beats on, when hope, and joy, and thought itself, are buried for ever in the great ruins.

'But oh!' sighed she, in a mournful voice, 'it was a terrible and fearful shock to learn, all of a sudden, that she for whom alone he had been amassing riches and a name, had been mouldering away under the daisies for many a long year! For a while it seemed as if the whole hope and stay of life were gone; as though the weary time he had spent in India was a useless blank and waste, and as though the years that lay between him and eternity would never roll their shadows away from the gates of life. But after a short season, when he heard how we were in want and tribulation, a new spirit dawned within him. The pleasant memories of the old times woke in his heart a melancholy gladness; and for her dear sake he resolved that we whom she had so loved and trusted should never know sorrow or destitution more.'

Miss Harriet's busy fingers paused, the work dropped upon her lap, and something glittered brightly beneath her eye-lashes. Here the younger sister took up the thread of the discourse :

'Was it not a well-contrived surprise? How should we suppose that he, whom we thought far across the seas, should be the one to purchase the picture and the piano, and how hard and cruel we thought it that they should be the property of another! But it is all settled now; he says that this poor old house shall be his dwelling-place always, for the sake of lang syne. None, no, not even a palace, could be dearer, he says; and we two lonesome old maids shall be his house-keepers, and help to comfort him whenever he is sad.'

This conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Cousin Philip himself, and I now had a fair view of him for the first time. A noble figure, somewhat bowed, a pleasant, cheerful countenance, bronzed by tropical suns, and a bright, penetrating eye, in whose deepest well-springs you could not but read the melancholy shadows of some one great sorthis was his tout-ensemble.

row

He sat down before the glowing hearth and talked pleasantly, even gayly, of things past and present. I was pleased to see the brotherly tenderness, the thoughtful kindness, with which he listened to the chirping voices of the two sisters, and the affectionate cordiality with which he replied to their manifold questionings. Ah! there was no more indigence or suffering or loneliness for them now. Safe in the assurance of wealth and comfort, the declining suns of their lives might set in tranquil peace and brightness. These were my musings when I had reached my own home, and in the silence of my chamber was mentally revolving all the events of the past twenty-four hours.

Their

Many bright suns have risen and set since the unexpected dawn of better days upon the solitary spinsters of the deserted street. stream of life flows gently and smoothly along, in its quiet and secluded way, toward the great sea of eternity. Sometimes in my daily walks I meet that bowed yet stately man, moving through the busy streets with dreamy face, and eyes that see through a mist of years some lovely vision afar off. I never saw its golden shine, but the sisters once told me, in subdued whispers, that a tiny locket, gleaming with precious stones, lies day and night on Philip's faithful breast, containing the

scented dust of that withered rose-bud, whose colorless petals had risen and fallen with the last beatings of Ellinor's heart.

I

go often to the venerable house - pleasant, even in the gloom of its dim antiquity and spend the summer evenings amid the peaceful group, while Philip, sitting dreamily at the piano, improvises sweet, mournful strains, like the dying cadences of some grand old requiem, breathing through the vaulted arches of vasty cathedrals, or like the heavenly, half-remembered melodies that start up suddenly in our hearts, as angels from enchanted slumbers. And the rosy twilight fades gradually around us, and the cricket sings softly on the hearth, while that glorious young face, in its seraphic beauty, smiles from the dark canvas, for ever brightening and gilding the cherished memory of the loved and lost.

MUSIC.

How often from the steep

Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard'
Celestial voices in the midnight air.'- MILTON.

ALL through the air dwelling,

All through the earth swelling,
Deep from the sea welling,

Music comes with gladness or with melancholy moan:
How the death of Time knelling,

And of spirit-land telling,

Or the joy of life quelling,

Roaring from the depths like the voice of spectre-gnome.

Columbus, July, 1853.

Which splotches here and there the leaves,
So softly mellowing, like a smile,
Their ending life, and slowly weaves

The grain in waves of lingering melody.

Music swelling everywhere,

In the earth and through the air;

In the bottom of the sea,

O'er the bright and blooming lea;
In the cloud by thunder riven,

In the wind which sighs, then roars,

In the rain before it driven,

When it shrieking heavenward soars.
All the world is harmony,

All the universe abroad;

All the flowers a melody,

All Nature but a hymn to GOD.

THE HISTORY OF CAPTAIN SAMPSON STRONGBOW.

CHAPTER ONE.

THERE once lived in a lordly house, with four great chimneys and a spacious cellar, a certain peer of the realm, with a red face, a choleric temper, and two wives. John, Lord Beef, was the name of this robustious old Turk. He was a man broad and solid of frame. His legs, like two stalwart pillars, rested upon a pair of pedestals which seemed to have been designed by nature solely for the sturdiest use. In fact, that sagacious artisan having received an order to furnish a proprietor for a certain hideous and howling wilderness, which was afterward known throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, the two Americas, the East and West-Indies, and all parts of the world habitable by fish, flesh, and fowl, under the name of Bullscrown Manor, very wisely said: 'It plainly matters little what kind of feet I bestow upon this image, so that they be square and solid, and not easily to be fretted by thorns and rocks; but I will give to the poor creature hands of the most excellent pattern, in order that he may combat triumphantly with the wolves and savages which will fly at his throat the moment that he sets his foot in that region abandoned of Heaven, and that he may build for himself a good and strong house, suitable to dwell in, and be with his dame and children exceedingly comfortable.' Accordingly, having fitted on the extremities of his shanks two feet, which, though not of the neat clipper-build of those belonging to the swift-footed Achilles, were still most massive and substantial; and having also, in the kindness of her heart, encased them in a pair of shoes of the most durable cow-hide, (although it was not in the agreement that he was to

have shoes,) she next sat down over her box of knuckles, and with great care selected the very best in the assortment, and with them formed the nucleus of a bunch of fives, which the whole world will never tire of admiring when shaken, as is often the case, under the world's nose, and with which future generations will become acquainted in history, poetry, music, and the fine arts, (according to their particular turn of mind,) till they become as thoroughly bored with them as I am with Napoleon's cocked-hat and long-boots. Of such perfect pattern and workmanship were they, that if they had been driven against the ribs even of Goliath of Gath, they would have excited disgusting sensations in the epigastrium of that unwieldy son of Anak. The upper frame of our worthy nobleman was, as I have said, broad and square. It was laced and braced by thews of the toughest fibre, so that when his lordship stood in the ring, stripped for an Olympic contest, (which his partiality for learning and the ancient authors sometimes induced him to do,) I publish, declare, and avow that since the son of Jupiter and Alcmene mauled the nob of that gipsy bruiser Antæus, long before the pramids were littered, there has not been seen a sweeter pair of shoulders or a more elegant back than rose above the waist-band of the Earl of Beef.

The face of our amiable Earl was of a lord-like circumference, and richly endowed with color. His eyes were light-blue, and widely separated from each other by a most comely nose. His neck appeared to have been modelled in main after that of a bull, and when he was affected by a rising of choler, the sounds that issued from his gullet were a kind of hoarse bellowing, like that of the lord of the meadows when afar off he espies a scarlet pennon, and charges across the field with levelled horns and foaming mouth. Thus it is here seen, and will hereafter be further shown, that the master of Bullscrown was a goodly man to look upon, as well as discreet in business, orthodox in religion, handy in a skirmish, and mighty at the trencher.

Although this excellent and puissant nobleman boasted that he came of a prime old family, and vehemently argued to his neighbors that their own blood was the veriest slop compared with that which flowed in his veins, yet was he no fop or Nancy. The nails in the leather of his soles were such as they drive into horses' hoofs, and when he walked about the house, in his cow-hide shoes, all corns in his line of march instinctively shrank from the square-toed phenomenon. His coat was a rough one with big buttons, in the hale old times. His hat was but rustic in design and construction; and the staff which he carried in his hand was a mere cudgel, fitter to rap the crown of a vagabond withal than to indicate the dignity of its bearer. Nevertheless, his lordship was not without a sentiment of grandeur, and sometimes amazed the popular mind by displays of pomp, with which the triumphal processions of the dead heathen world, recounted with so much relish by the ancient historians, were not, in the estimation of this mighty nobleman, to be compared. To see him on such an occasion riding in solemn state in the grand coach, enveloped with robes and furs, bedecked with ribbons like a prize-ox, his head surmounted by a gorgeous coronet, and his face beaming from the midst of these paraphernalia with the com