to the interests and feelings of his friends, and won their affection as well as their esteem, by the amiable and manly disposition which on all occasions he displayed. Inquiry was made if any secret misfortune had disgusted him with the world, and impelled him to seek the fatal relief of the bowl; but the history of his past life exhibited nothing more than the common incidents of youth and manhood-such changes as occur in the ordinary nature of things, over which we grieve the stated period, and then forget in the hopes, pleasures, and new disappointments which checker the little day of life. He had gone on in this manner for a year, and when all hope of his reformation had passed away, he suddenly appeared a new man. He resumed the character of an amiable and industrious citizen. He lived again happily in the bosom of his family. His business flourished beneath his anxious care, and, at this time, he is a happy husband and father.

He wrote me some time ago. His letter was long, and, to me, very interesting, and confirmed my opinion that the world is not so bad as we are apt sometimes to deem it. I will extract a few paragraphs for the benefit of such young gentlemen as allow their thoughts to wander away too far from the realities of life. Let Providence take care of his own works. We have every reason to believe that he knows what he is about, and when we discover the exquisite care he has taken for our enjoyment, and feel the blessings innumerable which his bounteous hand has lavished upon us, why should we suppose his favorable disposition will ever change?

After some account of the manner in which the subject of religion had affected him, and the despondency into which he fell in consequence, my friend adds:

"I had now no object for which to live. I had trusted with too much confidence to my own reason, and it had betrayed me into infidelity upon every subject. There seemed to be no Providence over human occurrences. I had lost my hold on all the feelings which link man with man, and lead his hopes on through the bright vistas of future happiness. In short, it was atheism, which comprehends all of horror that humanity can suffer. It took the tinge

of comfort from life. It made pleasure a mockery, and hope an empty dream. The earth offers to the imagination no prospect so utterly bleak as that of the atheist. He has no confidence in nature. In the thrillings of pleasure he feels no gratitude; in the anguish of suffering he knows no consolation. The world that moves on carelessly around him, was not made for him. He walks over it as an usurper, and after his brief hour of hopelessness, when he has snatched his selfish joys, and endured his lonely labors, he sinks back into the eternal grave, and mingles, like a brute, with the common mass of things. To escape reflections like these, I rushed into every excitement that chance offered, and I can scarcely say in which situation I was more wretched; in the cold, desolate moments of reason, or in the wild frenzy of intoxication.

"It was on my way to one of these scenes of debauchery, that I was met by a gentleman whom formerly I had much esteemed. He introduced me to his family, and I awoke to a scene of domestic bliss, the very existence of which I had forgotten. He was an elderly man. His wife was yet the object of his sincere affection, and he had sons and daughters_growing up in happiness and beauty about him. From the circle which gathered around his cheerful fire, all misery seemed excluded. The amusements every where opened to intelligence, here sufficed to beguile their leisure hours; and those affections which I had suffered to lie dormant, here occupied all hearts, and shed a charm, an inexpressible charm, over the scene. I could not but contrast it with the lonely madness of my own fate; and when the dance had ceased, and his youngest daughter had finished one of those touching songs which surprise the heart sometimes into the tenderness of a woman, and all the fair forms whose soft voices and beaming eyes lingered in my mind had passed away, I was prepared for the conversation which he introduced, and the conclusions to which he intended it should lead me. He heard me describe my feelings with patience, and after much argument, by which I was often compelled to acknowledge myself in the wrong, he finished with the following remarks:

"The miseries which you have suffered are not uncommon, and, were they permanent, few of us could be in any degree satisfied with life. But they are clouds which, though they will rise in the mind at certain times, yet melt away of themselves, and leave the character purer and better for the mental tempests which thy engender. There are three different periods in the life of a thoughtful man, when the world wears different aspects. To the eye of youth it is all gaywe trust all who promise, and love every one that smiles. The present is bright, but it is nothing to the brilliancy of the future; and all the delightful feelings of our nature unfold themselves luxuriantly, without experience to guide, or sorrow to chill them. But the season of youth steals swiftly away. Before we are aware, we have reached the stage of manhood, and are mingling in its wider adventures, and adapting our boyish hopes and opinions to its stern necessities. Soon we begin to perceive that the scenes around us have changed, and then to wonder that we ourselves are so much altered. That which we used to value, no longer satisfies our wishes. That which we used to wish, now appears wild and romantic. We find that we must contract the sphere of our hopes, and be content with much which, in the pride and ardor of earlier imaginings, we had rejected with disdain. Our old school mates, who, but yesterday, were sporting with us on the green, have grown up to maturity, and assumed their rank in society; and they to whom we once looked up with awe and reverence, from whose lips we received wisdom, have passed away, and their names are strangers in the places where they were once known and loved. It is very probable that, at this time, our own misfortunes begin to darken around us. We bid farewell to the thoughtlessness of our earlier hours, and can number the disappointments which have blighted our own hopes. The future loses its tinge of glory. Even the present often becomes a waste. Each year, as it rolls more darkly over us, dissolves some lingering spell of boyhood, and severs, one after another, the links that connected us happily to the earth. Now we acknowledge, in the private chambers of our thoughts, that the events we most earnestly

desired can never take place. Many of our dearest friends are gone. Many for whom alone we seemed to live, and without whose companionship and approbation wealth and fame would be almost valueless, have departed; not for a day or a year, but for ever; and after the mind has exhausted its every power of suffering by vain wishes and wretched recollections, it settles down at length into a gloomy acquiescence-a stagnant content. Here misery assumes its most hideous form, and we are in danger from wild opinions and tempting excitements. The desolation within prompts us to seek relief abroad, and it depends upon the nature of the path we here choose, whether we go forth upon a career of honor and happiness, or sink into idleness and oblivion. The affections which once stretched out their tendrils to embrace every surrounding object, now recoil from all contact, and wither up within the deep, cold, silent recesses of the heart. Our mind, once filled only with soft dreams and undisturbed affections, is now thronged with spectral doubts and fierce and dangerous resolutions. It is as if an elysian garden, where flowers had breathed and lovely girls wandered, were suddenly converted into a scene of warfare, its shady cloisters shaken by the roar of cannon, and its flowers trampled down by the tread of battle. This is, perhaps, the most important season of life. There comes over the spirit a species of desperation, a arecklessness of present and future, a wantonness of despair, while reason sits listless upon her throne; and the mind, crazy with the influence of a morbid imagination, plunges into the unfathomable abyss of metaphysical conjecture. Here all is dark, void, limitless, and unearthly; and in its mighty chaos we lose all identity and interest in common things. We believe ourselves lapsing along to a termination of all our feeling, and, shuddering, we yield to our fate. Many a noble fellow is here destroyed. Many a proud spirit that has warred in vain with the influences of the world, thus bends, at length, and bows down to the dust in anguish and shame. But this humor of the mind also passes away, the tumults of the bosom gradually subside, and we become familiar with nature as it is. The imagination returns from her dark flights, reason discovers new

objects of interest and affection, and the void in the heart is filled. Go back, my friend' continued my companion, and learn to meet the changes of life with firmness and dignity; and if your situation afford nothing else, still you may enjoy the pride of human intellect in buffeting the storms of fate, and standing erect, though all around you be in ruins. Do your duty, and heaven will accomplish the rest. But beware of yielding to the impulses of a moment, lest you destroy the chance of happiness for years.'

"I retired to my rest with these new views of the world, and experienced relief that others could comprehend me, and had known similar despondency. I abandoned all the habits to which I had resurted before, and mingled again with the world. It would be superfluous for me to say with what horror I regarded the dangers I had escaped, and the gratitude with which I remembered the sympathy by whicn I had been rescued. I am now as contented as ever. All my affairs go on prosperously; the labor of my day is far from being unpleasant; and you will never realize the great happiness I experience in returning to my home in the evening, till you try for yourself the- -but I am interrupted. My little boy is putting up his red lips for a good-night kiss, which will tell you better than any description what I mean, and my wife is playing upon the piano, accompanied by my sister, in a chord so sweet that I must stop to listen."

WHISKERANDOS CONFEDERATION.

MR. EDITOR-Agreeably to a notice published in your last, a large concourse of our fellow citizens assembled in the Park, for the purpose of adopting resolutions in opposition to whiskers, and of directing public attention to the alarming extent of this propensity. The meeting was composed of beardless boys, patriotic spinsters, and immense numbers of those decent and unassuming gentlemen, who were either unwilling from education, or