ART. I. THE HUT. BY HENRY J. BRENT, II. STANZAS: THE RECALL. BY A NEW CONTRIBUTor, III. TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. BY S. I. C. WHITTLESEY, VII. THE FLOWER-GIRL'S LAMENT. BY NELSON LAWES, VIII. WHAT JED PALLFRY FOUND IN THE COFFIN. By T. B. ALDRICH, . .80 31 XVII. THE EASTERLY WIND: 'A LAMENT.' Br THOMAS MAO KELLAR, XX. LINES: A HEART-MEMORY,. XXI. THE UNSEEN BATTLE-FIELD, XXII. YE WESTERN STAGE. BY L. J. BATES, LITERARY NOTICES: 1. THE COURT OF NAPOLEON: A SPLENDID GIFT-BOOK, 3. THE POETICAL WORKS OF HORACE AND JAMES SMITII, 5. PAUL FANE: OR PARTS OF A LIFE ELSE UNTOLD, ༦ 1. ARGUMENTS' PRO' AND 'CON' FOR 'GOING ABROAD,' AND ON THE OTHER HAND, WATCH-CASE EXTRAORDINAIRE': 'SUMMING-UP' OF OUR CORRESPONDENT. 5. UNEXPECTED DESAGREMENS' OF MOVING-TIME IN THE METROPOLIS: A FRIEND IN NEED' 'SECURED' INDEED: (PLAY ON WORD 'SECURED.) 6. TERRIBLE 23. THE BONNY BLOOMING HEATHER': A MEMENTO. 24. MINISTERIAL AND BIBLIOPOLICAL LINGUISTS, 25. SLEIGH-BELLS AND WINTER-LIFE. 26. AN AMUSING LETTER FROM A DEAF-MUTE. 27. GOOD ADVICE, IN A SMALL COM- PASS. 28. AMERICAN HOAXES OF ENGLISH JOURNALS AND SCRIBBLERS. 29. FOL- GER'S KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL,' PIERMONT, ROCKLAND COUNTY. 30. AN AF- FECTING AND TRUTHFUL INCIDENT: WISE JUDICIAL LENITY. 81. MAGAZINE EDITORS AND THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. 32. STEALING NEWSPAPERS: A FOUR- LEGGED THIEF. 33. LETTER FROM A PUMP TO MR. CHRISTAL PALAS. 84. A TOUCHING MISSIONARY REPORT. 35. THEODORE HOOK AND THOMAS HOOD. 36. EARTHLY SOUNDS IN THE FIRMAMENT OF HEAVEN.' 37. A BUSINESS-OBI- TUARY. 88. LIFE'S COMPENSATIONS': A BEAUTIFUL FIGURE. 39. BURTON'S NEW THEATRE. 49. A RECLAIMED WAIF. 41. PALMER'S EXQUISITE SCULPTURES. 42. THE ALBION'S ENGRAVING: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. 43. 'DYING BY INCHES. 44. BASSWOOD PAPER. 45. A HINT' THAT WILL BE TAKEN. 46. A WORD TO A. OF DEPOSIT.' 47. PASSAGE FROM A CORRESPONDENT'S NOTE TO THE EDITOR. 43. THE ILLUSTRATED KNICKERBOCKER GALLERY.' 49. BOOKS PERUSED AND AWAITING NOTICE: BOOKS RECEIVED. 50. COSMOPOLITAN ART- OVER the wilderness, the far-off and dreary wilderness, over the garden-walks and beds, lieth the snow, and with the snow there lives the cold air perpetually. At times the pine trees in the dim forest shake their mantled branches, and then the wintry sun sends in among the dark green boughs his gleam of transient light, and the spotted deer that had stood shivering in the shadows, steal out into the pale sunshine, and paw the snow with their sharp hoofs, hoping for herbage. The tracks of bears are all about upon the snow in the tangled ravines, and doubtless beneath the gloomy curtain of the dense wood many of these divorced Africans of the wilds are fast asleep with their well-gloved paws in their mouths. The garden-walks are filled with snow, and the garden-beds look as if the spade and its use was among the lost arts and the lost practices of mankind. Looking last spring and summer from my window over the sweet river that flows before my Hut, with my eye running over the screen of woods that grows upon the opposite shore, with the deep-toned grasses that seemed to float out from the banks, as if anxious to have a social chat with the old whalelooking rocks out in the deeper currents, I thought that it would almost be a sacrilege to have all these trees, and slopes, and twining grasses, and brown old rocks, and sparkling currents, bright here with flashes in the sun-light, and dark in the shadows of the purple clouds, covered, and buried, and lost in the deep mantle of the frozen snows : but now when I look out upon the same scene, I feel the influence of the dispensation, and would deem it quite a fiendish act in the warm sun, to take away the shroud, the holy shroud, in which God has wrapped the dead glories of the summer-time. But soon all this vast whiteness will be carried up into the spring air, and the wilderness will grow fresh again with its millioned leaves, and the deer will browse on the herbs it looked for through the deep snow, and the bear will cease sucking his fingers, and the rose-buds will burst into beauty along the garden-walks, and the gardener in his shirt-sleeves, with beads of perspiration on his brow, will be at work among his cabbage-plants, and the good-natured cook (if such things exist in animal botany) will look out upon the growing herbs from her kitchen-door and groan in spirit at the prospect of approaching bundles of asparagus and loads of cabbages, which she must cook in time for the master's dinner, or fatally lose her place. This place is not over-lonely in which I live, though I am all alone. The house is all alone, but yet it is not lonely, for it is the old belle of a miniature forest. Pines and red-blushing cherry-trees, dark furniturefurnishing walnuts and female-looking willows, with branches like Titanic mermaids' hair, all cluster close to the tender-hearted old dwelling; and in summer-time, when the porch-door is opened, they eagerly, and I am tempted to think, amorously, rush in with their cool shades and zephyrs, and penetrate into the very heart of the Hut. She receives their adulations with an air of quiet dignity, repelling none; but I think she shows a preference to a stately pine that has stood for half a century by her side, gloomily in love and grandly beautiful. It is necessary that I should carefully sketch the general and particular outlines of the scene and the scenery in which my life is passing away. Thus I shall be enabled to convey to others the actuality of those simple recitations and narratives that will eventually follow in these pages. The region in which my home is made is in one of the middle States of the Union; and in advance, I will at once say that I shall with my own rude pencil sketch the physical features of and about my abode and all things appertaining to these writings. The reader will find my rambling writing well besprinkled with drawings illustrating the scenery of my living, and the incidents of my narrative. I said that a river ran before my door. It is true: and it is true that it is a forever sweet and glorious river. Its banks are densely populated by clumps of trees, whose branches spread their countless stems over the rippling stream, and interlace the sun-light like threads of gold with skeins of green. In some places the channel is not too broad but that I can throw a two-ounced stone across when I see a crow blackening a bright spot of sun-shine on a silver bough. Then again it widens out and tranquilly flows onward, as if it would bid me have my grounds surveyed for a city. Here a wharf where the deep water swells in idle majesty, deep enough for an Indiaman; there where a steam-boat of three thousand or twenty thousand tons could heave up to the pierhead, and where the depth of water would defy the boat's barber to touch bottom with his pole and line. But no city shall ever lay alongside the heaving bosom of my mountain-born beauty; no wharf shall stretch its green legs into its clear depths; no steam-boat wake it from the glorious dream of its far-off mountain-home, where its cradle was the basin of the granite rocks, its nurse the evening wind of summer, and its mother the dews of heaven, wedded to the silver cascade that sparkled with its warm pulse and sang its song of love through the long moon-lit nights, and the amorous sun-shine of the day. About half-a-mile west of the Hut the river sweeps around a barrier of festooned rocks, and breaks in almost angry sportiveness through narrow channels made by the half-sunken chips that have been splintered from the main cliff. Here the scene is wonderfully beautiful. On the shore that acknowledges me as its owner, a dense wood walks carelessly down from the tall hill-side and throws its shadows across the bubbling, boiling torrent, and spatters the moss-covered rocks with spots of checkered shade. The limbs of the quivering aspen reach in delicate grace like the fingers of a fair woman, as if they would clutch and wear the diamond bubbles that sparkle on the rushing water. There is one rock, old as human thought and older too, I ween, that hems in the river on this shore. Never since the world was made, never since beauty became an element of creative wisdom, was there ever such a rock as this. It is the rock by which I swear. It is the rock by which the lightning flashes in wild wonder at its loveliness. It is the rock toward which the slight gossamer mist of the miniature cataracts, scattered all about, floats lovingly as if it would wreathe it with a veil through which the sun-shine may fall like stars all sprinkling. I wish the whole world could see my rock. It is worth a visit from Asia. The stars come down from heaven to see it; the moon rises over the ridges to look at it, and beam her witchcraft over it. The shrubs and the wild flowers cluster in its mossy garden-spots of crevices, the rose is its queen flower, the briar rose, and in its still shadow where there is no eddy but a calm perpetual, the water-lilies peep above the surface, and would not quit its side even to be placed in the banner of Imperial France. My rock has a name. I have baptized it I did it one summer evening. The idea had been wandering about my noddle for weeks, and so I resolved to go up to it, the antique gem of the bright waters, and give it a Christian christening. I dressed myself with great abandon for this important ceremony. I wore my slouched hat and decked its dark rim with a knightly feather, a feather |