and the heartless, who envied its possession. But afar from the nourishing stem, its form languished in one fleeting day, and its color faded. Then it was cast, like a loathsome weed, beneath the feet of the multitude, to wither and perish there.

Licentious profligate!

that rose was my only beloved Lina! I am

the solitary, broken, bleeding stem!

SUMMER AND

WINTER.

'I REMEMBER,' said an old man who was shivering with cold, and pinched with hunger, I remember, when our land was under the dominion of a beautiful and a munificent princess. She was of radiant looks, and lofty mien, and her people lived upon her smile they perished under her frown. Flowers burst around her footsteps. Her breath gave its perfume to the violet, her cheek lent its blush to the rose. Her approach was every where welcomed by songs of gladness. The poor man opened the door of his solitary cottage to greet her, and the sick man raised his drooping head to the uncurtained window, to feast his languid eye upon her happy retinue.

But the heart of Avarice is ice. From his mountains in the North, the tyrant saw and coveted her fair dominions. He donned his robe, and grasped his icy sceptre. He gathered his ruffian armies — swift as the winds, terrible as the tempest, numerous as the missiles of the storm. They burst upon the dominions of the princess. On they drave, blighting the poor man's harvest, and locking the water-springs under fetters of adamant.

They made our land naked, as a plain over which the fire has run mournful as a shroud enveloping the dead.

The princess dropped her garlands, and gathered up her robes for flight. Far, far to the South, she fled before her pursuer, like morning sunshine chased by an April cloud, over mountain and valley away. But there is a land where her reign is perpetual. On its limit she paused: she turned and bent upon her pursuer an irresistible smile. His spirit drooped his foot began to falter. His sceptre dropped from his powerless hand. His sparkling diadem fell from his head, and his robe from his shoulders. Back, back he fled, and resumed his throne on the iced mountain-top. His armies followed in swift retreat to their Northern fastnesses.

Our favorite returned, bringing happiness and life to her realm, which is thus soon desolated by Winter, and soon again will revive under the life-giving smile of Summer.

M.

A THOUGHT:

ADDRESSED TO MY COUSIN, WHO EXPRESSED

A WISH TO DIE.

THY form, dear girl! to earth is due --

Oh, not to heaven repair!

For angels are on earth too few-
While there are myriads there.

F.

HANNAH HERVEY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF TEN YEARS IN THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI,' 'FRANCIS BERRIAN,' ETC.

It was the month of June, and we were descending from Rochester to Schenectady in a packet canal-boat, a mode of travelling to most people excessively annoying, from its slowness, monotony, and destitution of excitement. I have been accustomed to be thrown upon the resources, such as they are, of my own thoughts, and never tire of being drawn thus leisurely through green meadows and fields, and having an opportunity to analyze the slowly-moving landscape, and deriving from it all the thoughts and associations which it is capable of exciting in the mind of a lover of nature.

At this time, in addition to those pleasures, we happened to have a very large assortment of fine young gentlemen and ladies, by which I mean young persons well-dressed, and with whole lots of airs and pretensions. Among them there happened to be one or two well-informed ladies, worthy of that name, and a single young gentleman, who had sense, instruction, enthusiasm, and a heart. He felt that he did not belong to those empty-headed persons, whose claims rested upon their whiskers, opera-glasses, fine clothes, and knowledge of the mysteries and dialect of Broadway.

I was amused to observe how naturally the kindred spirits of the passage gathered round this young gentleman, from sympathy. The consequence was, we had a little circle of our own, in which we originated many agreeable conversations, with just sprinkling enough of discussion, disputation, and wit, to keep them from being tame and stagnant on the one hand, or having the slightest shade of bitterness on the other. My young friend was an extensive merchant, on the line of the canal, and had the advantage of being more or less acquainted with all the distinguished inhabitants, whose habitations came in our view, in the slow movement of the canal-boat. When we saw a pretty place, it was natural, that, in addition to the name of the owner, we should like to know something of his history and character. It was amusing to remark, with how much pith and brevity our historian despatched most of these personages, a half a paragraph, in many instances, serving to furnish us with all of interest, that their history could offer. It was otherwise with a noble seat, that we saw opening among the green fields and trees on one of those fine acclivities, that bound the rich alluvial belt of the Mohawk valley. At a distance, it presented that happy union of nature and art, of simplicity and magnificence, of rural retirement, repose, and opulence, which always excites pleasant associations, and a curiosity to hear, if the owner of a spot so beautiful, is as happy as these appearances - unhappily so often deceptive - would indicate that he might and ought to be. Whose beautiful place is that?' was the united question of us all. belongs to my particular friend, Henderson L, Esq.,' said our cicerone, on whom I expect to call on my return from New-York.' 'Oh! is not the owner of such a splendid place happy? Yes, but not from being the owner of such a splendid place; though that circumstance, undoubtedly, contributes an element in his enjoyment. By that beautiful mansion and its tenants hangs a tale. The sun,' he continued, 'is

It

pleasantly clouded in, and if you have a mind to hear me spin a yarn considerably longer than my common ones, take chairs, and task your patience accordingly. We unanimously expressed a wish to hear his narrative, which commenced in the following terms.

Yonder small cottage, that you see half a mile to the right, was, two years since, the residence of Mr. Morrison Hervey, head of an English family, that moved to this part of the country a few years ago. Before I advance in my narrative, I ought to premise, that although my father resides fifty miles from this place, he had become acquainted with Mr. Hervey in New-York, and had conceived an opinion so exalted of his capabilities as an instructor, that being an earnest partisan of a private education in preference to a public one, he applied to that gentleman, to receive me in his family, as his pupil. As my father was rich and he poor, and as I was the only, and perhaps I ought to add, spoiled son, there was no difficulty in settling the arrangement.

Behold me, then, an indolent, indulged, and untaught subject, removed fifty miles from home, and placed in a position as unlike that in which I had hitherto moved, as can well be imagined. But I pass wholly by every thing that occurred here to myself, in order to give you, as I promised, the story of the family; and all that part of this, which has its scene laid in England, I shall despatch in a word. Mr. Hervey was an Oxford graduate, a genius, truly and emphatically such-a poet, and as sensitive, shy, and proud, as such persons generally are. He tried the church awhile, and abandoned it. He tried the law, and became disgusted with it. He tried verse-making, and as he was nameless, unpatronized, unknown, and wrote from the enthusiasm of a rich and elevated mind, and of course overshot the taste and comprehension of the circle in which he moved, the little poetasters and gazette-paragraphists barked his verses into nonentity in their clique. He was more successful in making love to the beautiful seventh daughter of a country curate, with a living of sixty pounds. She was only inferior to him in talents; being in inefficiency, in aimless incapability, in simplicity of character, and excellence of heart, his perfect peer and yoke-mate. Though it be mathematically true, that minus into minus makes plus, it is not a practical fact, that poverty added to poverty becomes wealth. After reducing love and a cottage to their very lowest endurable experiment, in various efforts for a subsistence, and when their family already amounted to five children, a small succession from a remote relative of Mrs. Hervey's fell to them in New-York; and in the hope, that chance. might prove more favorable in opening some avenue to subsistence in the new world, than it had in England, they sailed for America. Their bequest was rapidly exhausting in New-York, in different trials of pursuit, as little persevered in, and as little successful, as those in England. Mr. Hervey's health and spirits were declining, and as usually happens to minds of his temperament, the final experiment, that suggested itself to his thoughts, invested with a thousand soothing associations, was to turn farmer, and die in his own fields, and be buried under his own trees. Between two and three thousand dollars remained to him, with which, on the recommendation of a friend, he purchased yonder tract of land, furnished that cottage, and became its occupant..

Such was the family in which I became an inmate. It presented the most striking contrasts, and compounds of gentle and affectionate

intercourse, kept up almost in a state of want; of refinement and elegance of manners, in a disorganized and slatternly family establishment; of high-minded pride of feeling and deportment, sustained in the necessary discharge of offices and labors alike servile and profitless. Every thing in this new world was a study to me. Uninstructed as I was, I was soon made to feel the native resources and the vast acquirements of the mind that was to form mine. This, united to a quick perception of the admirable character which swayed that mind, awed me into a steadfast and unconscious respect for him and his household. The laughable shifts to which this family were often obliged to resort for subsistence from day to day, and the reckless mismanagement of every thing, within and without, were calculated to produce, and under any other circumstances would have produced, any other feeling than that of respect.

Four of the five children, George and Ruth, Sarah and Thomas, were fair and balanced compounds of the character of the father and mother. Like them, they were each remarkable for personal beauty, and were gifted with the genius and poetic temperament, the shyness, pride, and inefficiency of the father, and the gentle, quiet, uncomplaining mildness of their mother. At first view, their characters seemed as uniform as was the unhappy result; there was the same want of energy and firmness of purpose that marked their father. When studied more intimately, and analyzed with a more ample experience, each showed a modification of this singular endowment of the father, that rendered the study of these most amiable and most useless of human beings a source of perpetual and high excitement to my curiosity. It seemed impossible, that under an exterior so monotonous, and a result so exactly the same, there should be couched such a strange diversity of character, alike feeble, interesting, and amiable.

Hannah, the third in point of years, and when I entered the family, fifteen, that is to say five years younger than myself, was a strange exception. She was only what would have been called pretty, or perhaps good-looking, though the least beautiful of the family, if you laid out of the view eyes of a melting, black, lustrous brilliancy, which shone with the intense expression of sense, amiability, and firmness. eyes were such as a sacred painter would assign to a seraph. At the same time, their brightness was tempered with a lovely and forbearing expression of gentleness, and raised the impression of the intelligence of an angel, bestowed upon the guileless and loving nature of a child. Shall I speak of her intelligence? I was ashamed to attempt the same task with her, she grasped it so much more readily and perfectly. In regard to the moral part of her nature, I shall only remark, that all my conceptions of embodied truth, dignity, and worth, were carried out in her character. So entire were my convictions, that she would not act except with the noblest motives and the highest views, that her wrong-doing, in my eyes, would have been consecrated as some perfection of right which I understood not. Strange to tell, she was active as the domestic bee-as firm as the rock on the shore of the ocean; and of invincible inflexibility of purpose. If any one should ask, how it came that such a girl should be born of such parents, and should be found in such a place, I can only refer him to the will of Him who has seen fit to scatter the fairest flowers in the desert, and the most beau33

VOL. VII.

tiful gems in the depths of the sea. A striking result of her vigor, firmness, and prematurity of judgment, was, that without ever departing for a moment from the natural character and deportment appropriate to her years, she seemed to me a mentor, twenty years older than myself; and, without intending it, and apparently shrinking from the natural influence of her character upon them, she moulded the rest of the family, and guided its concerns, as a pilot steers his vessel. Dangerous would have been the temptations of her position, but for the intrinsic and shrinking modesty of her mind, which prevented her abusing this strange precocity of judgment. But she saw and felt how revolting it would seem to others, as well as herself, to attempt to manage the family; and from the purest and most natural of feelings, she recoiled from that sort of government and direction which might have retrieved the fortunes of her unhappy kindred. As it was, almost unconsciously, she introduced gradual order, industry, and arrangement into the concerns of the family, which began to operate, to a certain extent, the retrieval of its downward course. But she took especial care, that this redemption should not seem her work; and with such a happy forethought and address, that while one year had gone round, in which they had added to the comforts of the house, and the improvements of the farm, and it was found on balancing accounts, on the last day of the year, that their income had actually exceeded their expenditure, each member felt encouraged to claim a share of the merit of this happy change. It was while leading her parents, that she contrived to impart to them the inspiring feeling, that they were the sources of this new power. The hand that wound up the machinery was concealed.

Such was this family, promising to commence a new chapter in its history, when we heard of the commencement of the fearful ravages of the cholera at Buffalo and Rochester, and generally on the line of the canal. As my father lived at this time in Rochester, and as the cottage we have passed was retired, remote, as you remarked, from other habitations, and apparently a very healthy position, it was deemed more prudent that I should remain where I was, instead of returning to my father's family.

'It was among the inscrutable anomalies of that mysterious and formidable scourge, that Mr. Hervey's family should be the only detached farming establishment attacked with it, within fifty miles. But Mr. Hervey came in from hay-making, one beautiful evening, toward the close of July, apparently overwrought and fatigued with the exertions of the day. Apprehending no other cause for his exhaustion, he retired immediately to bed. No alarm was expressed; and his lady saw him not, until nearly nine in the evening, when he summoned her to his bedside, and complained of having felt for some time extremely restless and depressed, and a strange and unextinguishable thirst. His bedroom was so darkened, that she saw not the expression of his countenance; but, startled by the hoarse and unnatural tone of his voice, she laid her hand upon his breast, and was struck with terror, almost amounting to faintness, on remarking the death-like and marble feeling of his body. A light was brought. We all rushed in alarm to the room. None of us had yet seen a case of cholera; but we had all read so much upon the subject, and were so well informed of the more obvious and marked symptoms of this frightful disease, that the terrible