses, violets and pinks; the wholesome perfume of the pine was grateful, and the crisp tread over its fallen and matted leaves, pleasant to the foot.

In this age of improvements, when multiplied inventions have rendered useless many acts to which individuals were once called in the common concerns of life; when one traverses a kingdom, without the touch of its breezes upon his cheek; and now and then takes a hasty peep through his carriage

window at the scenery about him, as if he were a stranger to it, and would not be unmannerly; we may boast of the facili ties and harmless luxuries of the world we live in. But though it gives us facilities, it works into the character a sameness, and an indifference to particulars. Tho object we sought is turned out finished to our hands, wfthout our labor or observation; it is attained without effort, and possessed without delight.

This mechanical moving on of things may aid the politician, but will not benefit the man. To the mathematician, who holds the daily cares and heart-helping relations of life, as so many interruptions to the solution of his problem, it may be pleasant visioning, to suppose himself moved about, without the aid of his troublesome, but faithful breast; and his withindoor concerns carried on by well-ordered machinery, and not self-willed servants; to think that his only perplexities in his domestic establishment, would be the grating of a wheel or breaking of a cord. Not rusty, "like my father's hinge," but well-oiled, how smoothly all would go on! But to the man of heart and poetry, this would be like the house of the dead, where the cold and stiffened bodies of the departed were raised up and charmed into careful and silent motion, acting unknowing, and obeying without sense.

In old times it was not so. Artificial aids were few and uncouth. Worked out in the rough and cumbrous, and requiring strength in the handling, they drew the attention; and lasting long, they became a part of the family, and held their place in the still and kindly-working associations of our homes. The old arm-chair, in the very character of the age, looking so companionable and easy, yet with its comfortable arms protecting its good natured occupier from the too near and familiar approach of his neighbor, stood in the snug corner of the ample fire-place, as by prescriptive right. It was no newfangled thing, bought yesterday because in fashion, and set up for the gibes of the smart auctioneer to-day, because out. It had been adorned by the patient industry and quaint fancy of our mothers, and had the honor of having sustained the weight of our ancestors for a century and more. Putting it away would have been neglecting our fathers, and the unkindly cutting off of remembrances, that had taken root and grown up in the heart. Every piece of furniture had its story to tell, and every room in the antique mansion made the mind serious and busy with the past, and threw a sentiment and feeling, softening but cheerful, over present times. This converse with the inanimate kept the heart warm, and the imagination