are more dear to those with whom the fate of the original are linked, than the brightest and loveliest beauties of ideal beauty. Through its medium, friends and lovers gaze into each other's faces at the outermost ends of the earth. It preserves to you, unchanged by death or decay, or the mutations of the world, the frank, free countenance of the companion of your boyhood, or the form and features that "first love traced;" through it the mother gazeth with mournful tenderness on the similitude of her absent or departed child; and children with grateful recollection on the presentment of those who were the first and last to love them. And, no matter how commonplace or generally uninteresting the countenances of those persons who have been so preserved-they were dear to some one. The beneficent law of nature sayeth, that no human being shall go utterly unbeloved; it has insured sympathy and affection to all; a nook in some heart to the most despised

"There is a tear for all that die,

A mourner o'er the humblest bier."

Therefore, as an art that yields to the eye that for which the soul yearns, Portrait painting is worthy of all love and honour.

William Cox.

MARY'S PORTRAIT.

THIS faint resemblance of thy charms,
Though strong as mortal art could give,
My constant heart of fear disarms,
Revives my hopes, and bids me live.

Here I can trace the locks of gold

Which round thy snowy forehead wave,
The cheeks which sprung from Beauty's mould,
The lips which made me Beauty's slave.

Here I can trace-ah no! that eye
Whose azure floats in liquid fire,
Must all the painter's art defy,

And bid him from the task retire.

Sweet copy! far more dear to me,
Lifeless, unfeeling as thou art,

Than all the living forms could be,

Save her who placed thee next my heart.

Byron.

PROGRESS OF INTELLECT.

WHEN the treasures of knowledge are first opened before us, while novelty blooms alike on every hand, and every thing equally unknown and unexamined seems of equal value, the power of the soul is principally exerted in a vivacious and desultory curiosity. * ** When a number of distinct images are collected by these erratic and hasty surveys, the fancy is busied in arranging them; and combines them into pleasing pictures with more resemblance to the realities of life as experience advances, and new observations rectify the former. While the judgment is yet uninformed, and unable to compare the draughts of fiction with their originals, we are delighted with improbable adventures, impracticable virtues, and inimitable characters. But, in proportion as

we have more opportunities of acquainting ourselves with living nature, we are soon disgusted with copies in which there appears no resemblance. We first discard absurdity and impossibility, then exact greater and greater degrees of probability, but at last become cold and insensible to the charms of falsehood, however specious, and from the imitations of truth, which are never perfect, transfer our affections to truth itself.

Johnson.

POETRY OF PARADISE.

IN Eden, ere yet innocence of heart
Had faded, poetry was not an art;
Language, above all teaching, or, if taught,
Only by gratitude and glowing thought;
Elegant as simplicity, and warm
As ectasy, unmanacled by form;
Not prompted, as in our degenerate days,
By low ambition and a thirst of praise;
Was natural as is the flowing stream,
And yet magnificent-a God the theme!

Cowper.

CALPURNIA.*

FROM attachment to me she has acquired a love of study. My books she carries with her, reads, learns by heart. What solicitude she testifies when I am about to plead in a cause, what joy when I have done! She has messengers disposed to tell her what assent, what ap* The wife of Pliny.

plause I receive; and what is the event of the trial. She sings my verses to her lyre with no other art but love, the best of masters. Wherefore I entertain a confident hope that our mutual attachment will be perpetual, and will grow stronger and stronger with time. For it is not my youth or my person, which fail with age, but my fame, which she loves. Pliny.

INFANT BEAUTY.

BRIGHT be the skies that cover thee,
Child of the sunny brow-

Bright as the dream flung over thee
By all that meets thee now.
Thy heart is beating joyously,
Thy voice is like a bird's,
And sweetly breaks the melody
Of thy imperfect words.

I know no fount that gushes out
So gladly as thy tiny shout.

I would that thou mightst ever be
As beautiful as now,—

That time might ever leave as free
Thy yet unwritten brow,—
I would life were "all poetry,"

To gentle measure set;

That naught but chastened melody
Might stain thine eye of jet,
Nor one discordant note be spoken,
Till God the cunning harp hath broken.

N. P. Willis.

WOMEN.

WHAT can interrupt the content of those, upon whom one age has laboured after another to confer honours, and accumulate immunities; those to whom rudeness is infamy, and insult is cowardice; whose eye commands the brave, and whose smiles soften the severe; whom the sailor travels to adorn, the soldier bleeds to defend, and the poet wears out life to celebrate; who claim tribute from every art and science, and for whom all who approach them endeavour to multiply delights, without requiring from them any return but willingness to be pleased?

Johnson.

FILIAL MEMORY.

My mother! weary years have passed, since last
I met thy gentle smiles; and sadly then
It fell upon my young and joyous heart.
There was a mortal paleness on thy cheek,
And well I knew they bore thee far away
With a vain hope to mend the broken springs-
The springs of life. And bitter tears I shed
In childhood's short-lived agony of grief,
When soothing voices said that thou wert gone,
And that I must not weep, for thou wert blest.
Full many a flower has bloomed upon thy grave,
And many a winter's snow has melted there;
Childhood has passed, and youth is passing now,
And scatters paler roses on my path;