you

their opinions a trifle less positive. But now for a short time must bid farewell to the precincts of the fair shining water, and wend your way with me far, far south, to the flowery vale of the Oronoco, where dusky maids with drooping eyes, heavy with love, search beneath a brighter moon for charmed herbs, from which to win a power that will make love constant and immortal. We have arrived where we left our steeds,' continued he, as he placed his hand against the rocky wall, which yielded as easily as when we entered; 'hasten, for I must leave you where I found you, by the dawn.'

In an instant we were seated on our fire-breathing coursers, which cut the liquid way with ten times the speed of a flying eagle. In a short time we alighted on the gay plains through which the Oronoco stretches her hundred arms to the all-embracing ocean. Gorgeous flowers, to which those of the north are pale, lay like a wide sea of flame around, scenting the warm atmosphere with a delicious yet enervating fragrance. Oh ye beautiful flowers! ye incense-breathing worshippers! with what glory ye crown the desert, and make glad the silent places; whispering to the solitary of His love and goodness who made and remembers all things! 'Such flowers never bloomed in gardens,' said I to Trezalyun. 'No,' replied he; but it was not their beauty alone that I brought you so far to see, although that would be worth a long journey. Look through this crystal, for eyes formed from clay are not sufficiently microscopic to see without it, into the cup of that tulip, and tell me what you discover.' 'Oh!' cried I, what enchantment! a number of little creatures, not larger than midges, are painting the sides with single hairs!' Now examine others, and tell me if you see the same.' 'All, all have the same tiny inhabitants, and are employed in the like manner!' 'Did I not tell you,' said Trezalyun, that all have their places assigned, and that all are parts of the one great whole? It is the business of those minute fairies who are called Mimble-meers, to tint the flowers, and array them in all their glory. But look through the crystal, and tell me what you see above.'

'I see,' said I, a number of delicate creatures, so transparent that they do not intercept the moonbeams; their graceful movements yield and undulate to the passing breeze like a waving exhalation, or shape formed from the mist; they carry a silvery net, which they throw over the dying flowers, and then they ascend until they are lost in the blue sky. Ah! they are the Aucors, who catch the colors from the dying flowers to paint the dawn and streak the rainbow. But we must prepare to return, for soon Dawn's rosy fingers will open to them the ruby gates of morn.' 'Let me take one more look, to print this paradise on my memory: is it not a pity that it is inhabited only by roaming savages?' exclaimed I.‘A pretty paradise, and not without its serpent,' replied Trezalyun, with one of his gay laughs; why, six months in the year this garden of flowers turns to dry hard-baked clay, cracked by deep dismal fissures, which are filled with gigantic snakes, saurians, and

every other dreaded reptile; making day hideous with their horrible forms, and night awful with their appalling cries. We must rise higher into the upper current of air that flows from the south,' observed Trezalyun, or we shall meet the under one that runs from the north, which might occasion some disarrangement in your material organization.'

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed, when he cried, Halt! for a moment: we are again in the vicinity of your own bright Horicon. Hereabout lies the fairest county of this wide State, a Switzerland in miniature, scarcely known to civilized man. Now and then the foot of the hunter may start the deer; and once upon a time, a curious scenery-loving son of Melpomene laid aside his daintiness, and pushed through bush, brake and briar, to glad his eyes with its beauty. We call it the Fairies' Home, for here they repair and make short the summer nights with quips, quirks, and jollities: Here is a troop of the merry reveller's; we'll take a peep at their enjoyment.'

In a picturesque dell, through which ran a clear stream, lay a green meadow, the outer side skirted with trees, above which rose craggy castellated rocks; the inner was edged with dreary osiers, and alders, over which graceful vines twined in wild luxuriance; from which, although it was summer, hung bunches of ripened grapes. Midway in the meadow grew a willow, every pendant branch so entirely hung with fire-fly lamps, that the whole dell was completely illuminated, around which circled groups of joyous dancers, who had formed themselves into several rings connected by wreaths of flowers. They passed, repassed, and spun round each other after the manner of waltzers; then one party would suddenly throw their wreaths over a fay belonging to another, which if they succeeded in enmeshing, they placed in their midst, and danced round with all kinds of grotesque attitudes; laughing, shouting, and with mocking jibes, playfully challenging them to escape; which they were constantly on the watch to effect; when their former partners would all close round to rescue the little prisoners, and skip off to the farther part of the meadow, where all would rompingly follow. Here each gallant selected his favorite, and after a short promenade, led her up to the vine arbor, the leaves of which, for about two feet in height, were piled with clover blossoms; they picked the flower and sucked from them the ambrosia, in the same way as we larger ones do an orange; after this each little fellow drew an acorn-cup from his pocket, into which he squeezed a single grape, and handed it to his fair partner, who sipped the fresh nectar with a lady-like grace. They then pressed another into the goblet, bowed with a high-bred courtier-like air, and quaffed the liquid ruby at a single draught. After this they divided into separate groups, flirting, quizzing, and sentimentalizing, until they again formed for the dance.

But my attention was attracted to a dear loving-looking little creature, who had crept into a small leafy bower, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and her blue eyes pale with weeping. Do

fairies grieve like that?' said I to Trezalyun; where there is joy, there must be love,' replied he, 'and where was there ever love that sorrow did not follow ? But she, fond thing, only weeps her lover's absence, who will be here on the instant.' Scarcely had we passed on, when we met her on her lover's arm, all smiles and with glistening eyes listening to his excuses, which I bent my ear to catch: In the form of a musquito, I did some good to-night,' whispered he. 'There was a vain, selfish, artful, painted, bedizzened girl, who had made a dupe of a noble-minded young heir, who this evening at a ball would have laid his fortune and heart at her feet; the one, she would soon have squandered, and the other have broken within a year. She had given the last touch to her dress, and by candlelight really looked most bewitching, when I pierced with my bill the hand of her little sister, who was passing with an inkstand full of ink. Stung with sudden pain, she let it fall all over Madame's fine dress, which awakened her anger to such a pitch, that the lover, who was in waiting, received a new light through his ears, which cooled his ardor for proposing. I likewise met a base wife and mother, forsworn to each holy name, who had taken her youngest, (how could she hold it to her heart?) and under cover of the night was stealing away like a thief in the dark, with a wretch who would have strangled her in a week; running from home, respectability and honorable love, to poverty, infamy and violent death! I stung sharply the sleeping innocent, whose cries awakened the father, and the child. saved the mother, who now shuddered at her guilty infatuation. I likewise roused up, with great difficulty, a fat, snoring, red-faced father, whose gentle daughter was running off with a beggared gambler; a devil in deeds and a saint in words, who had living, but unknown, a pining wife, who was then sewing by faint lamp-light, with thin transparent fingers, and the death-hollows on her cheek, for his support. What a dreadful place must be the world!' said the little dove-eyed fairy, as she nestled close to her lover. 'Mixed,' replied he, much mixed; it has also its bright sides, where love may be found as fond, sincere and devoted as our own.'

'It will not do for us to listen much longer to the cooing of those doves,' interrupted Trezalyun; for I hear other birds twittering, which is a certain sign that the morn is near; so we will make direct for your little isle.'

In a moment we were there; and the very instant we dismounted, our heroes vanished away. By this time the cold grey of early dawn was slowly stealing through the leaden clouds.Farewell!' said Trezalyun; I have urgent business that calls me by day; and so, like the New-Yorkers, I take my amusement at night; but however well this may suit fairies, depend upon it that it will break down the health of a people, for none of us can outrage the laws of Nature, without receiving a check from the old dame, and one that will not be paid in the gold that some of them expect either.'

In the twinkling of an eye, before I could say one word, he quickly withdrew through the trees, saying, 'Remember, but follow me not!' My mind was in such an inextricable commotion, that I

had, (as a worthy friend of mine phrases it,) hardly organized' my ideas, when the steamer passed in the morning, and carried me once more among men and women, against whom I often carry on a wordy warfare in favor of my Little Friends.

Brooklyn, New-York.

8. M. PARTRIDGE.

WHO, or what was, JOHN STOPFORD honest John Stopford how many years have gone by since I last saw thee, or even thought of thee! and yet how pleasantly doth thy name sound this day in the ear of mine imagination! who, or what, JOHN STOPFORD originally was, or may have been, in his own native country of England, I pretend not in any manner to declare.

I know indeed very little or nothing of the early history of John Stopford. A few words on the subject, or in remote relevancy thereto, and they were very few, dropped incidentally only and at long intervals from his lips; and the intelligence that even in this way was ever conveyed to my apprehension, amounted only to the fact, that in an attempt to increase an already comfortable fortune; whether inherited acquired given him, or won by horse-race or lottery, he said not; he had first jeoparded, and then sunk the whole! If John Stopford had told me of his having been born a gentleman, and to the inheritance of a good landed estate, I should have believed him. Or if he had spoken in detail of large commercial or financial operations that he had been engaged in and that had resulted at one period in the accumulation of a very important sum, which was subsequently lost; I should have been equally ready of faith. But he was a man of few words was John Stopford, and never desired during the course of our acquaintance to produce a sensation. He had been ruined by a share in the contract for the peace loan. It was the only instance on record, he quietly believed, that a peace loan had resulted in a loss to contractors; but the publick had unhappily no confidence in the continuance of peace; a turn in the stocks had untowardly taken place; and that had ruined him.' The peace on which John Stopford had relied was the peace of Amiens; and when he used the word he called it, without being aware of his articulation, Eh! my Ends! in a tone of voice that used to remind one of that beautiful expression of grief, Aÿ di me, Alhama!

But any gloom beyond this momentary shade of recollection seemed never to obscure the calm self-possession and mild lustre of his temper, and even this passed from it like breath upon a Toledo blade, leaving it in an instant polished, impassive, and impenetrable

as before.

Like many others of his nation, and it does them honour, John Stopford maintained, often I doubt not at much cost to himself, an impregnable breast-work about the heart; and regarded useless or unnecessary words in the light that beleaguered men regard doubtful sentinels; never to be trusted or hazarded at the City Gates. And then he had a short interjectional cough that put him always on his guard when he was going too far, under cover of which he contrived a shelter from any development.

Now how judicious was this trait of character in John Stopford,