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below, I almost vowed, in my soul, to abandon the trickery of artificial society, and fly here, where nature's gifts might be enjoyed on her own bosom."

"Pray, Mr. Editor, that is all very fine, but what has it to do with your profession?"

"Patience, dear R., patience; youth is so impetuous. Even as thy fancy has painted the charms of an editor's life, so was this journey to me. In three weeks I was so tired of the eternal recurrence of similar images, beautiful as they actually were, that I pined for an open field or paved street, and the hum and bustle of the town. I was fairly sick of leaves, branches, hills, valleys, and the trunks of trees. When I went to bed and closed my eyes, the everlasting boughs were waving around me, the squirrels were leaping across the ceiling, the wind was rushing over the foliage, I could not exclude them from my imagination, and when I galloped into a town of some fashion, and entered the ample hall of a large hotel, I felt as if I had been saved from drowning. Thus may the seeming fair things of earth become valueless and unwelcome if forced upon the enjoyment. Even Rasselas was wretched in the happy valley."

"And pray, Mr. Editor, of what may these indefinite disadvantages thou speak'st of be composed?"

"One of them, my respected R., is the impossibility of chatting long in the morning with an agreeable friend like thyself. Business must be attended to. I have already staid with thee too long. Come in some other time, good friend, then, I will confess all. Had I but time,

'I could a tale unfold

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes

But here's Peter, with his melancholy face, for more copy, to cram down the throat of my voracious publication; therefore, by your leave, I shall postpone this eternal blazonry till a future visit."

MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS.

I SAT at my window to watch the heavens all clustered with tremulous stars on a cloudless summer night. How the soul sympathizes with the magnificence of nature. To me there is nothing more impressive and sublime than silence. And then to reflect that in this deep and universal hush, the stupendous globe, and the interminable system of flashing worlds, are for ever performing their revolutions. There is more morality in this than in a homily. It disenthrals the soul from every artificial excitement, and affords the heart an opportunity to speak its own eloquence. Music hath its charm, and so hath the revel, and the flash and dazzle of fashion aud beauty; and, under their thrilling influences, the young and the ardent, with unwithered hopes and passions, might tread boldly into the perilous battle. But it seems to me, that if some dark accident should startle me with the conviction that my last hour had come, I should require no sublimer preparation than a time spent in the perfect solitude-the vast stillness, the grandeur, the glory of the midnight! Deep, hushed, beautiful midnight-and silence-absolute silence in the sky and over the earth-upon the deserted street-and in the closed temple. Is not this a dream? and why should it not be? What more will it be tomorrow? Slumber shall seal our eye lids, and a few fantastic images roll in fragments through our imagination, and the flashing stars will sink down behind the river, and morning will come, and we shall go on in the old routine, and when we look back upon this quiet and lovely hour, and feel this now lonely pavement trembling with the thundering of wheels, thronged with the crowds of money hunters, how shall we recall this dim moonlight-this deathly calm-as other than a dream? And may not all life be thus reasoned up? What is it all but a dream? He with whom yesterday we roved and forgot care; whom today finds on the ocean bound for foreign climes -what is he but a dream? She to whose side we stole a few hours ago—whose mere presence was a joy that

has departed-what is she but the veriest vision, as separate from the dull reality of our existence as yonder distant star, that will flash on just so brilliantly when we are gone from the earth? And he who once loved us, but now moulders in the dust with this very light upon his tomb, what is he but a faint vision? a something conceived in the mind. What matter is it whether waking or sleeping, since to us he is nothing? When you read this hereafter, dear reader, by sunlight, in the flush of hope and enjoyment, you will frown. But this comes of writing at night. It is as natural for us to be sentimental at such an hour, as it is for those shining clouds to wreathe themselves into each other's bosom and float away down the blue tide of heaven. And this is night! To one who had never before witnessed this aspect of nature, what a sublime and magnificent wonder it would be? It impresses us more than eloquence or music. It comes fraught with deep and swelling thoughts. The world appears less, and our single being more. This is the time for the atheist and the scoffer to repent -examine his cold creed-to think of his coarse jest, and not in the crowd, where the brain is teeming with false images and excitements, and the heart full of pride and intoxicating passions. And who beside ourselves are waking now? The pale student over his book, forgets his untouched pillow and toils with the hope of fame. And all the treasure of knowledge and thought he has been heaping up for years, death will perchance tomorrow wash away with a single wave. And the watchman is pacing his round beneath the window, and misery fills the eyes of some with tears instead of slumber, and the sweet girl with her irrepressible mirth and winning beauty, whom perchance you have gazed on with a thrill in the haunts of fashion, struck down from the bright flock of joyful creatures, by the fatal arrow of disease, is tossing on her downy couch as if stretched on fire, and would give her beauty and her fortune to inhale one fresh breath. And the epicure, who has wasted his life to pamper his palate and seek pleasure in refined combinations never dreamed of by nature, is writhing with gout, and envying the poor farmer who sleeps now the more sweetly for his poverty and toil. And the mother wakes and sobs as she thinks of her

buried child; and the wife, whose husband is on the deep and the reveller drains the bowl in some secret cave of vice and ribaldry—and the watcher on the deck of the war ship beguiles his hour with thoughts of homeand the culprit immured within the dark prison walls, whose hand is red with human blood, and who tomorrow shall be dragged, with a thousand eyes bent on him, fiercely and scoffingly, to hear the calm voice of judgment read the doom of death! And at the window of these the pleasant starlight steals in like a careless spirit upon whom the wicked and the wretched have no claim; and the dimly breaking morn shall streak the east with its brilliant blazonry, and the perfumed breeze will blow upon their hot foreheads like a mockery-and so the world goes on and the night ends.

What a change both in physical nature and the aspect of society is wrought by a few short months at this period! The elegant runaways, who have been bearing the blaze of fashion into the quiet recesses of the country, have abandoned the Springs, Niagara and Trenton Falls. She who lately startled the echoes of distant forests with laughter, or held her breath as the magnificent view from the mountain top burst on her wondering sight; she who looked down into the lucid depths of Lake George, or in the flying chariot glided like a sea bird over the marble beach of Rockaway; has now floated with the tide that sets in upon the central ocean, and is here a different being. The youth who pressed her hand in the dance at Saratoga, passes her without a glance in the gay Broadway. The very summer zephyr that kissed her forehead among the Highlands, could it enter the radiant night world that goes on within the lofty theatre, would not recognise the jewelled brow that beams from the boxes like the evening star.

How beautiful are the gradations of the seasons, from the brilliancy of summer, mellowing into the wealth of autumn, till the sun turns away his face like a cooling friend, and leaves the dying forests and fading fields to darken gradually into wintry nakedness and desolation. We remember to have been once strangely chilled with this mournful passing away of bright things. We had stolen to a lovely rural spot, always charming, but when gazed on by one who had just escaped from the bondage VOL. II.-7

of business, and the artificial world of a city life, posítively bewildering and delicious. Every thing was there that a painter could crowd into Eden; and we were one of a party which might have added new rapture even to that blissful retreat. The forest was nearly dark beneath the masses of verdant foliage; the orchard boughs were bent down with their luscious burthens of crimson and gold; and the imprisoned essences of life and beauty were bursting out in new and more gorgeous forms from the hedges and the gardens, and decking the white fences with tresses of vines, blossoms and flowers, of dies as superb and glowing as if the rainbow had been broken into a thousand fragments, and scattered along the scene. A sudden illness confined us to our bed for a long period, we scarcely knew how long, and when at length returning health enabled us to venture abroad, one cloudy morning, we remember with what a frozen sense of desolation the marred, naked, dimmed prospect struck our eyes. All the bright trees were stripped, the blooming young flowers were gone, the wind sighed through empty branches, and across a dull expanse of land, whirling and rustling over the dried brittle leaves, and scattering them sometimes on the stream. It seemed as if a curse had fallen upon the spot, and so scathed it—as if, instead of roaming in the interior of the garden of paradise, we had been transported from its bowers into the bleak, dreary, dismal, real world. We never

felt more forcibly the exquisite beauty of Milton's descriptions. We hope all our young friends have read them; if not, we pray they will put the Pelhams, the Young Dukes, the Thaddeuses of Warsaw, and even the Moores, the Byrons, (must we add, the Sir Walter Scotts!) away, and take up John Milton incontinently. Do not be dismayed with a few pompous lines, or a chapter of hard names; but, in the first place, read over Addison's elegant criticisms on "Paradise Lost," published in the Spectator. He will lead you in among splendors, as a gentle friend would guide you through an ancient city, and point out its monuments, its palaces, and all its hidden wonders. It is with a most dissatisfied feeling that we hear a young intelligent girl say she has never read Milton. We always wish to be in a pleasant, still room with her alone, and all care off our

its

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